Research Organization - Composition II: Organizing & Using Sources

Why is organization important in the research process?

When you conduct research and write research papers, you want to be sure that you are sharing your own ideas, as well as the evidence you are using to support those ideas. One way to help accomplish these tasks is to have organized sources.

How can staying organized help me with the research process?

Staying organized can help you do the following:

• Find useful sources - By staying organized you can help ensure that you are finding useful, relevant, and unique sources.
• Avoid plagiarism - When you have organized sources you are much less likely to have a citation error
• Write faster - If you keep your research organized, you'll save time later when you actually start writing and incorporating evidence into your paper.

How can I stay organized?

One great way to keep your research organized is to take good notes on the sources you are using. By taking good notes you can identify main ideas and themes in your sources, and you can then group your sources together to use them in your research paper.

Take notes and use organizational methods that work best for you. If you're a visual learner, you might consider creating a mind-map for your notes, or using color-coding to stay organized.