Research Papers 101: Scholarly conversation + Making sense of scholarly sources

Research is a conversation where many diverse people (scholars, citizens, activists, companies, governments, and others) are discussing your topic. You can find these conversations in academic papers, as well as in other formats like conferences, government white papers, blogs, social media, etc. As a researcher, your job is to listen in on these conversations, understand what's being said, and figure out what it all means. Once you understand what's going on, you can add your own ideas to the discussion.

In scholarly conversations, you'll find both big, widely-discussed topics and smaller, more niche ones. The main discussions usually revolve around keystone texts—articles or books that are cited a lot because they offer valuable, unique, or interesting insights that other scholars find useful. You can discover these key texts by searching Google Scholar using general terms related to your topic.