if you're writing a research paper or you're planning to start writing a research paper then in this video I want to share with you the most important tip that can mean that your paper is either going to get accepted in a very good journal or is just going to get rejected so let's Dive Right In and see what's that key strategy to publishing research papers in top journals now you've probably seen all sorts of YouTube videos that claim to you know know the number one strategy to writing and Publishing research paper so you might be
wondering well why should I even listen to this one well this strategy is based on my experience of successfully coaching over 300 PhD students and researchers and helping them publish research papers in top journals and also having written and published research papers in journals myself it's also based on my personal experience of having had some of my papers actually rejected or having had some of my papers come back with major comments and looking at all of these things you know how I've helped my clients my own experience of writing papers those situations where my paper
was rejected or in needed major revisions what I've realized is that you know there is one like really really important thing that you must do correctly in your research paper if you want to publish in really good journals and this is what I want to share with you in this video and if you're new here my name is marikuchkovic and I run academic English now where I help PhD students and researchers regularly publish papers in top journals so this number one key thing that you've got to get right in a research paper is the research
Gap I'm going to explain in a second what a research Gap is and show you examples from research papers but let me first explain why the research Gap is so important well it's really really key because it's the number one thing that shows the reviewers in the journal why there is a need for your study like without a research Gap or without a properly explained research Gap in your introduction your study doesn't have any Merit it has zero Merit it has zero validity basically and your research question is basically useless I'm sorry if I sound
blunt but that's just the way it is right and you can even have a recent Gap that is amazing and it's very clear in your head but if you didn't present it correctly in your research paper right in the introduction then your research paper is done like the likelihood of it being rejected is very very high and this is something that actually happened to me not a very long time ago right submitting my paper to a really good journal in my field it's like top 10 journal in teaching English and it didn't get rejected but
it came back with major Corrections and what seemed like you know I'll have to completely redo my study because the main comments that the reviewers gave me was that you know we don't really see why this study what was needed and we don't understand what's the contribution and Novelty of your study and initially when I saw that I was like what are they talking about you know I did mention the research Gap in my introduction I really don't understand like did you even read my paper of course it has an amazing contribution and of course
it has novelty right that was my immediate reaction but then the more and more I thought about it and the more I looked at my introduction and the research Gap the more I realized that they were completely right you know the research Gap was clear in my head but it wasn't clearly explained on paper in exactly the same thing happened almost at a very similar time to one of my clients whose paper also came back with major Corrections and one of the main comments was you know we don't really understand the contribution and we don't
know what the research Gap here is and therefore we we're not really sure about the novelty of your study right and this really for me drove the message home that the research Gap is the key to publishing in high impact journals now before I show you how to actually Express the research Gap in your own paper and let me just very briefly explain what a research Gap is and give you some clarity on the different types of research gaps that are out there so they're basically four main types of a research Gap the first one
is lack or insufficient research and this basically means that you know simply not enough research has been done on a particular topic on a particular group of people or material or maybe in a particular country or setting or doing a particular using a particular methodology or something like this right so that's that's the first one the second one is that there is some sort of like lack of understanding or lack of consensus about a specific issue in your field so in other words a lot of Studies have been done but the results are maybe contradictory
or just like completely different right and therefore researchers disagree as to a certain issue right and then you can come in and try to clarify this disagreement so that's research Gap number two research Gap number three is limitations of previous studies right so all Studies have some sort of problems right so you want to look at the limitations of all the previous studies and see if you can notice any patterns about them and then you know take those patterns and see if you can fix those limitations in your own study right so that's research Gap
number three or type number three the fourth one is you know a real world problem or a practical problem that needs fixing so in other words you know imagine like you know Engineers are using a specific algorithm for solving a specific problem and while this algorithm Works maybe it takes a very long time to actually use it right so that's a practical problem right a real real world problem and now you can come in with your study and solve it right so that's research Gap number four now that you understand what a research Gap is
we need to look very carefully at how you actually present the research Gap in your research paper so that you know you really highlight the contribution and the novelty of your paper and then when the reviewers read the research Gap it's Crystal Clear to them why your study was needed why your study is novel and why your aim or research question you know really can contribute to the field a great deal right so I'm going to show you that on a couple of examples from different research papers from different fields so regardless of whether you
know you're in more exact Sciences or you're in more in social sciences this is really going to help you to present the research Gap in your own paper so before we dive into the types of research Gap with clear examples let's just and sure that you know where exactly in your paper you should present the research Gap right so you've got to present it in the introduction and where it's done it's at the end of the introduction right so we can see the introduction in here right and before you state the aim right so in
here they State the aim and the hypothesis right before that you've got to State the research Gap so this comes in the introduction after you've reviewed the literature you've shown us what other researchers have done then you've State the research Gap now one way of stating the research Gap is to point out that there is a lack of research or insufficient research right and so you've got an example of this here right and notice how also you know we we want to be cautious right so it's very common to say something like to the best
of our knowledge right you know because maybe we're wrong I mean we've done a thorough literature review search but maybe we missed one study so we wanted to be a little bit cautious here right and then you can say that this topic has not yet been included studied researched and so on right so this is pointing out lack of research now another thing that um we can do right we can also point out a lack of knowledge or you know um basically that a lot of Studies have been conducted but we still don't understand a
certain phenomenon right so you you can see that here little is known about right so that's a clear lack of knowledge and this phrase little is known is a very common phrase to express that type of research Gap right and then same thing here it is not clear weather right that's again a very common phrase to express to show that there is a lack of consensus or a lack of understanding of a specific topic right so and again notice that if this is done right before the aim of the study because this is the aim
of the study right and this is done at the end of the introduction now another thing that you can do is also show limitations of previous studies right um for example in here so you can again notice that this is the last paragraph of the introduction right before stating the aim right we've got a sentence in here right um so there was one study in this context but it used a very small sample size right so this clearly means as well that this study was limited right and then we've got another example in here previous
research does not explain something so again this is a limitation of previous studies so that's a third type of a research Gap now the fourth type of research Gap that you can present is a sort of practical problem in your field that needs resolving so let's take a look here and you can see an example here so this you know production this method is unpractical right so that's an example of of a problem in your field where you know you're going to try to resolve in your paper right it's another example in here you know
while it is in principle possible to do something you know it remains unpractic practical right and then another example here such beams suffer from low production cross-sections and poor quality right so again it's it's not so much about limitations of previous studies the lack of research or anything like it it's more about a practical problem that needs resolving and your study aims to resolve this problem now with these four different types of research gaps one tip that I would give you is to try to combine them together so if we if we look at this
example right so I mentioned in here that you know they talk about um lack of knowledge on a specific topic right but also they mentioned limitations of previous studies right and they mention a practical problem as well so in essence they basically combine three types of research gaps now this might not always be possible for all topics but whenever you can try to combine more than one type of a research Gap I've got another example of how this is done in here right so we've got lack of studies right that have only been four studies
on this topic right and there is also another type of lack of research where like all these Studies have been only conducted in like a particular region of the world right so that's another type of a of a research Gap um and then we've got limitations of previous studies which is something that I've that I've already mentioned and another limitation so in here we kind of combine three types of research gaps and this just makes your topic much stronger right and much more novel than just like having one simple research gun and the last tip
that I would want to give you is about you know combining the research Gap with the contribution of your study right so this is how it's done in here so we've got we've got the research Gap in here that there is a clear lack of studies on this topic and then we've got the aim but what you can do after that is to present the contributions of your study straight away this is this is a good trick if you want to you know let the reviewers know straight away in the introduction why your study is
novel and why it should be considered for this journal right and so you know the way to do this is very simple you just need one paragraph maybe three sentences or something like this you start by saying that you know this study has several contributions and then you know you can use phrases like this is the first study to do something right and then you know this research contributes for the first time to something right and then you know this paper opens several avenues for future research right so we just like in every sentence we
highlight why the results of this study are novel so if you do if you have a research Gap and then you say the aim and then you highlight the novelty and the contributions of your study your chances of your paper being accepted in a really good Journal definitely go up now if you've enjoyed this video but you'd like to get more personalized help to publish research papers in top journals in your field and schedule a free one-to-one consultation and the link to do that is right below this video we're going to meet one-to-one and identify
what challenges you're currently having pinpoint your exact goals and we'll show you a clear pathway as well to getting to those goals and solving your challenges much faster and with greater ease and if you're interested in doing that the link to schedule a free one-to-one consultation is right below this video
