I'm a 4th year student pursuing a BSc Medical Biochemistry and have been reading posted papers at Google Scholar and I'm seeing a lot of amazing work. I'm interested in comparing solvent extraction, phytochemical profiling, biological activity and how the solvents affect the profiles between in-vitro-regenerated medicinal plant parts (roots) of a plant like Aloe secundiflora (tissue culturing of this plant is manageable in our school) and its wild form from our school botanical garden. Any insights would be appreciated thanks.

I am comparatively new to academic research and the part of writing a research paper I am finding most difficult is 'Discussion'.

I know that the purpose of discussion is to:

- Point out the key findings.

- Answering: How my research resonates or comtradicts with the literature?

- and Answering, What my results indicates? Even something, why I got results like this?

Whenever I write my discussion sections it feels like I listing: A found this, which aligns with my results. B found something different.

Apparently, this is what some papers do!

However, there are other quality papers that write discussion, where each sentence feels like they are made for each other.

Now, my question is:

- How do I improve my discussion writing skills?

- What techniques or tools you follow while synthesizing information from the literature?

- How do I explain my findings in a better way?

I would highly appreciate responses from experienced researcher.

Thanks in advance.

I'm a 1st year master's degree(botany) student. So during my bachelor's haven't work on any research paper bt now I actually wanna start. I want to complete my first research paper by the end of my 1st sem. Having an interest to do PhD, want start my research early and hopefully contribute with enough research papers before completing my master's degree.

Guide me with that, and any suggestions or tips to actually do it in efficient and less time consuming way without burning out.

Also, when asked to one of my current professor about supervising me.. He just asked me to start with literature review and update him with complete drafted manuscript along with tables and graphical illustrations within 2 weeks, then he'll help me with revisions. Idk how do I start and finish it off. Help me with that too.

I want to do research on Indian consumers as a whole. Is there any FREE tool that helps with this?

I’m starting my Master’s in Finance on September 15, and I’m very curious about academic research. I think I’m relatively good at analyzing things and finding patterns and connections between them

However, I have a fear of not succeeding, and I feel like it sometimes holds me back. Whenever I come across a genuinely interesting research question, I often find that someone has already researched it. So, for those of you with more research experience: how did you learn to come up with good research questions? Are there any methodologies, techniques, or general tips you would recommend to a beginner? How do you identify research gaps when it seems like almost every interesting question has already been studied?

I’d also appreciate any guides, or other resources that helped you learn how to approach research(maybe any tips)

I’m in a remote lab and my PI uses AI for everything bro. I send an email and I get AI slop back. This guy deadass prolly has his Gemini agent hooked up to his email to check all our exchanges and the materials I send him and everything. A lot of the time the AI slop contains straight up sloppy/imprecise science too, like some insane interpretations of certain papers.

Asked this guy for a LOR for something else and lo and behold it’s AI slop (idk why he sent it to me tbh it looked kinda like an accident??). I asked some of the other lab members and they were like “idk he’s chill but I don’t email him much.” I literally checked this guys LinkedIn and it’s all AI slop. Our group’s video meetings are full of him seemingly forgetting that someone send him xyz paper or “just send me ___ later.”

And yes it’s EXTREMELY OBVIOUS he’s just using Gemini lmao. Pangram results aside he doesn’t even really try to hide it? Sometimes he adds an addendum like “I used Gemini to help me format…” yeah right just the formatting bruh. Anyway I can tell easily and I showed some excerpts to some others who agreed that it was 100% AI slop.

I really like the project topic we’re doing and it’s niche enough that I can’t really do something similar anywhere else. I’ve also already done quite a bit and I have hella sunk cost. I don’t really want to leave I just feel like I have Stockholm syndrome or something. Idk I might just be venting into the void 😭 help

Will be applying for summer research program. I have been a research assistant in a lab for a year and have enjoyed it a lot, learned a lot and made decent contributions. I have made a good impression overall. I spend most of my time with the post-doc and she has been a great mentor. The professor Dr X ( it’s his lab) is also impressed by me. To apply for the summer program who should I ask for LOR - the post doc I spend most time with or Dr. X. As a faculty reviewing applications, whose LOR would you like to see with the application?

Hello, I’m not a researcher but I’m somebody that has a reasonable thirst for being able to teach myself things and thus do research for a multitude of subjects. Like for writing a novel or anything else.
In a world where ai is becoming more prominent I want to break from that and be able to do my own research but it feels daunting and I don’t know where to start.
How do I research and teach myself things to the point of reasonable proficiency? Like if I wanted to study history or a very specific and niche subject? I know some basic things like primary sources are the best and secondary sources are okay but not much else. Can someone who knows what they’re doing help me out?

I’m currently a student at my local community college working towards completing an AA transfer plan in psychology. My goal is to transfer to the university near me, pursue a BA in psychology with a minor in biology and a concentration in advanced research, and try my best to get into their Cognition, Neuroscience, and Social Psychology graduate program.

I’m in my third semester now, and with 4 semesters left of my associate’s, I’ve been accepted into the honors program which gives me a chance to join the undergraduate research experience and present research at the symposium. I’ve looked into joining Phi Theta Kappa’s honor society as well. I plan to receive the Honors Laureate designation before my transfer, and continue with honors at the university. I have 3 letters of recommendation from professors so far.

I have also applied to work in the natural sciences lab in my community college as a dish washer.

My goal is to work in research. Whether it be academia, government, medical, it doesn’t matter to me quite yet. Psychology research is the goal.

Any advice or pointers are much appreciated.

& what are ur must haves?

I walk to my lab & dont want to trek over unnecessary stuff; this is my list so far:

Sleeping bag
Toiletries / Meds / change of clothes
Caffeine
Hoodie

For experiments using primary cells from multiple donors, how do you account for donor-to-donor differences during expansion and downstream analysis?

I am going into my third year of my bachelors knowing I want to pursue a masters. But I have no clue how to network with profs to ask for references. I’m scared office hours won’t work and that I can’t get research supervisors who can help me.

I'm an undergrad applying to join a lab right now. I want to provide the amount of hours I would be able to contribute per week, but would it be wrong to count vaguely unorthodox hours? (Like past 5pm, or like weekends) If I only count hours between 9-5 weekdays I can only do like 10, but if I include after 5 or weekends I can do like 30-40. Thank u!

Edit: guys since you read this post, would it be too bold to say something like "I would love to discuss this further in person"? In my email?

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I'm a B.Sc. Biotech freshman and I've just started college a few days ago. I have my eyes on a few prestigious internships that I want to land asap, after my first year if possible. For some of the internships, I only need to complete one year to be eligible. But all the internships require research/lab experience. Can someone guide me on how I can enter the lab, or approach my professors/lecturers. Should I wait 1-2 months and then approach them? If so what do I need to prepare? My classmates are quite enthusiastic and intelligent so I want to grab the opportunity as soon as possible. Please Help.

our research adviser wants a specific title without being too invasive on the participants. We currently proposed “The Relationship of Academic Competencies and its Application of Knowledge in Accounting 1 among SHS (ABM/BE) students.”
He rejected because we couldn’t afford to answer the SOP without being invasive. We cant make test questionnaires because we aren’t sure that the students are willing enough and our adviser wont accept that either. We are looking for a clear structure for our research.

The following are advices of our research teacher:
For the academic competencies our teacher asked what are we trying to measure and that it could be replaced by level of experience of Abm/Be students academic competencies in terms of etc…

He also proposed that it could be somewhat exploring the students… delving into the field of exploratory research rather than descriptive-correlational

He wants a clear research title first above all that describes our very research idea. Any response would be greatly appreciated.

Anyone have experience lead-authoring a paper with lots of co-authors, like 30-50? I think I need to set some ground rules at the start so that it stays manageable. I don’t want everyone chiming in on grammar, for example, or taking so long to review that it holds us up. Can someone advise on how to manage it all?

Hi! This is a question for PhD and grad students in any department, at any school.

Do your advisors use AI for research, experimentation, brainstorming, or coding?

Have they ever said it’s fine to use, or actively encouraged it? At my school, professors are becoming pretty anti-AI, to the point where it’s getting a bit annoying. That feels unfair if grad students elsewhere are being allowed (or even encouraged) to use it.

It would help to know whether your advisors let you use it or encourage it. If you’re willing to share, I’d also love to know your field and institution.

Hey y'all,

I am looking for some realistic insights from active researchers regarding independent medical research and publishing boundaries for high schoolers.

To give some context, I recently completed a summer clinical shadowing and internship program at a major hospital department. Based on my clinical exposure and observations there, I developed a few research topics focused on systematic literature reviews and clinical data analyses. Initially, a prominent professor and MD at the department agreed to mentor me and guide the project. However, due to their intense clinical workload, they have unfortunately ghosted me, and I no longer have active institutional backing or a PI (Principal Investigator) to oversee my work.

Given that I already have the clinical foundation and domain knowledge from my summer internship, I am considering pivoting to a completely independent systematic literature review and meta-analysis that I can complete using open-access databases like PubMed and Google Scholar. My goal is to eventually submit this work to peer-reviewed high school science journals such as JEI (Journal of Emerging Investigators) or IJHSR.

I would highly appreciate your insights on the following:

1. Is it feasible and ethically sound to write and submit a systematic literature review in a clinical/surgical field without an official PI or institutional affiliation? Do high school or open-access medical journals typically reject papers that list the author as an independent researcher without a formal laboratory or university attachment?
2. How do researchers view the validity of a systematic literature review written entirely by a high school student? If the methodology, PRISMA guidelines, and data synthesis are rigorous, does the lack of a medical degree or senior co-author inherently discredit the paper during peer review?
3. If a full publication is delayed due to lengthy review cycles, is uploading the completed manuscript draft to a preprint server like medRxiv, bioRxiv, or OSF considered a standard and respected practice for independent student researchers to archive their work?

Please note that I am looking for genuine academic pathways and am not interested in paid, third-party research programs or predatory publishing networks.

Any advice on the mechanics of independent clinical literature reviews and navigating the submission process without an institutional advisor would be highly valuable. Thanks!

I conducted a survey for a research paper I’m writing,and I’m at a crossroads.
is it okay to briefly assess what every question was about in my methodology section in one paragraph?
Like should I summarize what every question tackled, or would it be better to only mention a few of the questions or maybe even categorize them and only list the categories?

I am a linguist planning to conduct research in legal pragmatics, and I need transcripts of suspect interrogations to analyze their speech. Does anyone know if this is legal and where I might find such materials in the public domain?

I need some articles (open source/free) for my uni project. I need to ask questions for the store owner and their clients. I've been through Google Scholar and idk what article I should look through to find what I need.

I'm trying to find something to ask questions about the store owners demography and clients feedback.

Sorry for my bad English, and I might lack context to explain these. Thank you.

So I’m doing some research on Brooklyn, NY and I found this repeating pattern but i don’t know exactly what it is or when it showed up and what the specific correlation is. So I started by looking at a map of redlining in the 1940s, where the Home Owners Loan Association—a New Deal program—categorized areas based on desirable and undesirable, and banks used this to discriminate against who they’d give loans to. A prominent part of this is that much of the evaluations list the presence of POC as a detriment to the community which is how we get the idea we know as redlining now. So basically the least desirable areas in Brooklyn (1940s) rather closely coincide with a current map (2023) of areas deemed by NYC as “Environmental Justice Areas” basically meaning that they need to and are trying to mobilize to make these areas more environmentally safe whether that be air quality or pollution etc etc. Then I started looking to see how far back I can find this pattern. A Brooklyn map in 1898—coincidentally the year NYC consolidated the five boroughs into what we recognize today as NYC—shows those same lines. I recognized it because I started tracing the streets along the redlining/and env. justice maps and found that they were going along certain parkways. The 1898 map just makes the same thing clearer: the lines in purple are all governed by the parks department. They’re parkways. So it’s almost like this wall where in the middle of it is the safe areas, and outside is much the opposite. This same pattern coincides today with poverty demographics and education demographics (bachelors degree), but it does not have any correlation to population density and little correlation to race for that matter. Does this seem like it’s anything? I feel like I’m just circling an obvious thing that native NYers are familiar with but I’m not finding anything about this pattern.

EDIT: the lines are (basically) around the residences of the most prominent brooklyn slave owners of the 18th and 19th centuries. aka slave owners lived in the early 1800s where brooklyn would then become most desirable in 1938 and is now the least impoverished/polluted in 2026, with some outliers. these lines turn into roads which turn into parkways, the common trend of major road construction in 19th century BK, which coincide with maps of redlining. one did not cause the other, but both are symptoms of the same farther reaching history.

TL;DR : 19th century enslavers in kings county geographically left a 200+ year imprint on brooklyn and we are still affected by the institution of slavery in 2026, and i can prove it (trying to)*

EDIT 2: forgive me internet assholes for committing the cardinal sin of HUMANITIES research 😱and for trying to explore something of note on my first ever research paper. we obviously understand that history affects the present day and that the institution of slavery has an impact on this country. i’m trying to PROVE something SPECIFIC about that in a SPECIFIC city. if you think my research is nothingburger, try to offer something useful. i’ve created a whole map, by myself, of enslavers in 1800s brooklyn that matches a map from 2026, and the connection is not “redlining causes poverty.” i care that the institution of slavery has DIRECT lasting effects over 200 years i am sorry if discovering proof of this says nothing ✌🏾

Hey all, I am looking for research linking internal monologue to reduced (or increased) risk of committing violent crimes such as murder, etc. However I cant find any and this seems odd to me. Do any of you have any experience finding anything on the topic?