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How to Choose a Research Topic (转载)

已有 5882 次阅读 2009-11-7 04:55 |系统分类:科研笔记

Choosing a research problem to work on is a tough decision to make, and the relevant advice is rather scarce.

So far I have found only a handful of reasonably looking tips:

  • work on important problems (R. Hamming, You and Your Research)
  • go for the messes, i.e., for the areas far from being crystal clear
    (S. Weinberg, Scientist: Four golden lessons)
  • look for an unoccupied niche that has potential (this and some other good tips can be found in the paper Picking a research problem — the critical decision which is primarily addressed to the researchers in biology and medicine but can be of interest to the other scientists too)
  • try to move beyond the subject of your Ph.D. thesis (if you have already defended one, indeed) or your postodoc (or your postdoctoral mentor, for that matter); more broadly, beyond your current area of research (see e.g. this post of Terence Tao). This has an extra benefit of reducing the risk of being scooped as discussed here.
  • do something you will enjoy doing and what you feel you can do
  • your work should rather open the way to new breakthroughs than close the whole subject down

The last three tips are somewhat of a common wisdom and can be found in a number of places; see e.g. the article Choosing a research topic by Richard Reis, which contains some further interesting thoughts on the subject.

See also:



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