How to Find Valuable Resources and Support Materials to Help You through Your Doctoral Journey

The authenticity of a doctoral dissertation depends upon the authenticity of the resources from where you have gathered the data for your dissertation.  In this post, the best ways to find valuable resources and support material for Ph.D. assignments and thesis writing have been shared.

The authenticity of a doctoral dissertation depends upon the authenticity of the resources from where you have gathered the data for your dissertation. 

No doubt, to find out resources is a difficult task, but if you want to find out some valuable resources, you will have to face more difficulties. Its reason is that most of the students find lots of resources relevant to their topic but to differentiate between the valuable and ordinary resources is a real challenge for them. If they are not able to find out the valuable resources, their doctoral dissertation will not be interesting for the audience members.

Some essential tips to find valuable resources for your doctoral dissertation are given below;

1) Start with Wikipedia

Wikipedia has become the most accurate encyclopedia to gather a huge amount of information relevant to your topic idea. No doubt, Wikipedia is providing an offer to all the people that they can edit and share their own information. Due to this reason, some weird information is also available on this website. Therefore, you should not try to use the reference of Wikipedia articles in your research paper. Here, I am suggesting you Wikipedia for these two reasons;

• Wikipedia articles will provide you with an idea of whether your topic is researchable or not. Wikipedia also provides some suggestions. These suggestions are relevant to your topic idea. These suggestions will provide the best ideas that are associated with your topic idea.
• At the end of each Wikipedia article, lots of references are given. In other words, Wikipedia articles are also the best resources to gather some valuable resources relevant to your topic idea.

2) Go to the library

Your university library is the best place to find out the best research paper sources. Its reason is that lots of researchers have submitted their research papers in your university library. You just need to keep in mind the associated ideas relevant to your topic and try to find out such research papers that are providing enough information about these associated ideas. To find out the valuable research paper resources from your university library is not an easy task but with some hard work, you can easily find these resources.

3) Find the top few secondary resources cited in the article

In a doctoral dissertation, you will have to provide references to lots of resources. While providing references to these resources, you should keep in mind that these resources should be authoritative. The best way to get an idea about the authority of a resource is to get an idea of how many times this resource is used in different research papers.

When you take an overview of the resources of lots of research papers and research articles, you will easily get an idea which research resources are mostly used. Another important way to get an idea of how many times a resource is used to check this resource in Google Scholar.

4) Follow the trail of citations to primary resources

By following the above tips, you will be able to find out some authentic resources for your dissertation. No doubt, these authentic resources have also gathered the data from other authentic resources. You should follow the resources of those authentic resources. As a result, you will be able to create a wide list of authentic resources relevant to your topic idea.

5) Mix up your research paper resource type

There are some students who just stick themselves to normal sources like books and journal articles. No doubt, these are great resources but you should also try to find out some other resources for your dissertation. By using some sources other than traditional sources will create authenticity in your dissertation.

Some essential resources other than traditional resources that you can use in your dissertation are given below;

1. Articles that are published in the newspapers
2. Articles that are published in private journals
3. Sound recordings
4. Personal interviews
5. Magazines

In the end, you should keep in mind that you should try to use at least one resource for each page of your dissertation.

To Sum Up

The authenticity of a doctoral dissertation depends upon the authenticity of the resources from where you have gathered the data for your dissertation. No doubt, to find out authentic resources is a real challenge for the students but they can easily find these resources by following some essential tips. First of all, they should read Wikipedia articles and try to trace their resources. Secondly, they should read out the research papers by visiting the university library. Thirdly, they should trace the number of times a resource is used in the research papers with the help of Google Scholar. At last, they should also try to find out some other resources like magazines, personal resources, and sound recordings along with traditional resources.