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• CAREER FEATURE
• 01 April 2024

How scientists are making the most of Reddit

• Hannah Docter-Loeb 0

Hannah Docter-Loeb is a freelance writer in Washington DC.

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Reddit’s many ‘subreddit’ communities offer channels for discussing science and are of interest to social-media scholars. Credit: Amy Lombard/New York Times/Redux/eyevine

It has been almost 18 months since Elon Musk purchased Twitter, now known as X. Since the tech mogul took ownership, in October 2022, the number of daily active users of the platform’s mobile app has fallen by around 15%, and in April 2023 the company cut its workforce by 80%. Thousands of scientists are reducing the time they spend on the platform ( Nature 613 , 19–21; 2023 ). Some have gravitated towards newer social-media alternatives, such as Mastodon and Bluesky. But others are finding a home on a system that pre-dates Twitter: Reddit.

The site was founded in 2005, originally as one all-encompassing forum where users (known as redditors) could post content such as links, texts, images and videos. Anonymous user upvote (or downvote) and comment on each other’s content, deciding on what performs well enough to reach others’ feeds.

Social media for scientists

Today, Reddit is divided into communities, called subreddits, each with volunteer moderators who review content. These subreddits have names that begin with ‘r/’ and are devoted to all sorts of subjects, such as literature, solo travel and Washington DC. Reddit is regularly irreverent: r/trees is for people to share content about marijuana, whereas r/marijuanaenthusiasts is the place to look at trees. It is sometimes dangerous — some communities have amplified conspiracy theories. And there are subreddits devoted to science, ranging from the broad r/science to more specific ones, such as r/bacteriophages.

As of December 2023, according to Reddit’s own statistics, the site had 73 million daily active users, more than 100,000 active communities and had amassed over 16 billion posts and comments. In February 2024, it was the eighth most visited website in the world, ahead of both Amazon and TikTok (see go.nature.com/3tugxbq ). And on 20 March, the company floated on the New York Stock Exchange, where it was initially valued at US$6.4 billion. With most researchers now needing to pay to download useful amounts of data on X, Reddit is another option to survey the Internet hivemind. Although changes made last year threaten researchers’ ability to pull data as easily as they once did, Reddit says access to its data continues to be free for non-commercial researchers and academics.

“As the social-media landscape started changing, we really started thinking about the other spaces besides Twitter that people are using,” says Nicholas Proferes, a social media researcher at Arizona State University’s School of Social and Behavioral Sciences in Phoenix, who co-authored reviews on the use of Reddit for research 1 , 2 . Here, Nature reports on how Reddit is providing scientists with continued avenues for connecting with other researchers, gathering data and engaging with the public.

Networking and collaboration

Yvette Cendes’s journey on Reddit began in 2014. Cendes, who is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, found herself with some downtime during her PhD studies in astronomy, and started poking around on the platform. She came across a thread in which users were panicking over how imminent γ-ray bursts from supernovae were going to wreak havoc and kill people — something that she knew to be untrue. She resolved to jump into the comments and clear things up, and this was the start of her science-communication career.

Since then, Cendes has made a name for herself on Reddit and even created her own subreddit, with nearly 17,000 members. “It’s a very good way to get good knowledge out there,” she says.

Scientists also use Reddit to get tips and tricks from other scientists. The r/biotech subreddit features news about biotechnology innovations and career advice; r/datascience is a community specifically for data-science professionals. There’s even a subreddit devoted to electron microscopy, from which users can seek guidance on the technology.

Yvette Cendes discusses astronomy as a science and a career on Reddit. Credit: Floris Looijesteijn

Not everyone is as forthcoming with their names and credentials on Reddit, which can make networking a bit more challenging than on other sites, says Cendes. But the pseudoanonymity can also be beneficial. Groups such as r/labrats offer safe spaces for scientists to discuss their research or dilemmas with others of similar backgrounds (and these groups are sometimes used by science journalists looking for article ideas). The anonymity provides some protection for people to post without fear of retaliation, and to seek counsel. In one discussion, for instance, a user laments how their principal investigator published a paper based on their research without giving credit, and considers hiring legal support.

Reddit can also be a great jumping-off point for early-career scientists or those trying to pivot between specialties. Kevin Ortiz Ceballos, a graduate student at Harvard University’s Department of Astronomy, happened upon one of Cendes’ posts about how to become an astronomer back when he was in secondary school. He credits it with helping him to switch from literature to physics and eventually astrophysics. Engaging in conversations about professional astronomy before entering the field himself was a huge asset.

“The fact that Yvette made it so accessible gave me the tools I needed to take the necessary steps to study and prepare what I needed to get into astronomy grad school,” he says. The two have since connected in person, and even collaborated on a project that was recently submitted for publication.

With all of its subspaces, Reddit can be overwhelming at first. Cendes encourages potential users to take it slowly, find the communities they are most interested in and go from there — putting keywords in the search function and perusing the different subreddits that come up.

Research and analysis

The information embedded in posts and comments from Reddit’s millions of users can also be a treasure trove for researchers studying online behaviours. In 2022, NASA collaborated with master’s students at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, to use Reddit data to locate landslides (see go.nature.com/3tlum6t ). The team scraped the site for mentions of ‘landslide’, before analysing and validating relevant mentions to add to the NASA landslides database. According to the team, this verification was needed because a Reddit post about the song ‘Landslide’ by the rock band Fleetwood Mac might “give us insight about the changes and challenges of life, but it doesn’t do much for global disaster detection”.

TikTok for physics: influencers aim to spark interest in science

A 2021 review 2 in Social Media + Society , co-authored by Proferes, chronicled 727 manuscripts published between 2010 and 2020, that made use of Reddit data. These studies spanned all sorts of disciplines — from computer science to medicine to social science.

One reason that Reddit is ripe for research is that there are few bureaucratic hurdles to clear compared with what’s required for other studies involving human beings. “It is a publicly accessible web forum in the US and so is not considered to be human-subjects research,” says Proferes. Institutional review boards view Reddit research as “exempt from ethical review”, he says.

However, Proferes and his co-authors emphasize the need for intentionality and sensitivity when collecting data from the site. Consider a subreddit such as r/opiates. Data on substance use are often difficult to procure from in-person interviews or other social science methods, but because of Reddit’s anonymity, people are more open to sharing such information on the platform. However, using the subreddit for research could be seen as invasive by a community that considers itself a semi-private anonymous support network. Certain communities on Reddit are also wary of scientific researchers.

The 2024 review co-authored by Proferes 1 lists some of these considerations and suggests steps such as obfuscating usernames in published work and collaborating with moderators.

“Academia and data populations have a very sore history of, frankly, academics coming in and just taking,” says Proferes. The online community “is not getting any benefit whatsoever. It is very exploitative. There’s some real historical reasons, too, why folks may be highly suspicious or dubious about researchers coming in, even in these digital spaces.”

Research findings derived from Reddit posts should be shared with users, says Sarah Gilbert. Credit: Steven Shea

“It’s really easy when you’re working with these large data sets to just think of the data points in them as literal data,” says Sarah Gilbert, research director of the Citizens and Technology Lab at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and a co-author of the review. “Spending time in the community and learning the norms and actually reading it, it turns that data into people. It gives a better sense of who is going to be included, more like human-subject research.”

Gilbert also recommends sharing whatever published research comes out of trawling through Reddit data with those who provided the information. “Hopefully what you learnt is beneficial to the community so they can see data is used for something,” she says.

Connecting with non-scientists

Reddit can be a way for scientists to use their expertise to answer any questions the general public might have, says Cendes. She is a regular on r/space, educating users about topics such as the James Webb Space Telescope.

Kelly Zimmerman, a PhD candidate in ecology at Montclair State University in New Jersey, has connected with and educated other users on Reddit. When she started on the platform about 12 years ago, she mostly used it to find journal articles of interest on r/ecology and r/biology. But, like Cendes, she noticed how curious users were about scientific topics that were in her area of expertise, and she now often engages in discussions on subreddits such as r/whatisthisbug.

Thousands of scientists are cutting back on Twitter, seeding angst and uncertainty

Although she previously used X, Zimmerman thinks that Reddit provides a more engaging experience. “I felt like I was just talking into a void — there wasn’t a lot of response on Twitter,” she says.

One way for scientists to try their hand at science communication on Reddit is through ‘ask me anything’ (AMA) sessions, in which researchers answer users’ questions in their own time. Moderators pull in verified researchers to provide responses — even renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking participated. (To schedule an AMA with r/askscience, you can e-mail the moderators.)

With both AMAs and general discussion forums, there is an art to making sure that information is communicated effectively and succinctly. “We’re trying to keep it as scientific as possible, but in layman’s terms, so that non-scientists can understand cutting-edge science that’s coming out right now,” says Zimmerman, who also moderates some science subreddits.

Nathan Allen, a synthetic chemist based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and a former moderator at r/science, likens it to writing a persuasive e-mail. “On Reddit, you have got to convince the general public that this has some general interest to them, and you’ve got to develop it and build the message and make sure people stay on point,” he says. “You get a lot of practice writing concise explanations of complicated things that people who aren’t necessarily scientists are able to digest and understand.”

When using Reddit in any capacity, Zimmerman encourages scientists to make sure to read the rules before making a post or comment, and to mind their manners, just as they would on any other social-media platform. “Be polite,” she says. “Just because you’re an anonymous username doesn’t mean you should be rude to other people.”

Jennifer Cole, a biologist and anthropologist at Royal Holloway University of London, notes that using Reddit for scientific communication is not without its problems. Moderators do a lot of work behind the scenes and often face a torrent of abuse for trying to maintain standards, says Cole. And although using people’s real names can help with credibility, it can also make academics and experts targets for harassment and abuse. Although the site does not provide support for users who experience abuse, a spokesperson for Reddit noted that the platform has policies to prohibit both harassment and the sharing of personal or confidential information, and that these policies are enforced by the internal safety teams.

It can also be used to spread falsehoods. R/conspiracy has repeatedly posted misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines. Climate deniers are also present on the platform, although a decade ago the science forum specifically banned climate change deniers. Asked about misinformation, the Reddit spokesperson said that because Reddit is governed by upvotes and downvotes, quality and accurate information tend to rise to the top.

Interviewees agree that Reddit is at its core a social media platform, and social media has the potential to be toxic. But when scientists engage, there’s also a lot of great scientific communication and debunking of misinformation. “Don’t be afraid to talk to the people,” Zimmerman says. Those “who are not scientists are just as curious as we are. There’s nothing special about being a scientist. We are like everybody else, and sometimes folks forget that.”

Nature 628 , 221-223 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00906-y

Fiesler, C., Zimmer, M., Proferes, N., Gilbert, S. & Jones, N. Proc. ACM Hum. Comp. Interact. 8 , 5 (2024).

Article   Google Scholar  

Proferes, N., Jones, N., Gilbert, S., Fiesler, C. & Zimmer, M. Soc. Media Soc . https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211019004 (2021).

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Disguising Reddit sources and the efficacy of ethical research

Joseph reagle.

Communication Studies, Northeastern University, 215 Holmes Hall, 43 Leon St, 02115 Boston, MA USA

Associated Data

Not applicable. Research data are: (1) research reports, (2) phrases from those reports taken from Reddit, and (3) interviews with the authors of the reports. The first two datasets are confidential so as not to embarrass researchers. The third set is confidential because they were obtained via a consent form that sated: “The confidentiality of your research records will be strictly maintained. Records of our discussion will be (1) kept separate from this consent form, (2) not shared with others, and (3) kept on an encrypted file system.”

Not applicable.

Concerned researchers of online forums might implement what Bruckman ( 2002 ) referred to as disguise . Heavy disguise, for example, elides usernames and rewords quoted prose so that sources are difficult to locate via search engines. This can protect users (who might be members of vulnerable populations, including minors) from additional harms (such as harassment or additional identification). But does disguise work? I analyze 22 Reddit research reports: 3 of light disguise, using verbatim quotes, and 19 of heavier disguise, using reworded phrases. I test if their sources can be located via three different search services (i.e., Reddit, Google, and RedditSearch). I also interview 10 of the reports’ authors about their sourcing practices, influences, and experiences. Disguising sources is effective only if done and tested rigorously; I was able to locate all of the verbatim sources (3/3) and many of the reworded sources (11/19). There is a lack of understanding, among users and researchers, about how online messages can be located, especially after deletion. Researchers should conduct similar site-specific investigations and develop practical guidelines and tools for improving the ethical use of online sources.

Introduction

Reddit is known as the “front page of the web,” claiming “52 M + daily active users” and “100K + communities” (Reddit, 2021 ). Millions of Redditors, including minors and other vulnerable populations, have thousands of subreddits to discuss extraordinarily specific and sometimes sensitive topics, including sexuality, health, violence, and drug use.

Given the public prominence, breadth, and depth of Reddit’s content, researchers use it as a data source. Proferes et al., ( 2021 ) identified 727 such studies published between 2010 and 2020-May. They found that only 2.5% of their studies claimed to paraphrase compared to the 28.5% of the studies that used exact quotes. Researchers who do paraphrase write of limiting the locatability of sources and possible consequent harm. (The studied reports are not quoted or cited directly, see the “Ethics” section below.) I am not aware of cases, fortunately, of online users coming to harm because of information in research reports. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, and given the sensitivity of topics and vulnerability of sources, additional scrutiny could be consequential to users’ health, relationships, employment, and legal standing. (For a more general discussion of potential harm, sensitive topics, and sources, see Franzke et al., ( 2020 ), § 3.2.5.) Additionally, I note that users need not be personally identified to feel embarrassed, to be harassed, or to be forced to abandon a long-held pseudonym. And researchers themselves, whose use of public sources is thought to be outside of human subjects review, might face embarrassment or repercussions nonetheless if a source complains. Paraphrasing sources’ prose might mitigate such outcomes.

Verbatim quoting and paraphrasing are two practices within a spectrum of what Bruckman ( 2002 ) identified as disguise , which can range from none to heavy. Disguise can also include altering usernames and the context of a message, such as the time and forum of posting.

I analyze 22 Reddit research reports: 3 of light disguise, using verbatim quotes, and 19 of heavier disguise, claiming to reword phrases. I test if their sources can be located via three different search indexes (i.e., Google, Reddit, and RedditSearch). I was able to locate all of the verbatim sources (3/3) and many of the reworded sources (11/19). I also interview 10 of the reports’ authors about their sourcing practices, influences, and experiences. These conversations reveal that there is a lack of coherent practice and guidance on effective disguise, the importance of search and archival affordances, and how errors can arise amidst multi-author collaborations and during the review and revision process. Most importantly, these interviews identify exemplary practices, such as researchers testing their own disguises.

The present work does not address whether researchers should disguise their sources. This decision depends on the type of research, the sensitivity of the topic, the vulnerability of the sources, and the attributes of the venue. Rather, my concern is empirical: when researchers choose to employ disguise, does it work? And what, then, can we do to improve the practice?

Background and terminology

Reddit and sensitive topics.

Reddit was founded in June 2005 as a pseudonymous-friendly site for users to share and vote for links they had read (i.e., “I read it.”) Reddit’s development as a forum of forums, where users could trivially create subreddits, each with its. own moderators, led the website to succeed over its link-sharing peers.

Like Twitter and Wikipedia, Reddit serves an extraordinary corpus of mostly public data. That is, while there are private and quarantined subreddits, the vast majority of content is public : transparently accessible to any web browser or search engine. More so than Wikipedia and much of Twitter, Reddit hosts discussions of a personal character. Subreddits on sexuality, health (including mental health and eating disorders), interpersonal abuse and violence, and drug use and cessation have been topics of research. Reddit is a compelling and accessible venue, but with sensitive – even if public – information.

Ethics and Online Research

The practice of online research has been accompanied by discussion of how to do so ethically (Eysenbach & Till, 2001 ; Flicker et al., 2004 ; Mann & Stuart, 2000 ; Reid, 1996 ; Smith & Murray, 2001 ; Waskul & Douglas, 1996 ). And the issues noted by Siang ( 1999 ) over two decades ago remain salient today: of “the blurred distinction between public and private domains,” “the ease of anonymity or pseudonymity,” “the suspension of temporal barriers with the recording and archiving of communications,” and “the relatively low cost, easy to use, technological means to facilitate tracking of participants.”

An intuitive approach to these early concerns was to apply existing research guidelines to the online context, such as those from the American Psychological Association (King 1996 ) and other disciplinary and national societies. At the same time, the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) was constituted as a transdisciplinary endeavor, which created and maintains guidelines for online research (Ess & Committee 2002 ; Franzke et al., 2020 ).

Institutional review boards (IRBs) can also be a source of guidance and review. Like much of the disciplinary guidelines, however, their focus tends to be on human subjects research, where there is an interaction between researchers and subjects. Most Reddit research (86.1%) makes no mention of “IRB” or “ethics review.” Of those that do, the majority (77.2%) note an exempt status, though it’s unclear if this is “an official designation given by a review board or whether the authors made this judgment themselves” (Proferes et al., 2021 , p. 14).

What is clear is that there is no widely accepted and consistent practice when it comes to reporting excerpts of public content. Systemic literature reviews show this (Ayers et al., 2018 ; Proferes et al., 2021 ), as will the present work. For those concerned with disguising public data, there’s little guidance on how to do so effectively.

Online Sites, subjects, and sources

The incoherent approach to public data is related to a lack of agreement about terminology and substance. What should researchers call those whom they research online? I distinguish between subjects , those with whom researchers interact, and sources , authors of public content with whom researchers do not interact. (Recall that I use public to mean content that is transparently accessible to any web browser or search engine.) There is also the question of Reddit terminology. Following the architecture of Reddit, I distinguish between posts and their subsequent comments within a thread . I refer to posts and comments, generically, as messages .

Beyond terminology, what should researchers do? There is substantive disagreement compounded by different understandings of terms. Sharf ( 1999 , p. 253), for example, argued that researchers should contact public sources “in order to seek consent” and “implied consent should not be presumed if the writer does not respond.” Rodham & Gavin ( 2006 ) responded “that this is an unnecessarily extreme position to take” and wrote, “messages which are posted on such open forums are public acts, deliberately intended for public consumption.” Presently, I analyze published research reports and seek their sources, without consent. Unlike Sharf’s study of a breast cancer email list (“public” because the list is “open” for anyone to join), published reports are closer to Rodham and Gavin’s sense of the term (i.e., “intended for public consumption”).

Increasingly, researchers are engaging in site-specific considerations, which requires contextual ethical reasoning, be it at Wikipedia (Pentzold 2017 ), at sites where “we are studying people who deserve credit for their work” (Bruckman et al., 2015 ), or public sites where people, nonetheless, discuss sensitive topics or share images (Andalibi et al., 2017 ; Ayers et al., 2018 ; Chen et al., 2021 ; Dym & Fiesler, 2020 ; Haimson et al., 2016 ). For example, on Twitter, Fiesler & Proferes ( 2018 ) found that “few users were previously aware that their public tweets could be used by researchers, and the majority felt that researchers should not be able to use tweets without consent. However, we find that these attitudes are highly contextual, depending on factors such as how the research is conducted or disseminated, who is conducting it, and what the study is about.” Additionally, as I will show, specific websites have affordances that affect how sources can be located (e.g., novel search capabilities or external archives).

De-Identifying, Anonymizing, fabricating, and Disguising

Researchers who attempt disguise note that their sources might be struggling with health, sexuality, or drug use, and additional scrutiny might cause them harm. For the reasons that follow, I speak of disguising public sources to prevent them from being located .

Bruckman ( 2002 ) identified a spectrum of disguise, from none to heavy. Under light disguise, for example, “an outsider could probably figure out who is who with a little investigation.” The forum is named, usernames and other details are changed, yet “verbatim quotes may be used, even if they could be used to identify an individual.” Under heavy disguise , some false details are introduced and verbatim quotes are avoided if a “search mechanism could link those quotes to the person in question.” If the heavy disguise is successful, “someone deliberately seeking to find a subject’s identity would likely be unable to do so.” Moderate disguise is “a compromise position … incorporating some features of light disguise and some of heavy disguise, as appropriate to the situation.” Kozinets ( 2015 , p. 3473) adopted this notion in his discussion of ethical netnography though he used the term cloaking “to emphasize the researcher’s protective actions rather than the state of the participant.” This is a good point, but disguise is the more common term in the literature.

In commercial contexts, enterprises use sanitization to remove sensitive information such as “credit card numbers, email addresses and Social Security Number (SSN)” (Nguyen & Cavallari 2020 , pp. 37–38). In human subjects research, such as healthcare, de-identification “involves the removal of personally identifying information in order to protect personal privacy” (Guidelines for Data de-Identification or Anonymization, 2015). Anonymized is sometimes used synonymously with de-identified, or can have a stronger connotation of data being rendered incapable of being re-identified. I avoid anonymized because it is far too an assured word given the known cases of failure (Ohm 2010 ). And in public data contexts, there might not be personally identifiable information to speak of given the use of pseudonyms. Even so, users need not be personally identified to feel exposed or embarrassed, to be harassed, or to be forced to abandon a long-held pseudonym.

Introducing false or combined details about a source has been referred to as fabrication , a tactic of heavy disguise. The practice is not limited to prose and can include visual content, such as a profile picture in a screenshot (Haimson et al., 2016 ). This practice can conflict with traditional notions of research rigor and integrity. Markham ( 2012 ) argues that if done with care, fabrication can be the most ethical approach. If not done with care, however, fabrication can lead to suspicions of fraud (Singal, 2016 ).

UnGoogling has been used for “obscuring published data and analysis from index, search, and retrieval for ethical purposes” (Shklovski & Vertesi, 2013 , p. 2172). And obfuscating has been used to speak of the “deliberate addition of ambiguous, confusing, or misleading information to interfere with surveillance and data collection” (Brunton & Nissenbaum 2015 , p. 1). UnGoogling is too service-specific and is more often used to describe users removing themselves from the Google ecosystem, such as abandoning Android for iOS. Obfuscation ’s most common use is to describe users protecting their privacy rather than as a research practice.

I examine research reports who disguise their public sources to keep them from being located .

Locating sources

What of the substance, the process, of locating research subjects or sources? Sometimes the ethnographic subjects themselves, of a small town, for example, can recognize themselves and their neighbors. Sometimes real-world events, such as the occurrence of a murder, provide a clue to the public (Reyes, 2017 , n. 9; Singal, 2015 ). And when a researcher from a top-tier New England university describes their research using undergrads from a top-tier New England university, the subjects are probably their students. Online, messages’ prose style (Narayanan et al., 2012 ), timing (Johansson et al., 2015 ), and network relationships (Zhou et al., 2016 ) serve as digital fingerprints (Brown & Abramson, 2015 ), amendable to digital forensics (Guarino, 2013 ), which can lead to online accounts and even personal identities being linked together (Backes et al., 2016 ). For example, Narayanan & Shmatikov ( 2009 ) were able to re-identify a third of users in their “anonymous” Twitter graph who also had a Flickr account “with only a 12% error rate … even when the overlap between the target network and the adversary’s auxiliary information is small.”

As far back as the 1990s, King ( 1996 ) faulted Finn & Lavitt ( 1994 ) for disguising sources’ names, but not that of the sexual abuse forum or the date and time of posts. More recently, Zimmer ( 2010 ) critiqued researchers from a top-tier New England university for creating a “Tastes, Ties, and Time” Facebook dataset that was improperly – perhaps impossibly – “anonymized.” The data was obtained by Harvard Resident Advisors acting as research assistants and scraping their Facebook friends lists. And once the school and cohort were known, other aspects of students’ tastes, ties, and activity made re-identification possible (e.g., being the only student from a specific country in the dataset). Journalists, too, sometimes participate. At the New York Times , Barbaro & Zeller ( 2006 ) reported on – and confirmed – the potential to locate sources in an AOL dataset. A decade later, in the same newspaper, Singer ( 2015 ), wanting to speak to a source in a research study, was able to identify, contact, and interview the subject.

Concerned researchers have started to assess how often usernames, quotations, and media are included in research reports. Ayers et al., ( 2018 ) analyzed 112 health-related papers discussing Twitter and found 72% quoted a tweet, “of these, we identified at least one quoted account holder, representing 84%.” When usernames were disclosed, in 21% of the papers, all were trivially located. Ayers et al. wrote that these practices violate International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) ethics standards because (1) Twitter users might protect or delete messages after collection, and (2) revealing this information has no scientific value.

Proferes et al., ( 2021 ) performed a systematic overview of 727 research studies that used Reddit data and were published between 2010 and 2020-May. They found “Sixty eight manuscripts (9.4%) explicitly mentioned identifiable Reddit usernames in their paper and 659 (90.7%) did not. Two hundred and seven papers (28.5%) used direct quotes from users as part of their publications, 18 papers used paraphrased quotes, noting they were paraphrased (2.5%) and 502 (69.1%) did not include direct quotes” (Proferes et al., 2021 , p. 14).

I make no claim as to whether sources should be disguised. Rather, I ask if a researcher chooses disguise, does it work? Can the original message used by a researcher be located? If so, the full message, associated username, and context (i.e., subreddit, thread, and posting history) are then available. This, itself, could be revealing or linked with other information, including personally-identifying information.

I collected two sets of research reports. In 2020, I sought ethnographic-type research reports since 2015 that included Reddit messages. I searched via Google using keywords such as “AoIR guidelines,” “privacy,” “verbatim,” and “fabrication.” I found three reports using light-disguise with verbatim phrases and three claiming heavier disguise with reworded phrases. In 2021, as part of a panel proposal, I discussed this work with two of the authors of a systematic review of Reddit (Proferes et al., 2021 ), and they kindly shared their list of reports that “paraphrased” Reddit messages, adding 16 new reports to my initial set. Because paraphrase can connote significant change, I use the term reword , which can be as minimal as inserting an adjective or altering a place or name. The final corpus, then, included 22 reports, with 19 claiming to reword.

From each report, I collected phrases of more than ten words because any less than that is too short for meaningful searches. I excluded phrases from subreddit documentation such as sidebars, wikis, or FAQs; these have multiple authors and are informative rather than personal disclosures.

The process of locating Redditors’ original messages was idiosyncratic: intensive, manual, and subjective. I performed exact searches (using quotation marks) and inexact searches across the whole phrase and fragments of novel-seeming prose. Near the end of this work, and hoping to share a method of scrambling phrases and testing disguises, I wrote a script that automated the invocation and opening of search query results (Reagle & Gaur 2022 ). Even so, I had to use discretion with how many search results to review, usually no more than the first page or 20 results – each search service returns results differently. I made no effort to personally identify Reddit users. However, locating sources, as I attempted, could be the first step in the distinct process of identifying users.

After my initial analysis, I emailed the research reports’ authors and asked if they would speak with me. If so, and they completed the consent form, I began with five questions about their practice, rationale, influences, and thoughts about my efforts. We worked to identify weaknesses to avoid and strengths to emulate as part of research and publication. One interview was a ~ 30-minute voice communication, others were via email exchanges with each subject. Interviewees were allowed to review my characterization of their work and our discussion in this report.

Though I used public research reports and their own Reddit sources in my analysis, they are not identified, cited, or quoted. I wanted candid interviews with researchers free of possible embarrassment. I hope that “someone deliberately seeking to find a [subject’s or source’s] identity would likely be unable to do so” (Bruckman 2002 ). That said, other Reddit researchers who are conversant with the literature could make guesses about the identity of research sources. Should this happen, I believe my sources have plausible deniability.

This method was specified as part of Institutional Review Board application #20-08-30 and “approved” as DHHS Review Category #2: “Exempt… No further action or IRB oversight is required as long as the project remains the same.”

Analysis and discussion

Table  1 describes the reports’ approaches to phrases, number of sources, and how many were located. The rightmost column has strengths (bold Ⓢ) to emulate and weaknesses (Ⓦ) to avoid in creating effective disguise relative to reports’ stated policy, actual practice, and ease of location. Importantly, all reports articulated a policy of disguise in their approach to sources, even if weak (i.e., removed usernames but included verbatim quotes).

Research reports and results (“i” = interview)

Searching reddit and the meaning of deletion

Authors V1 and V2 both relied on the fact that Redditors are typically pseudonymous. They included verbatim quotes without the authors’ usernames (i.e., light disguise).

V2 claimed that because pseudonyms are encouraged, the quoted Redditors could not be traced. This claim is highly probable, but digital forensics can sometimes link pseudonyms with other identities, especially as it is easy to peruse all of a user’s posts. Additionally, users who maintain multiple accounts can mistakenly post a message with the wrong account. Even though such users can edit or delete mistaken messages, it’s likely the original will survive elsewhere.

V1 was more cognizant of these concerns and stated they only used posts wherein Redditors explicitly declared they were using a throwaway (single-use) account. However, oddly, V1 did include verbatim quotes from a few Redditors who wrote why they chose not to use a throwaway . A researcher might inadvertently collect posts with the term “throwaway” even if the Redditor was explaining why they did not do so.

The research reports of V1 and V2 each had about twenty phrases (of ten or more words), and I was able to locate almost all of them using three indexes of Reddit content.

Table  2 represents the relative usefulness of the three search services across all 22 research reports. Oddly, Google under-performed (“†”) in verbatim searches because it did not return any of V1’s 18 sources from Reddit. Google’s search algorithms are opaque and ever-changing, so I do not know why it missed these posts, but they could become locatable in the future. Indeed, much could change, and search engines’ capabilities are likely to improve. When removing V1 from the calculation, Google’s verbatim rate is 45%.

Percent of sources found (non-exclusively) at service

RedditSearch (using the Pushshift service) was the most generative search engine because it permits accurate time and subreddit searches. In practice, winnowing away misses is as important as roughly matching hits. It also returned some posts that had since been deleted by their authors, including from V1’s users who did not use throwaways – and perhaps regretted that decision and deleted their posts. Similarly, I was able to locate phrases from deleted posts in the reports of V1, R6, R14, and R18.

The deletion of messages by Redditors suggests that users can feel exposed even when using pseudonymous or throwaway accounts. Users should appreciate that deleted messages on Reddit can be archived and indexed off-site. Researchers should appreciate that they could inadvertently publicize such messages.

Additionally, the Pushshift data originally contained public and private subreddits (determined by moderators) and can include quarantined subreddits (determined by Reddit for problematic but not yet banned) (Stuck_In_the_Matrix, 2019 , 2015 ). Pushshift data has also been packaged in common “big data” frameworks, permitting even more powerful queries and analysis. For example, BigQuery (Balamuta, 2018 ) was used by R5, R6, and R17; ConvoKit ( 2018 ) was used by R9. Locating sources via these resources would add additional capabilities beyond the human-facing searching engines I limited myself to.

Making mistakes and the need for a system

V3 argued that because the site is premised on Redditors competing for upvoted visibility, the site can be taken as public. Even so, V3 elided all usernames, except for two central characters in their report. They quoted phrases from a couple of posts and a handful of comments. This made it easy to find their sources. I was also able to (redundantly) find a post by looking for V3’s description of a meme via a Google image search.

Upon reading V3’s report I was confused by the positioning of Redditors as authors deserving credit in a public venue (hence no consent was obtained), yet, also of a need to elide most Redditors’ usernames (while quoting their prose verbatim). V3 responded that the approach to sources and its description changed during the reports’ review and editing: “originally each of the pseudonyms was formally cited, but this was removed in an earlier stage of peer review.” The confusion in the description was the likely result of this change “and not picked up during the copy-editing stage of the journal.”

R12 also reflected on the likely cause of mistakenly including verbatim phrases. Because of the massive size of their data, “we only paraphrase those we would actually use in the paper.” The process of managing the manuscript and sources then became a problem: “We initially inserted the original quotes into the draft and did one round of paraphrasing. But writing was an iterative process, especially when review & resubmit was involved, during which we might switch in and out quotes as appropriate.” Having multiple authors work on this no doubt contributed: “We probably thought one person on the research team did the paraphrasing.”

Similarly, R16 intended to change all the quotes and believed they had: “I obviously didn’t do a thorough job at it, and I don’t know why – was I aiming to keep the authenticity of the quotes, or was I simply running out of time and did not work diligently? Probably both.” Ethical disguise had been at the forefront of their mind at the start, but perhaps not later: “Was I weighing up the risk of [sources] being identified in this context of technologies used by parents? Certainly in my ethics application, but probably not as much in the reporting.” R5, R6, R10, and R19 similarly included verbatim phrases contrary to their stated policy, perhaps because of similar reasons as the researchers above.

Balancing Fidelity and disguise

Many of the interviewees spoke of the challenge of balancing fidelity to sources’ sentiments with the ethical concern of limiting sources’ exposure.

With respect to identities, V3 shared that “The intention here was to not explicitly name Redditors (using their pseudonym) unless there was a reason to do so.” That is, “My ethical practice defaulted to anonymity, but when necessary for the discussion I used the pseudonyms that the user provides to the public forum.” Two prominent Redditors “are named because of how identifiable their content is and how widely it has been shared across platforms (including sites such as KnowYourMeme).” Additionally, one “username itself was worthy of comment as a signifier of geek humor.” And, once published, the “study gave them significant appreciated notoriety on Reddit and beyond,” something they welcomed.

With respect to verbatim phrases, V3 recognized that phrases can be searched for. However, “What you can find this way is a user’s publicly available (shared) content and pseudonym, not their ‘real name’.” In any case, “As researchers we understand that ethics is a process, not something that is achieved once it is rubberstamped by an institution.” As part of V3’s process, “I considered the trade-off between potential tracking back to a pseudonym and fair representation. The expectation of users, popularity of content, and lack of real names also fed into this calculation.”

R2 attempted to disguise sources and this was a shift in practice from earlier work, where they “included the usernames and preserved quotations.” The earlier work had been influenced by an AoIR presentation about a site wherein the Redditors saw themselves as creative developers worthy of and preferring attribution. “And, because I believed part of my argument about Reddit hinged on the creative play that Redditors engaged in, I wanted to preserve usernames (as this is one of the places where this kind of play occurred).” However, “given the nature of the online sphere these days (this was pre-Gamergate), I would likely not have made the same choice.”

Additionally, the “AOIR guidelines have been hugely influential” in R2’s practice. The guidelines respect that research practices “are not one-and-done decisions, but that things like anonymizing [online] identities/quotes are ongoing decisions that we need to make. IRB guidelines are pretty much worthless in this regard, as they would consider any public forum ‘public’ and their understanding of how easy it is to find out information based on usernames or quotes is limited in my experience.”

The AoIR guidelines were influential to R3, R16, and R18 as well. Other noted influences included boyd ( 2007 ), Kozinets ( 2015 ), and especially Markham ( 2012 ).

Changing practice and changing context

Unlike R2’s past work, in their present report, usernames were elided and phrases from posts and comments were lightly reworded. Though Google can be astoundingly good at finding similar phrases when the field is sufficiently narrow, the modest rewording was sufficient to frustrate my efforts with Reddit, Google, and RedditSearch. However, those messages appeared in threads whose titles were included verbatim in the report, and this leaked information was useful in locating sources. Once in the right thread, it was trivial to locate phrases from the report. Not only did verbatim titles become avenues for locating messages, but they can also be sensitive disclosures.

Like V3, R2 changed their level of disguise during the report’s review: “This piece was a content analysis, and so in my first draft of the article I actually preserved this material as-is, because I wanted to be transparent and make my study potentially replicable.” However, reviewers found this to be problematic because it could open the Redditors to trolling. R2’s forums were not sensitive per se : “I would absolutely have issues with someone using usernames/direct quotes from a health or relationship subreddit for obvious reasons.” Yet, personal disclosures were made in the studied forums and its users are sometimes targets of harassment. R2 agreed with the concern and altered the quoted phrases: “the outlet and the reviewers made a difference in this case.”

R2’s experiences speak to the importance of site-specific context and the larger zeitgeist. A practice on one subreddit might not be appropriate to another, especially after larger events increase the likelihood of trolling and harassment. Similarly, R15 noted that “I think ethical use of social media posts for research has to take context into consideration – it’s a different thing to quote someone posting from a public Twitter account than it is to burrow into an obscure subreddit and identify one comment on a long thread to surface.” And the social media context is dynamic: “With more and more news-style platforms grabbing social media posts without permission to use as comments in news articles we might even see a shifting culture around what people think is permissible once they’ve posted something publicly. Or this practice might result in pushback in which people demand to be asked permission or credited for their posts!”

The world that researchers seek to understand is ever-changing, as are the technical affordances of media platforms and search services. It can be difficult to match ethical policy to the quickly shifting online world, as can implementing that policy with consistent practice, especially given the time and changes needed during a reports’ publication.

Effective tactics of disguise

R1’s report is a detailed ethnography of a few identified subreddits that is well-grounded with descriptions of community concerns and quotes from Redditors. Yet there were only two phrases (of more than 10 words) to attempt to locate. Most of everything else was from subreddits’ documentation (not sensitive) and interviews (not indexed by search engines). Confidential interviews of public Redditors can enable a surprising degree of richness, disclosure, and confidentiality.

Otherwise, searching for 150 + sources in the 22 research papers reveals that the metaphor of finding a needle in a haystack (of returned search results) is apt. Reports that focus on a single subreddit (as stated or inferred) in a single year winnow away much of the hay. Additionally, changes of punctuation, switching to or from contractions, single word insertions or removals, and retaining novel words are usually insufficient disguise.

Larger datasets – or less specific descriptions – and more substantive changes are more effective. R9, for example, included 11 effectively disguised phrases. Their dataset included over a million posts over a dozen subreddits – their haystack was large. Additionally, their technique for disguising the phrases might be an effective consequence of an analytic technique used to normalize text into a canonical form: “normalization is an approach to finding long English phrases in online vernacular and replace them with concepts in clinical knowledge sources. For instance, ‘shortness of breath’ in a post is replaced by the term ‘edema’ or ‘dyspnea.’”. Though this technique was not created to disguise sources, it seemingly serves that purpose.

The rigor of testing and disciplinary differences

R3 used about ten reworded phrases from Reddit; I was not able to locate their sources.

Two influences at the start of R3’s career – as well as the sensitive topics they tend to study – led to a rigorous process for disguising sources. Today, their process is an iterative one, of swapping in synonyms or larger rephrasing “in a way that doesn’t change the meaning and yet would be untraceable. If someone were to put that quote in Google and try to find it there … they wouldn’t be able to do that.” To accomplish this, R3 performs the task themselves. That is, they seek to locate their own disguised sources – though, as seen above, Google is not the only index of Reddit messages. And their method is akin to my method here: using exact searches (in quote marks), near searches (without quote marks), and focusing on portions of a phrase, while conceding the process is “pretty subjective.” Just as with my method, they have to choose how to specify the search and how many returned results to review.

R3’s germinal influences were an event and a scholar. First, as a doctoral student, they saw another researcher’s source publicly disclosed because of the inclusion of a verbatim quotation. This was “an example of how [verbatim quotes] can be a problem.” Second, subsequently, R3 learned of Markham ( 2012 )’s coining and explication of “ethical fabrication,” giving R3 a name and rationale for something similar to what R3 was already doing.

Today, in their role as an editor and reviewer, R3 sometimes asks researchers to reflect on their sourcing practice and rationale, with those in their discipline tending to be thoughtful about this issue. Elsewhere, though, R3 has experienced pushback against fabrication, such as in a presentation before a group of network-analytic sociologists. The audience was upset when they learned they were seeing fabricated, rather than authentic, quotes and images in the presentation.

R4 employed similar tactics as R3, changing “gender, location, specific details of an incident etc. so that, while they convey the original thought of the author, they cannot be traced back to them.” They tested these disguised phrases using a Pushshift-related service and “shared the two snippets with others in the team in order to see if the rephrase is too far off.”

R14 was the third interviewee to test their disguises. Though R14 used Pushshift in other work, they did not test their disguises against RedditSearch/Pushshift. Instead, they pursued the tactic of change-and-test “until I couldn’t find the quote + reddit in Google.” I was able to locate many of their sources because I limited my queries to the Reddit website (i.e., site:reddit.com) in Google. This extra specificity plus the year led to many of R14’s sources.

R16, too, has tested their disguises in the past via Google, “but I don’t know if I did it with this paper. And I certainly did not try other search engines.”

If a researcher wants to use disguised public data, rather than interviews, then the best disguise is tested disguise. This means investigating where their data sources are likely to be archived, how it all can be searched, and using as many facets of search as possible to test their efforts.

Limitations and Future Work

The present work is idiosyncratic and relatively small in scale; nonetheless, it shows that the practice of disguise is often haphazard and ineffective. The next step is to investigate automated methods for managing and disguising sources. That is, can automated programs and services alter phrases for inclusion in reports with more or less efficacy than humans? Managing sources could be easy as keeping quotes, their source, and their disguise in a spreadsheet shared among collaborators – and this could then facilitate automatic testing. The next phase of the current work tests the feasibility and efficacy of this approach (Reagle & Gaur, 2022 ) .

The web and the services that index it are dynamic. Google routinely updates its search algorithms, and in April of 2022 – after the data and collection in the present report – Reddit announced they had extended their search facility to comments and made their searches less literal: “100% of a query doesn’t have to match the text of a post to return relevant results. By doing this we saw a 60% increase in results for queries that previously didn’t receive results” (Staff, 2022 ). Such changes will affect how easy it is to locate a source. Though such changes could make location more difficult by crowding out the true source, it is clearly the intention of services to improve their search efficacy.

Another practical follow-up is to increase the understanding of risks and options among researchers. King ( 1996 ) faulted Finn & Lavitt ( 1994 ) for leaking information about source context decades ago, and yet it still happens. A guide that builds on Bruckman ( 2002 )’s categories of disguise and identifies risks and options available to the researcher could help authors, reviewers, and editors. The guide could include a checklist of things to attend to for a given category of risk and disguise. And it could be complemented by site-specific information about conventions and norms, and affordances around user identity and message persistence and locatability.

Finally, messages appeared in research reports that were subsequently deleted by their authors – even if from pseudonymous and throw-away accounts. This merits more attention and work-in-progress indicates throwaway accounts regularly – routinely even – delete posts in advice subreddits.

Conclusions

There is no single research policy appropriate to disguising online sources. For example, community members might expect or appreciate recognition as creative authors. Like V3’s two Redditors who gained additional notice for appearing in her report, R18 noted that “One of the moderators of a subreddit I used reached out to me on ResearchGate and thanked me for my research and steps toward harm reduction; they were happy that I used material from their subreddit.”

If researchers chose to use disguise, however, their practice ought to effectively match their policy. I found descriptions of ethical policy that were confusing or inconsistent with actual practice. In a few cases, this was the result of changes made during the review and editing process. In another case, I suspect it was an oversight in data collecting and reporting. Many others simply made mistakes or failed to appreciate the affordances of Reddit and web searching.

The RedditSearch interface to the Pushshift repository proved especially useful in locating sources. And such data can be repackaged in ways that permit even more powerful searching capabilities (e.g., BigQuery and ConvoKit). While some researchers might use these resources in large-scale analyses, other researchers were unfamiliar with them. In addition to advanced search capabilities, these resources also mean that researchers who use them might include data since deleted by users in research analyses and reports.

The highest level of disguise, eliding usernames and rewording prose, can be effective, especially when the reworded phrases are tested against search engines – the practice of a few interviewed researchers. However, concerned researchers should be as specific as possible in their test queries, taking advantage of site, date, and subreddit facets.

My interviewees shared how their practices changed relative to their research sites, the larger cultural context, and their influences and experiences. The different approaches we see in reports, however, are not necessarily the result of a consistent policy (i.e., from conception to publication), fully cognizant of technical affordances (e.g., Google’s site: facet and RedditSearch/Pushshift existence and abilities), and users’ wishes (e.g., when users delete posts from throw-away accounts). The research community can improve on this, though, via similar site-specific investigations and practical guidelines that inform the conception, execution, and review of research. We also need additional work on automating, managing, and testing research disguise.

Acknowledgements

I thank the other panelists of the AoIR 2021 panel on Reddit and ethics, especially Michael Zimmer (Marquette University) and Nicholas Proferes (Arizona State University), who shared information with me about their large-scale survey of Reddit research. I thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful insights and suggestions. Finally, I am grateful to my interviewees, especially as their attention and time were under stress from COVID-19.

Availability of data and material (data transparency)

Code availability (software application or custom code), declarations.

Northeastern Univervisty Institutional Review Board application #20-08-30 and “approved” as DHHS Review Category #2: “Exempt… No further action or IRB oversight is required as long as the project remains the same.”

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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• Singal, J. (2016, March 9). 3 lingering questions from the Alice Goffman controversy. The Cut . https://www.thecut.com/2016/01/3-lingering-questions-about-alice-goffman.html
• Singal, J. (2015, June 18). The internet accused Alice Goffman of faking details in her study of a black neighborhood. I went to Philadelphia to check. The Cut . https://www.thecut.com/2015/06/i-fact-checked-alice-goffman-with-her-subjects.html
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Reddit 101 for Scientists

Author: Penny Freedman

When it comes to utilizing social media in the science community, you might not automatically think about including Reddit into your activities. While Reddit threads may have a reputation for being controversial, there is another side to Reddit that is both important and useful to the scientific world.

What exactly is Reddit?

You can think of Reddit as one giant virtual conference for every discipline and subject you could imagine where people break off into smaller groups -called subreddits- to talk about topics interesting to them. When you first enter Reddit it looks like one large message board. When you register for an account you can post content and vote posts up or down the page, helping to determine what will receive the most attention.

What subreddits do I even begin with?

If you’re interested in a more general discussion on science, start with  http://reddit.com/r/EverythingScience . It’s a place for people to talk about anything and everything having to do with science. You can filter by field, add your thoughts to discussions already taking place, or start a new discussion by submitting a link to something you are interested in – a blog post, video, news article, editorial, etc.

If you’re looking for a more defined discussion on peer-reviewed science, head on over to The New Reddit Journal of Science at  http://reddit.com/r/science . There you may only submit links to published peer-reviewed research. Get the conversation started on your work or a peer’s work!

What is an AMA?

An AMA is short for “Ask Me Anything.” A scientist arranges a time with Reddit moderators to discuss a specific topic related to their research or interests. You submit a brief bio and summary of what you would like to discuss, and the Reddit community is given the chance to submit questions before the AMA start time. There is a submission guide  with detailed information on how to get started with setting one up. An AMA is a great way to get a conversation started on items that are of particular interest to you, and a way to share your expertise with people interested in studying or working in the same field, or just interested in learning something new.

Springer editors and authors have hosted a few AMAs, including:

• An AMA on rare and neglected diseases
• An AMA on American politics
• An AMA on realistic robots

How do I establish myself as a qualified scientist in my field to the Reddit community?

Reddit uses something called flair to designate who is a trained scientist, doctor, or engineer. The flair will present as a small bar next to your user name, noting your title and/or education level (such a Professor of Biology, PhD, etc.). When you add this bit of information people will understand that the comments you provide are knowledgeable and valuable. Once you have created your account reference  these instructions  to get your flair.

How is using Reddit any different than posting on other social media sites?

Reddit gives you the opportunity to share your knowledge and expertise in a more detailed, conversational way. You can find people discussing topics at length that you are interested in and can contribute meaningfully to. Unlike social media platforms that are centered around creating a personalized profile that is all about you, Reddit prides itself on being a community. The things you share should not be overly promotional, but should contribute to the discussion as a whole. Joining the discussion can help serve to expand your network and reach.

Penny Freedman is a Marketing Manager on the Author Experience & Services team based in the New York office. She works closely on sharing insight and guidance on the benefits and services available to our editors, reviewers, and authors.

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• Starting the research process

A Beginner's Guide to Starting the Research Process

When you have to write a thesis or dissertation , it can be hard to know where to begin, but there are some clear steps you can follow.

The research process often begins with a very broad idea for a topic you’d like to know more about. You do some preliminary research to identify a  problem . After refining your research questions , you can lay out the foundations of your research design , leading to a proposal that outlines your ideas and plans.

This article takes you through the first steps of the research process, helping you narrow down your ideas and build up a strong foundation for your research project.

Table of contents

Step 1: choose your topic, step 2: identify a problem, step 3: formulate research questions, step 4: create a research design, step 5: write a research proposal, other interesting articles.

First you have to come up with some ideas. Your thesis or dissertation topic can start out very broad. Think about the general area or field you’re interested in—maybe you already have specific research interests based on classes you’ve taken, or maybe you had to consider your topic when applying to graduate school and writing a statement of purpose .

Even if you already have a good sense of your topic, you’ll need to read widely to build background knowledge and begin narrowing down your ideas. Conduct an initial literature review to begin gathering relevant sources. As you read, take notes and try to identify problems, questions, debates, contradictions and gaps. Your aim is to narrow down from a broad area of interest to a specific niche.

Make sure to consider the practicalities: the requirements of your programme, the amount of time you have to complete the research, and how difficult it will be to access sources and data on the topic. Before moving onto the next stage, it’s a good idea to discuss the topic with your thesis supervisor.

>>Read more about narrowing down a research topic

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So you’ve settled on a topic and found a niche—but what exactly will your research investigate, and why does it matter? To give your project focus and purpose, you have to define a research problem .

The problem might be a practical issue—for example, a process or practice that isn’t working well, an area of concern in an organization’s performance, or a difficulty faced by a specific group of people in society.

Alternatively, you might choose to investigate a theoretical problem—for example, an underexplored phenomenon or relationship, a contradiction between different models or theories, or an unresolved debate among scholars.

To put the problem in context and set your objectives, you can write a problem statement . This describes who the problem affects, why research is needed, and how your research project will contribute to solving it.

>>Read more about defining a research problem

Next, based on the problem statement, you need to write one or more research questions . These target exactly what you want to find out. They might focus on describing, comparing, evaluating, or explaining the research problem.

A strong research question should be specific enough that you can answer it thoroughly using appropriate qualitative or quantitative research methods. It should also be complex enough to require in-depth investigation, analysis, and argument. Questions that can be answered with “yes/no” or with easily available facts are not complex enough for a thesis or dissertation.

In some types of research, at this stage you might also have to develop a conceptual framework and testable hypotheses .

>>See research question examples

The research design is a practical framework for answering your research questions. It involves making decisions about the type of data you need, the methods you’ll use to collect and analyze it, and the location and timescale of your research.

There are often many possible paths you can take to answering your questions. The decisions you make will partly be based on your priorities. For example, do you want to determine causes and effects, draw generalizable conclusions, or understand the details of a specific context?

You need to decide whether you will use primary or secondary data and qualitative or quantitative methods . You also need to determine the specific tools, procedures, and materials you’ll use to collect and analyze your data, as well as your criteria for selecting participants or sources.

>>Read more about creating a research design

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Finally, after completing these steps, you are ready to complete a research proposal . The proposal outlines the context, relevance, purpose, and plan of your research.

As well as outlining the background, problem statement, and research questions, the proposal should also include a literature review that shows how your project will fit into existing work on the topic. The research design section describes your approach and explains exactly what you will do.

You might have to get the proposal approved by your supervisor before you get started, and it will guide the process of writing your thesis or dissertation.

>>Read more about writing a research proposal

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Methodology

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

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Home / Guides / Citation Guides / How to Cite Sources / How to Cite a Reddit Ask Me Anything Thread in APA, MLA, or Chicago

How to Cite a Reddit Ask Me Anything Thread in APA, MLA, or Chicago

As new forms of online communication become acceptable sources in an academic setting, questions regarding proper citation sometimes arise. You might be confused about how to cite certain things—like a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread—but we promise it’s not as difficult as it might initially seem. Regardless of whether you want to cite a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread in MLA format , APA format , or Chicago style, we have some tips to help make the process a little easier for you.

To correctly cite a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread, you must take the following pieces of information into consideration:

• The title of the Ask Me Anything thread that you’re citing
• The date it was published
• The author (usually subject) of the Ask Me Anything thread
• The URL (visible in the top of your web browser)

Use the following structure to cite a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread in MLA 9:

Author’s Last name, First Name [Username if different than their name]. “Thread Title.”  Reddit , date the thread was published, URL (without http:// or https://).

Here’s how the above example would be cited in MLA 9:

Gates, Bill [u/thisisbillgates]. “I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ask Me Anything.” Reddit , 3 Mar. 2017, www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/.

Here’s how the above example would be cited in an in-text citation:

(Author’s Last Name OR Username)

Use the following structure to cite a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread in APA:

Author’s Last Name, First Initial. (Year, Date). Thread title [Online forum].  Retrieved from URL

Here’s how the above example would be cited in APA:

Gates, B. (2017, February 27). I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ask me anything [Online forum]. Retrieved from //www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/

Use the following structure to cite a Reddit Ask Me Anything thread in Chicago:

Author’s Last name, First name. “Thread Title.” Reddit . Accessed Date (Time stamp if available). URL.

Here’s how the above example would be cited in Chicago:

Gates, Bill. “ I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ask Me Anything.” Reddit . Accessed February 27, 2017. //www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/ .

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Home » Research Paper – Structure, Examples and Writing Guide

Research Paper – Structure, Examples and Writing Guide

Table of Contents

Research Paper

Definition:

Research Paper is a written document that presents the author’s original research, analysis, and interpretation of a specific topic or issue.

It is typically based on Empirical Evidence, and may involve qualitative or quantitative research methods, or a combination of both. The purpose of a research paper is to contribute new knowledge or insights to a particular field of study, and to demonstrate the author’s understanding of the existing literature and theories related to the topic.

Structure of Research Paper

The structure of a research paper typically follows a standard format, consisting of several sections that convey specific information about the research study. The following is a detailed explanation of the structure of a research paper:

The title page contains the title of the paper, the name(s) of the author(s), and the affiliation(s) of the author(s). It also includes the date of submission and possibly, the name of the journal or conference where the paper is to be published.

The abstract is a brief summary of the research paper, typically ranging from 100 to 250 words. It should include the research question, the methods used, the key findings, and the implications of the results. The abstract should be written in a concise and clear manner to allow readers to quickly grasp the essence of the research.

Introduction

The introduction section of a research paper provides background information about the research problem, the research question, and the research objectives. It also outlines the significance of the research, the research gap that it aims to fill, and the approach taken to address the research question. Finally, the introduction section ends with a clear statement of the research hypothesis or research question.

Literature Review

The literature review section of a research paper provides an overview of the existing literature on the topic of study. It includes a critical analysis and synthesis of the literature, highlighting the key concepts, themes, and debates. The literature review should also demonstrate the research gap and how the current study seeks to address it.

The methods section of a research paper describes the research design, the sample selection, the data collection and analysis procedures, and the statistical methods used to analyze the data. This section should provide sufficient detail for other researchers to replicate the study.

The results section presents the findings of the research, using tables, graphs, and figures to illustrate the data. The findings should be presented in a clear and concise manner, with reference to the research question and hypothesis.

The discussion section of a research paper interprets the findings and discusses their implications for the research question, the literature review, and the field of study. It should also address the limitations of the study and suggest future research directions.

The conclusion section summarizes the main findings of the study, restates the research question and hypothesis, and provides a final reflection on the significance of the research.

The references section provides a list of all the sources cited in the paper, following a specific citation style such as APA, MLA or Chicago.

How to Write Research Paper

You can write Research Paper by the following guide:

• Choose a Topic: The first step is to select a topic that interests you and is relevant to your field of study. Brainstorm ideas and narrow down to a research question that is specific and researchable.
• Conduct a Literature Review: The literature review helps you identify the gap in the existing research and provides a basis for your research question. It also helps you to develop a theoretical framework and research hypothesis.
• Develop a Thesis Statement : The thesis statement is the main argument of your research paper. It should be clear, concise and specific to your research question.
• Plan your Research: Develop a research plan that outlines the methods, data sources, and data analysis procedures. This will help you to collect and analyze data effectively.
• Collect and Analyze Data: Collect data using various methods such as surveys, interviews, observations, or experiments. Analyze data using statistical tools or other qualitative methods.
• Organize your Paper : Organize your paper into sections such as Introduction, Literature Review, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. Ensure that each section is coherent and follows a logical flow.
• Write your Paper : Start by writing the introduction, followed by the literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. Ensure that your writing is clear, concise, and follows the required formatting and citation styles.
• Edit and Proofread your Paper: Review your paper for grammar and spelling errors, and ensure that it is well-structured and easy to read. Ask someone else to review your paper to get feedback and suggestions for improvement.
• Cite your Sources: Ensure that you properly cite all sources used in your research paper. This is essential for giving credit to the original authors and avoiding plagiarism.

Research Paper Example

Note : The below example research paper is for illustrative purposes only and is not an actual research paper. Actual research papers may have different structures, contents, and formats depending on the field of study, research question, data collection and analysis methods, and other factors. Students should always consult with their professors or supervisors for specific guidelines and expectations for their research papers.

Research Paper Example sample for Students:

Title: The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health among Young Adults

Abstract: This study aims to investigate the impact of social media use on the mental health of young adults. A literature review was conducted to examine the existing research on the topic. A survey was then administered to 200 university students to collect data on their social media use, mental health status, and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. The results showed that social media use is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The study also found that social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) are significant predictors of mental health problems among young adults.

Introduction: Social media has become an integral part of modern life, particularly among young adults. While social media has many benefits, including increased communication and social connectivity, it has also been associated with negative outcomes, such as addiction, cyberbullying, and mental health problems. This study aims to investigate the impact of social media use on the mental health of young adults.

Literature Review: The literature review highlights the existing research on the impact of social media use on mental health. The review shows that social media use is associated with depression, anxiety, stress, and other mental health problems. The review also identifies the factors that contribute to the negative impact of social media, including social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO.

Methods : A survey was administered to 200 university students to collect data on their social media use, mental health status, and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. The survey included questions on social media use, mental health status (measured using the DASS-21), and perceived impact of social media on their mental health. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis.

Results : The results showed that social media use is positively associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The study also found that social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO are significant predictors of mental health problems among young adults.

Discussion : The study’s findings suggest that social media use has a negative impact on the mental health of young adults. The study highlights the need for interventions that address the factors contributing to the negative impact of social media, such as social comparison, cyberbullying, and FOMO.

Conclusion : In conclusion, social media use has a significant impact on the mental health of young adults. The study’s findings underscore the need for interventions that promote healthy social media use and address the negative outcomes associated with social media use. Future research can explore the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing the negative impact of social media on mental health. Additionally, longitudinal studies can investigate the long-term effects of social media use on mental health.

Limitations : The study has some limitations, including the use of self-report measures and a cross-sectional design. The use of self-report measures may result in biased responses, and a cross-sectional design limits the ability to establish causality.

Implications: The study’s findings have implications for mental health professionals, educators, and policymakers. Mental health professionals can use the findings to develop interventions that address the negative impact of social media use on mental health. Educators can incorporate social media literacy into their curriculum to promote healthy social media use among young adults. Policymakers can use the findings to develop policies that protect young adults from the negative outcomes associated with social media use.

References :

• Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2019). Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study. Preventive medicine reports, 15, 100918.
• Primack, B. A., Shensa, A., Escobar-Viera, C. G., Barrett, E. L., Sidani, J. E., Colditz, J. B., … & James, A. E. (2017). Use of multiple social media platforms and symptoms of depression and anxiety: A nationally-representative study among US young adults. Computers in Human Behavior, 69, 1-9.
• Van der Meer, T. G., & Verhoeven, J. W. (2017). Social media and its impact on academic performance of students. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 16, 383-398.

Appendix : The survey used in this study is provided below.

Social Media and Mental Health Survey

• How often do you use social media per day?
• Less than 30 minutes
• 30 minutes to 1 hour
• 1 to 2 hours
• 2 to 4 hours
• More than 4 hours
• Which social media platforms do you use?
• Others (Please specify)
• How often do you experience the following on social media?
• Social comparison (comparing yourself to others)
• Cyberbullying
• Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
• Have you ever experienced any of the following mental health problems in the past month?
• Do you think social media use has a positive or negative impact on your mental health?
• Very positive
• Somewhat positive
• Somewhat negative
• Very negative
• In your opinion, which factors contribute to the negative impact of social media on mental health?
• Social comparison
• In your opinion, what interventions could be effective in reducing the negative impact of social media on mental health?
• Education on healthy social media use
• Counseling for mental health problems caused by social media
• Social media detox programs
• Regulation of social media use

Thank you for your participation!

Applications of Research Paper

Research papers have several applications in various fields, including:

• Advancing knowledge: Research papers contribute to the advancement of knowledge by generating new insights, theories, and findings that can inform future research and practice. They help to answer important questions, clarify existing knowledge, and identify areas that require further investigation.
• Informing policy: Research papers can inform policy decisions by providing evidence-based recommendations for policymakers. They can help to identify gaps in current policies, evaluate the effectiveness of interventions, and inform the development of new policies and regulations.
• Improving practice: Research papers can improve practice by providing evidence-based guidance for professionals in various fields, including medicine, education, business, and psychology. They can inform the development of best practices, guidelines, and standards of care that can improve outcomes for individuals and organizations.
• Educating students : Research papers are often used as teaching tools in universities and colleges to educate students about research methods, data analysis, and academic writing. They help students to develop critical thinking skills, research skills, and communication skills that are essential for success in many careers.
• Fostering collaboration: Research papers can foster collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers by providing a platform for sharing knowledge and ideas. They can facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships that can lead to innovative solutions to complex problems.

When to Write Research Paper

Research papers are typically written when a person has completed a research project or when they have conducted a study and have obtained data or findings that they want to share with the academic or professional community. Research papers are usually written in academic settings, such as universities, but they can also be written in professional settings, such as research organizations, government agencies, or private companies.

Here are some common situations where a person might need to write a research paper:

• For academic purposes: Students in universities and colleges are often required to write research papers as part of their coursework, particularly in the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. Writing research papers helps students to develop research skills, critical thinking skills, and academic writing skills.
• For publication: Researchers often write research papers to publish their findings in academic journals or to present their work at academic conferences. Publishing research papers is an important way to disseminate research findings to the academic community and to establish oneself as an expert in a particular field.
• To inform policy or practice : Researchers may write research papers to inform policy decisions or to improve practice in various fields. Research findings can be used to inform the development of policies, guidelines, and best practices that can improve outcomes for individuals and organizations.
• To share new insights or ideas: Researchers may write research papers to share new insights or ideas with the academic or professional community. They may present new theories, propose new research methods, or challenge existing paradigms in their field.

Purpose of Research Paper

The purpose of a research paper is to present the results of a study or investigation in a clear, concise, and structured manner. Research papers are written to communicate new knowledge, ideas, or findings to a specific audience, such as researchers, scholars, practitioners, or policymakers. The primary purposes of a research paper are:

• To contribute to the body of knowledge : Research papers aim to add new knowledge or insights to a particular field or discipline. They do this by reporting the results of empirical studies, reviewing and synthesizing existing literature, proposing new theories, or providing new perspectives on a topic.
• To inform or persuade: Research papers are written to inform or persuade the reader about a particular issue, topic, or phenomenon. They present evidence and arguments to support their claims and seek to persuade the reader of the validity of their findings or recommendations.
• To advance the field: Research papers seek to advance the field or discipline by identifying gaps in knowledge, proposing new research questions or approaches, or challenging existing assumptions or paradigms. They aim to contribute to ongoing debates and discussions within a field and to stimulate further research and inquiry.
• To demonstrate research skills: Research papers demonstrate the author’s research skills, including their ability to design and conduct a study, collect and analyze data, and interpret and communicate findings. They also demonstrate the author’s ability to critically evaluate existing literature, synthesize information from multiple sources, and write in a clear and structured manner.

Characteristics of Research Paper

Research papers have several characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of academic or professional writing. Here are some common characteristics of research papers:

• Evidence-based: Research papers are based on empirical evidence, which is collected through rigorous research methods such as experiments, surveys, observations, or interviews. They rely on objective data and facts to support their claims and conclusions.
• Structured and organized: Research papers have a clear and logical structure, with sections such as introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. They are organized in a way that helps the reader to follow the argument and understand the findings.
• Formal and objective: Research papers are written in a formal and objective tone, with an emphasis on clarity, precision, and accuracy. They avoid subjective language or personal opinions and instead rely on objective data and analysis to support their arguments.
• Citations and references: Research papers include citations and references to acknowledge the sources of information and ideas used in the paper. They use a specific citation style, such as APA, MLA, or Chicago, to ensure consistency and accuracy.
• Peer-reviewed: Research papers are often peer-reviewed, which means they are evaluated by other experts in the field before they are published. Peer-review ensures that the research is of high quality, meets ethical standards, and contributes to the advancement of knowledge in the field.
• Objective and unbiased: Research papers strive to be objective and unbiased in their presentation of the findings. They avoid personal biases or preconceptions and instead rely on the data and analysis to draw conclusions.

Advantages of Research Paper

Research papers have many advantages, both for the individual researcher and for the broader academic and professional community. Here are some advantages of research papers:

• Contribution to knowledge: Research papers contribute to the body of knowledge in a particular field or discipline. They add new information, insights, and perspectives to existing literature and help advance the understanding of a particular phenomenon or issue.
• Opportunity for intellectual growth: Research papers provide an opportunity for intellectual growth for the researcher. They require critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity, which can help develop the researcher’s skills and knowledge.
• Career advancement: Research papers can help advance the researcher’s career by demonstrating their expertise and contributions to the field. They can also lead to new research opportunities, collaborations, and funding.
• Academic recognition: Research papers can lead to academic recognition in the form of awards, grants, or invitations to speak at conferences or events. They can also contribute to the researcher’s reputation and standing in the field.
• Impact on policy and practice: Research papers can have a significant impact on policy and practice. They can inform policy decisions, guide practice, and lead to changes in laws, regulations, or procedures.
• Advancement of society: Research papers can contribute to the advancement of society by addressing important issues, identifying solutions to problems, and promoting social justice and equality.

Limitations of Research Paper

Research papers also have some limitations that should be considered when interpreting their findings or implications. Here are some common limitations of research papers:

• Limited generalizability: Research findings may not be generalizable to other populations, settings, or contexts. Studies often use specific samples or conditions that may not reflect the broader population or real-world situations.
• Potential for bias : Research papers may be biased due to factors such as sample selection, measurement errors, or researcher biases. It is important to evaluate the quality of the research design and methods used to ensure that the findings are valid and reliable.
• Ethical concerns: Research papers may raise ethical concerns, such as the use of vulnerable populations or invasive procedures. Researchers must adhere to ethical guidelines and obtain informed consent from participants to ensure that the research is conducted in a responsible and respectful manner.
• Limitations of methodology: Research papers may be limited by the methodology used to collect and analyze data. For example, certain research methods may not capture the complexity or nuance of a particular phenomenon, or may not be appropriate for certain research questions.
• Publication bias: Research papers may be subject to publication bias, where positive or significant findings are more likely to be published than negative or non-significant findings. This can skew the overall findings of a particular area of research.
• Time and resource constraints: Research papers may be limited by time and resource constraints, which can affect the quality and scope of the research. Researchers may not have access to certain data or resources, or may be unable to conduct long-term studies due to practical limitations.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 113 great research paper topics.

General Education

One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

• Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
• Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
• How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
• How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
• How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
• How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

Current Events

• What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
• How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
• How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
• Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
• What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
• What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
• How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
• How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
• How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
• What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
• What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
• What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
• Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies  (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
• Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
• Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
• Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
• Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
• Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
• How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
• Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
• What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
• How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
• What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
• Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
• Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
• Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
• How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
• Should graduate students be able to form unions?

• What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
• How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
• Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
• Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
• How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
• How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
• Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
• Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
• Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
• Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
• Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
• Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
• Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
• Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
• Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
• How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
• How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
• What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
• What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
• Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
• What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
• What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
• Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
• Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
• How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
• Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
• What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
• How does stress affect the body?
• Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
• What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
• Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
• How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
• What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
• What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
• Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
• What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
• What were the causes of the Civil War?
• How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
• Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
• What caused Hitler's rise to power?
• Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
• What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
• How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
• What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

• Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
• Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
• How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
• How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
• What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
• What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
• How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

• How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
• How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
• Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
• Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
• How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
• How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
• What are the pros and cons of fracking?
• What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
• What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
• How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
• Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
• Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
• What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
• What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
• How are black holes created?
• Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
• How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
• Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
• How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
• Has social media made people more or less connected?
• What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
• Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
• What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
• How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
• When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
• Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

What's Next?

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Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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More From Forbes

5 tips to enhance your research paper’s visibility and altmetric score.

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US evangelist Billy Graham addresses a crowd of football supporters at Stamford Bridge, London, ... [+] during half-time at the match between Chelsea and Newcastle United. (Photo by Edward Miller/Getty Images)

I previously wrote about the importance of attracting public attention to scientific research . In today’s world, where billions of people are attached to their digital devices watching the very addictive but often useless TikTok content or receiving instant gratification by engaging in meaningless debates about celebrities, scientists need to find creative ways to have their research noticed. Popularizing scientific research helps inspire the younger generations to go into science and provide the general public with a sense of optimism enabling the government to channel more resources into science. People do need inspiration. But very often, even very important scientific breakthroughs requiring many years, hard work, skill, funding, and genuine serendipity go largely unnoticed by the general public.

One of the best ways to measure expert and public attention is the cumulative Altmetric Attention Score , originally developed by Digital Science and adopted by many prestigious publishers, including Nature Publishing Group. Every Nature paper and the papers published by pretty much every credible publisher are tracked by Digital Science by the Document Object Identification (DOI) or the Unique Resource Locator (URL) . While Altmetric has many limitations, for example, it does not track LinkedIn posts and may not adequately cover the impact of top-tier media coverage, at the moment it is the blueprint for tracking attention.

Altmetric Score in The Age of Generative AI

Media attention is likely to be very important in the age of generative AI. Many modern generative systems, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Mistral, and Gemini, as well as hundreds of Large Language Models (LLMs) in China, use the data from the same sources referenced in Altmetric to learn. The more times generative systems see the same concept presented in different contexts, the better they learn. So if you want to contribute to the training of AI systems that may thank you for it in the future - Altmetric is the way to go.

So what can a research group do to ensure they are communicating their findings effectively and increasing the visibility of their research to ensure it gets reflected in the Altmetric Attention Score?

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Altmetric openly discloses the weights of the various sources and the scoring algorithm is relatively straightforward. It is easy to learn, and there are multiple online resources providing advice on how to share your research in ways that will be captured by Altmetric. Cambridge University Press published a guideline to Altmetric for the authors on how to popularize their research with Altmetric in mind. Wolters Kluwer put out a guide and the editor of Toxicology and Pathology wrote a comprehensive overview of Altmetric and how to use it. Surprisingly, this overview got an Altmetric Attention Score of only 4 at the time of the writing, but was cited 137 times according to Google Scholar .

Altmetric monitors social networks, including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Reddit; all major top-tier mainstream media, mainstream science blogs, policy documents, patents, Wikipedia articles, peer review websites, F1000, Syllabi, X (formerly Twitter), tracked Facebook pages, Reddit, one of the Stack Exchange sites, and Youtube. Unfortunately, several powerful platforms, including LinkedIn, are not currently tracked.

The popularity of the paper depends on many factors. Firstly, it has to be novel, trendy, and newsworthy. You are unlikely to get high Altmetric Score with a boring topic. Secondly, papers coming out of popular labs in top-tier academic institutions and in top journals are likely to attract more attention. Often, the communications officers in these academic institutions work closely with the media to amplify notable research. Celebrity companies, for example, Google DeepMind, consistently get higher coverage.

Screenshot of the Altmetric Attention Score "Flower" showing several tracked sources

Here are the five tips for increasing the visibility of your work and ensuring that reach is tracked and reflected by Altmetric:

1. Understand How Altmetric System Works

Congratulations, if you read this article and looked at what sources are tracked by Altmetric. Most likely, you got the basics and will be able to get a “balanced flower” by making a press release, tweeting the DOI of the paper on X, posting a video overview of your paper on Youtube, announcing on Reddit (I still need to learn how to do this).

To understand how Altmetric works, I emailed a few questions to Miguel Garcia, Director of Product and Data Analytics Hub at Digital Science and my first question was wether the Altmetric algorithm is open source. “The Altmetric Attention Score's calculation is not open source but we try to provide as much information as possible around how we calculate it here, and are currently considering what steps we might take to make our algorithms more transparent.” He also provided a link to how the Altmetric Attention Score is calculated.

Many professionals use LinkedIn as the primary social media resource and I was wondering why Altmetric stopped tracking it. Bad news - technical reasons prevent tracking DOIs on LinkedIn. Good news - they are actively seeking ways to appropriately track mentions on LinkedIn and we may see some news toward the end of the year.

My other big question was how does Altmetric count tweets and retweets on X. What if there are many posts from the same account? Miguel’s response was: “Re-tweets count less than original tweets. In addition to that, modifiers are applied to the type of account that is tweeting in order to reduce the weight of the tweet in situations where we find signals of bias or promiscuity (for example a journal publisher only tweeting their own articles). Besides that, we have conditions around the maximum number of retweets in order to limit the maximum impact they would have.”

So tweeting the article many times will not help you. But if other scientists tweet you paper with a DOI - these tweets will get counted. So tweet others as you would like to be tweeted.

2. Make a Press Release and Distribute to Science-focused Media

If your paper is significant, for example, you elucidated novel disease biology, discovered a new drug, developed a new fancy algorithm, designed a new material, or developed a new application for a quantum computer, it is worthwhile investing some time and resources in writing a press release. If you are working for an academic institution, most likely they have a communications office that will help you. If you do not have this luxury, you will need to learn how to write a press release. Plenty of free online guides cover the basics of press release writing. And press releases are one area where ChatGPT and other generative tools do surprisingly well. Upload your paper and ask it to write a press release, check for errors or exaggerations, edit, and you are ready to go. Just make sure to include the DOI and the URL of your paper. A proper business press release on BusinessWire or PRNewswire may cost several thousand dollars. In my opinion, these resources are dramatically overcharging while providing little service. I don't remember a case where a journalist picked up our news based on a commercial press release. But these releases are often reposted by other online press release distributors and the boost to Altmetric may be considerable. The default news release distribution service for research news is EurekAlert. This resource may sometimes result in journalistic coverage as many reporters are using it for science news. There are many free resources you can use if you do not have any budget.

Once the press release is issued, share it with the media. Share the resulting news coverage via your social networks and contacts. Many journalists track the popularity of their news articles and giving them several thousand extra views from professional audience and increasing their social following increases the chances that they will cover the next important research paper.

3. Make a Blog Post

Writing a blog post can be longer and more comprehensive than the press release. Make sure to add fancy diagrams and graphical explainers. You can share the blog post with the journalists at the same time as the press release. Your blog may serve as a source of inspiration for third party news coverage. Make sure to reference the DOI and URL of your paper.

If your paper is in one of the Nature journals, consider writing a “Behind the Paper" blog post on Nature Bioengineering Community. Surprisingly, these blogs are rarely picked up by Altmetric but may serve as a source of inspiration for the journalists and social media influencers. Plus, it is a resource by the Nature Publishing Group.

4. Tweet and Ask Your Team Members to Tweet

Each post on X gives you a quarter of an Altmetric point. If your paper goes viral on X, your Altmetric score can be considerable. Plus, once journalists notice that it went viral, they will be more likely to cover the story, further increasing the score.

Try to choose the time of the post, the hashtags, and the images wisely. Since Elon Musk took over X and opened the algorithm it became very transparent and easy to optimize for. Here are the top 10 tips for boosting attention for a post on X. Make sure to include the DOI or the URL of the paper for Altmetric to find the post.

5. Experiment, Learn, Repeat

My highest Altmetric Attention Score core to date was around 1,500 for a paper in Nature Biotechnology published in 2019, where we used a novel method for designing small molecules called Generative Tensorial Reinforcement Learning (GENTRL) to generate new molecules with druglike properties that got synthesized and tested all the way into mice. In 2024, we went further and showed that an AI-generated molecule for an AI-discovered target was tested all the way up to Phase II human trials, but the paper published in Nature Biotechnology, let’s call it the TNIK paper , has achieved a score ofjust over 600 to date. So what has changed and what can we learn from these two papers?

The popularity of the paper depends on many factors. Ones which capture the public imagination or have widespread appeal are of course, much more likely to gain traction online. When we published the GENTRL paper in 2019, Generative AI was in its infancy, and there are pretty much no other companies that I heard of at the intersection of generative AI and drug discovery. We also published multiple articles in this field in the years leading to that paper and many key opinion leaders (KOLs) followed us. That following included a small army of generative AI skeptics who not only contributed to multiple rejections in peer-reviewed journals but also openly criticized this approach in social networks. This criticism also helped boost the Altmetric Score and bring more attention to the study. So first learning from this exercise - negative publicity helps overall publicity. As long as you are certain that your research results are honest - leave room for criticism and even help expose your paper’s weaknesses. Critics are your greatest Altmetric boosters. Since readers and, by extension journalists, react to negative news and drama stronger than to positive news, critical reviews will boost your Altmetric as long as the DOI or URL of the paper is properly referenced.

Secondly, papers coming out of popular labs in top-tier academic institutions and in top journals are likely to attract more attention. Often, the communications officers in these academic institutions work closely with the media to amplify notable research. Celebrity companies, for example, Google DeepMind, always get a higher level of coverage. For example, the AlphaFold paper published in July 2021 in Nature got an Altmetric Attention Score of over 3,500 . Even though I have not seen any drugs out of AlphaFold reaching preclinical candidate status, I predict the popularity of this tool will result in the first Nobel Prize in this area. Therefore, in order to become famous and popularize your research more effectively, it is a good idea to build up the public profile of yourself and your work. For example, Kardashians are famous for being famous .

Be careful with Wikipedia. I made a mistake explaining the importance of Wikipedia to students when lecturing on the future of generative AI, and one or two of them got banned for expanding the articles with paper references. Wikipedia requires that these are added by independent editors rather than the authors of papers themselves, but if some editors do not like it, they will not go deep or investigate - they will assume wrongdoing. So it is better to avoid even talking about Wikipedia. References there should happen naturally and often some of the more popular papers get picked up and referenced by veteran editors.

Experimenting with Altmetric will also help you explore new strategies for popularizing scientific research and develop new strategies for inspiring people to learn or even get into the new exciting field. UNESCO estimates that there was just over 8 million full-time equivalent (FTE) researchers in 2018 globally. Only a fraction of these are in biotechnology - less than 0.01% of the global population. If you motivate a million students to go into biotechnology by popularizing your research, you double this number.

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Best Research Paper Writing Services: The Top 7 You Need to Know About

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It is not uncommon for students to struggle with research paper writing. It is an advanced college task that requires dedication, skills, and time. That’s why many students are in need of expert assistance to fulfill academic requirements.

Fortunately, there are plenty of service providers ready to help. However, finding the legit and credible one is a hustle. That’s why our team created this guide for research paper writers and the best online platforms.

We’ve tested and checked them to find the best seven providers for students. Choosing a suitable research paper writer from the best research paper service is the secret to success. We’ve evaluated the offers, prices, and quality of work provided. We’ve prepared full reviews so you know exactly where to go when you need high-quality assistance with your assignments.

Other criteria include delivery, customer support, and other features students might benefit from. All of these seven platforms are credible, legit, and professional. They all have excellent teams of writers ready to deliver outstanding papers on demand. In this guide, you’ll find the top service to go to when you need assistance with college tasks.

Top 7 Best Research Paper Writing Services Providers

Here is an overall rating of these seven research paper writing services before we dwell into details. We’ve focused on the main benefit each of them offers in terms of the research paper help.

• PaperWriter 🥇 | The Best Research Paper Help Overall | 9.9
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• EssayHub | The Best for Rushed Orders | 9.6
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PaperWriter.com – Excellent Research Paper Writing Help

PaperWriter.com is our top pick overall because the service covers all the criteria completely. It provides high-quality and quick assistance to college students with a variety of assignments. The team assists with essays, dissertations, presentations, homework, and, of course, research papers. Because of the excellent team of writers and customer support professionals, it is the best research paper writing service out there. Students can quickly place an order and get it going.

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EssayPro.com – One of The Best Research Paper Writing Services in USA

When it comes to US higher education, there is no better research paper helper. EssayPro.com is an outstanding provider that focuses on US students. The team consists of US and Canadian residents who have graduated from these countries’ top universities. They know everything about local requirements and expectations from their first-hand experience.

Another great sign of credibility is that the business has been operating for more than a decade. It has an impressive track record of completed projects and satisfied customers. The team does admission essays, dissertations, case studies, term papers, and research papers writing on demand.

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• The platform doesn’t work with extremely short deadlines.

WritePaper.com – Outstanding Research Paper Writers

Although every platform on this list has a solid team, WritePaper.com comes first when it comes to the best research paper writers. All of them are experts with many years of experience in the field. Some have a Master’s degree, but a vast majority have Ph.D. It makes the team fit to complete an assignment of any complexity, whether it is an essay, case study, or dissertation.

Each writer has a profile with stats on works completed, success rate, and reviews. You can also see their level of education and subjects of expertise. It makes the choice of an author for your order relatively easy.

The services include all types of college assignments along with homework help and personal statement writing. Students can also read the blog with plenty of tips and tricks on academic writing. Here you can also find experts to complete niche projects and subjects.

• Proficient and expert team of authors;
• Confidentiality and advanced data protection; 24/7 customer support;
• Additional focus on payment safety;
• Reasonable prices and a full money-back guarantee;
• Free originality reports to all orders, outlines, and formatting.
• There are fewer payment options because the platform trusts only some gates.

EssayService.com – The Cheapest of the Best Research Paper Writing Services

Some might think it is expensive to buy research papers online; however, it is not the case with EssayService. The provider knows that budget is crucial for many students, so it offers many deals and discounts. For example, the first order comes with a 15% discount, which is fantastic. It is a platform of choice for those who want to save some money without compromising on quality.

Besides the budget-friendly policy, the platform delivers a wide range of papers. The writers’ team is qualified and experienced. Students can order not only research assignments but also dissertations, essays, term papers, and MBA essays.

Also, custom writing is available. The platform has excellent reviews and hundreds of thousands of happy clients.

• Various deals and discounts that make writing assistance affordable;
• A lot of free features like plagiarism reports, edits, and formatting;
• Huge range of services from essays to book reviews and more;
• Individual approach to every order and style imitation service;
• To start, you only need to deposit one-third of the price.
• Finding a suitable author for very niche topics can take time, so it is better to start ordering beforehand.

EssayHub.com – The Best Website to Write My Research Paper in 3 Hours

If you need immediate assignment writing services, EssayHub is ready to help. You can find professional research paper writers that can provide outstanding papers in only 3 hours. So it is the best platform for quickly approaching deadlines.

Also, any paper gets an unlimited number of reviews. If you are not completely satisfied immediately, you can ask a writer to make changes. We were impressed by the quality and delivery.

The delivery is speedy, and all the texts are original. Students can ask for help with any type of text they have issues with. It includes such things as discussion board posts and book reports. So it is a one-stop for all kinds of college tasks, and that’s why the platform has a great percentage of returning customers.

• Extremely quick delivery of orders even with rushed deadlines;
• Experienced writers that can nail all types of assignments;
• Reasonable pricing and easy ordering process;
• Helpful blog with tips on academic writing;
• Ability to communicate with the writer during the process;
• Authentic and original content according to your specific requirements.
• The team is comparatively small, which means the platform can process a smaller number of orders overall.

DoMyEssay.com – The Best Range of Writing Services

Although all of the platforms in the list have impressive services, this one comes first. DoMyEssay can complete anything a student can think of, from a research paper to presentations, annotated bibliographies, and reflective writing texts. It is possible because the platform has a great team of writers with various qualifications.

Students can get assistance with Statistics coursework or ask for a creative writing assignment. Another considerable advantage of this service is that it has even college professors on the team. It allows for fulfilling requirements of any complexity. And it ensures the best results and the highest grades.

Students can also rest assured that their personal data is protected with the best measures. All the papers are authentic, original, and delivered just in time.

• With the broadest range of services out there, students can get assistance with anything;
• Reasonable prices with several free features included;
• Plagiarism report included in every order;
• Style imitation ensures that the paper looks as if you write it;
• Research is based only on credible and scientifically-approved sources;
• All clients get unlimited revisions to ensure satisfaction with the result.
• Payment options are a bit limited to only credible ones;
• The first order processing can take a bit longer.

StudyFy.com – The Best Non-STEM Research Paper Writing Service

This platform delivers help with various kinds of assignments, along with homework and coursework help. Also, the team offers rewriting and editing services to polish your work before submission. The team works best with non-STEM subjects, including Business, Art, Literature, Nursing, Geography, and many more.

Another fantastic feature of this platform is the resources tab. Students can find writing tools, samples, writing, and literature guides there. All of those resources help students to become better writers. Besides that, students can also read a blog with expert guidance on the matter. The best part is that those resources are free, and anyone can access them.

The pricing is reasonable, and the team delivers high-quality and unique papers. The support team representatives are very helpful and available 24/7. Overall, it is an amazing platform for non-STEM research papers.

• Qualified team to work with tasks of different academic levels;
• Original papers with plagiarism reports and unlimited revisions;
• All the necessary features are provided for free, including the outline, title page, and formatting;
• Full confidentiality and data security;
• A lot of valuable resources for students who want to become better writers;
• Great library of essay samples on various subjects;
• Works with rushed orders and deadlines.
• No special deals or discounts are available for students.

Here Is How We Chose Our Top Research Paper Writing Services

So how did we choose these seven platforms to feature in our guide? Here is how our process works.

First, we look for popular services with appropriate ratings. If many people have reviewed it four stars and higher, we want to get a closer look. It matters what sites they are evaluated at. And we also go through the testimonials to figure out the authenticity. At this stage, our team evaluates the legitimacy of a business. Only if it is clean, do we proceed with further inspections.

Secondly, we research the business and the services it offers. We evaluate the range of papers and the team. We look into the claims before we test them out. It is essential that the platform delivers various papers because it is a sign of a diverse and expert team.

Thirdly, we place an order and wait for the result. Based on that, we get to test customer support and service convenience. Another crucial criterion is how easy it is to start and place an order. It shows how user-friendly the site is. And that’s one of the significant factors in evaluating how much the business cares about clients.

And the fourth step is to analyze the received paper in terms of originality and quality. Of course, it is the main deciding factor in our investigation. After all, this is all it comes to – how reliable the platform is. Based on the papers we’ve received, all of these platforms have proven their expertise.

Other factors we consider include additional features, discounts, and prices. Although the average costs are approximately the same, if a platform offers special deals, it can make it significantly more budget-friendly.

Confidentiality and data security are also crucial. We choose only services that imply their websites’ newest and most robust data protection features. Cyber security is something everyone must care about, especially when it comes to paid services. It is how our team inspected these seven services to make sure they are the best when it comes to research papers.

1. How Fast Can They Write My Research Paper?

The delivery time depends hugely on the complexity of the task. The harder it is, the longer it will take an expert to research and write an excellent paper. Delivering essays is pretty fast, but a research paper requires deeper insight and might take more effort.

However, some of the services in this guide work with rushed deadlines. Usually, the minimum is 3 hours. But it is always better to place an order beforehand. First of all, the rushed deadlines might come at an additional fee. Secondly, there is little room for revisions and edits if the deadline is very tight.

2. Are Research Paper Writing Services Cheap?

The average price for academic writing is about $11 per page. But the estimation for each order depends on several major factors. These are the type of assignment, complexity, volume, and deadline.

For example, the higher the academic level of the paper, the more a student will need to pay. At the same time, all the services in our list provide a handful of free features. Those mean free plagiarism reports, unlimited revisions, formatting, outlining, and a title page. Taking all of that into consideration, the price is low.

Also, you get to work with the best in the industry and communicate with authors directly. Also, some of the platforms offer regular discounts and deals for students. It makes research paper writing even more affordable.

3. Who Will Write My Research Paper?

Students choose who will complete the order. All the services listed offer this for free. After you’ve stated your requirements, you can view writers’ profiles and decide who is the most suitable for the job.

You can view the number of completed tasks and the satisfaction rate to decide on that. Also, the profiles feature each professional’s qualifications and areas of expertise. They focus on 2-3 areas they are educated and experienced at. Some are experts in the Humanities, others in STEM.

Another good way to evaluate a writer’s expertise is to read through testimonials of students that worked with them already.

4. How Safe Is It to Use Research Paper Services?

Using any of these seven platforms is completely safe. We’ve gathered only legitimate businesses that have been on the market for years. They are well-established and secure. All of them care deeply about the confidentiality of customers.

They also use various data safety measures to ensure your cooperation remains confidential. Besides that, the platforms have clear terms and conditions along with refund policies. It means that there are no risks. Students can order their papers knowing that their data is secure and they get high-quality results.

5. How Does the Payment Work?

When you place an order, you receive the estimation for your paper. After that, you choose the writer and place a deposit. After getting the paper and confirming satisfaction, the deposit goes to the service.

Some services take only a fraction of the price as a deposit, making it even more convenient for students. Satisfaction means that you’ve read the paper and have no edits or reviews needed. The services accept credit and debit cards. Those are secure and safe payment services that protect all your sensitive information.

6. Why Do Students Use Research Paper Help?

Students might need assistance for various reasons. One of the most common ones is the lack of time. Students have to manage many responsibilities, and finding the right balance is often challenging. Maybe you are overloaded with tasks or have unexpected duties to fulfill. It becomes impossible to do everything on your own.

Professionals can write a paper from scratch, or they can edit and rewrite your work so that it is outstanding. Another primary reason why students opt for such services is that they need guidance.

Academic writing is complex and requires advanced skills. If you are not confident in your research or writing, getting an objective and expert perspective on that is a good idea.

7. How to Order a Research Paper?

To order the paper, you need to go to the website of the provider you’ve chosen from the list. All of them have a convenient ordering system. Students get to fill in the form. First, you need to specify all the fundamental requirements like academic level, type of paper, and deadline. Secondly, you need to put in all other additional requirements.

Usually, students can either type them in or upload a task document. These requirements include professor instructions, textbook information, style specifics, etc. The more specific you’ll be, the better the result you’ll get.

After that, you proceed to choose an author and place a deposit. You can chat with the author while they are working on your text. Students can check on the progress or share more details in person.

8. Will I Get the Original Papers?

Yes, all the papers provided by these services are original and plagiarism-free. We’ve investigated it based on our orders. Originality is one of the crucial demands in the academic world. That’s why professional platforms take pride in the authenticity of their assistance.

Every order is handled individually. There are no premade texts. A writer will start working on an order from scratch (unless you want rewriting or editing).

It begins with proper research of peer-reviewed and scientifically-approved sources. Then comes the outline, draft, and final version.

All the orders come with a plagiarism report so that customers can be confident that they get an original assignment. Also, the style imitation feature allows getting texts that are written in your unique way.

9. What Happens If I Do Not Like the Paper?

If you are dissatisfied, you can ask for as many reviews and edits as needed. In our experience, all the papers were of excellent quality. But miscommunications and errors can happen. If you feel something should be edited, ask the writer to do it without additional charges.

Also, the platforms in our list offer partial and complete refund policies. It is proof of a business being confident in the quality of services.

Final Thoughts Top Research Paper Writing Services Websites

Getting professional assistance with college papers is an excellent way to keep up with all the duties. It is also a powerful learning opportunity. Students can communicate with experts, get an objective perspective on their work, and learn from the best. But it is vital to know who to trust your time and money with. Our team wants to help students get the best services and avoid any risks. That’s why we’ve investigated these services to make sure they are the best in research paper writing.

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Paper: To understand cognition—and its dysfunction—neuroscientists must learn its rhythms

Thought emerges and is controlled in the brain via the rhythmically and spatially coordinated activity of millions of neurons, scientists argue in a new article. Understanding cognition and its disorders requires studying it at that level.

It could be very informative to observe the pixels on your phone under a microscope, but not if your goal is to understand what a whole video on the screen shows. Cognition is much the same kind of emergent property in the brain . It can only be understood by observing how millions of cells act in coordination, argues a trio of MIT neuroscientists. In a new article , they lay out a framework for understanding how thought arises from the coordination of neural activity driven by oscillating electric fields—also known as brain “waves” or “rhythms.”

Historically dismissed solely as byproducts of neural activity, brain rhythms are actually critical for organizing it, write Picower Professor Earl Miller and research scientists Scott Brincat and Jefferson Roy in Current Opinion in Behavioral Science . And while neuroscientists have gained tremendous knowledge from studying how individual brain cells connect and how and when they emit “spikes” to send impulses through specific circuits, there is also a need to appreciate and apply new concepts at the brain rhythm scale, which can span individual, or even multiple, brain regions.

“Spiking and anatomy are important but there is more going on in the brain above and beyond that,” said senior author Miller, a faculty member in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. “There’s a whole lot of functionality taking place at a higher level, especially cognition.”

The stakes of studying the brain at that scale, the authors write, might not only include understanding healthy higher-level function but also how those functions become disrupted in disease.

“Many neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, epilepsy and Parkinson’s involve disruption of emergent properties like neural synchrony,” they write. “We anticipate that understanding how to interpret and interface with these emergent properties will be critical for developing effective treatments as well as understanding cognition.”

The emergence of thoughts

The bridge between the scale of individual neurons and the broader-scale coordination of many cells is founded on electric fields, the researchers write. Via a phenomenon called “ephaptic coupling,” the electrical field generated by the activity of a neuron can influence the voltage of neighboring neurons, creating an alignment among them. In this way, electric fields both reflect neural activity but also influence it. In a paper in 2022 , Miller and colleagues showed via experiments and computational modeling that the information encoded in the electric fields generated by ensembles of neurons can be read out more reliably than the information encoded by the spikes of individual cells. In 2023 Miller’s lab provided evidence that rhythmic electrical fields may coordinate memories between regions.

At this larger scale, in which rhythmic electric fields carry information between brain regions, Miller’s lab has published numerous studies showing that lower-frequency rhythms in the so-called “beta” band originate in deeper layers of the brain’s cortex and appear to regulate the power of faster-frequency “gamma” rhythms in more superficial layers. By recording neural activity in the brains of animals engaged in working memory games the lab has shown that beta rhythms carry “top down” signals to control when and where gamma rhythms can encode sensory information, such as the images that the animals need to remember in the game.

Some of the lab’s latest evidence suggests that beta rhythms apply this control of cognitive processes to physical patches of the cortex, essentially acting like stencils that pattern where and when gamma can encode sensory information into memory, or retrieve it. According to this theory, which Miller calls “ Spatial Computing ,” beta can thereby establish the general rules of a task (for instance, the back and forth turns required to open a combination lock), even as the specific information content may change (for instance, new numbers when the combination changes). More generally, this structure also enables neurons to flexibly encode more than one kind of information at a time, the authors write, a widely observed neural property called “mixed selectivity.” For instance, a neuron encoding a number of the lock combination can also be assigned, based on which beta-stenciled patch it is in, the particular step of the unlocking process that the number matters for.

In the new study Miller, Brincat and Roy suggest another advantage consistent with cognitive control being based on an interplay of large-scale coordinated rhythmic activity: “Subspace coding.” This idea postulates that brain rhythms organize the otherwise massive number of possible outcomes that could result from, say, 1,000 neurons engaging in independent spiking activity. Instead of all the many combinatorial possibilities, many fewer “subspaces” of activity actually arise, because neurons are coordinated, rather than independent. It is as if the spiking of neurons is like a flock of birds coordinating their movements.  Different phases and frequencies of brain rhythms provide this coordination, aligned to amplify each other, or offset to prevent interference. For instance, if a piece of sensory information needs to be remembered, neural activity representing it can be protected from interference when new sensory information is perceived.

“Thus the organization of neural responses into subspaces can both segregate and integrate information,” the authors write.

The power of brain rhythms to coordinate and organize information processing in the brain is what enables functional cognition to emerge at that scale, the authors write. Understanding cognition in the brain, therefore, requires studying rhythms.

“Studying individual neural components in isolation—individual neurons and synapses—has made enormous contributions to our understanding of the brain and remains important,” the authors conclude. “However, it’s becoming increasingly clear that, to fully capture the brain’s complexity, those components must be analyzed in concert to identify, study, and relate their emergent properties.”

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Bank Runs, Fragility, and Regulation

We examine banking regulation in a macroeconomic model of bank runs. We construct a general equilibrium model where banks may default because of fundamental or self-fulfilling runs. With only fundamental defaults, we show that the competitive equilibrium is constrained efficient. However, when banks are vulnerable to runs, banks’ leverage decisions are not ex-ante optimal: individual banks do not internalize that higher leverage makes other banks more vulnerable. The theory calls for introducing minimum capital requirements, even in the absence of bailouts.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the Federal Reserve System, or the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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Title: leave no context behind: efficient infinite context transformers with infini-attention.

Abstract: This work introduces an efficient method to scale Transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) to infinitely long inputs with bounded memory and computation. A key component in our proposed approach is a new attention technique dubbed Infini-attention. The Infini-attention incorporates a compressive memory into the vanilla attention mechanism and builds in both masked local attention and long-term linear attention mechanisms in a single Transformer block. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on long-context language modeling benchmarks, 1M sequence length passkey context block retrieval and 500K length book summarization tasks with 1B and 8B LLMs. Our approach introduces minimal bounded memory parameters and enables fast streaming inference for LLMs.

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How Big Tech and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Military-Industrial Complex

America’s military-industrial complex has been rapidly expanding from the Capital Beltway to Silicon Valley. Although much of the Pentagon’s budget is spent on conventional weapons systems, the Defense Department has increasingly sought to adopt AI-enabled systems. Big tech companies, venture capital, and private equity firms benefit from multi-billion dollar Defense contracts, and smaller defense tech startups that “move fast and break things” also receive increased Defense funding.  This report illustrates how a growing portion of the Defense Department’s spending is going to large, well-known tech firms, including some of the most highly valued corporations in the world.

Given the often-classified nature of large defense and intelligence contracts, a lack of transparency makes it difficult to discern the true amount of U.S. spending diverted to Big Tech. Yet, research reveals that the amount is substantial, and growing. According to the nonprofit research organization  Tech Inquiry , three of the world’s biggest tech corporations were awarded approximately $28 billion from 2018 to 2022, including Microsoft ($13.5 billion), Amazon ($10.2 billion), and Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company ($4.3 billion). This paper found that the top five contracts to major tech firms between 2019 and 2022 had contract ceilings totaling at least $53 billion combined.

From 2021 through 2023, venture capital firms  reportedly  pumped nearly $100 billion into defense tech startup companies — an amount 40 percent higher than the previous seven years combined. This report examines how Silicon Valley startups, big tech, and venture capital who benefit from classified Defense contracts will create costly, high-tech defense products that are ineffective, unpredictable, and unsafe – all on the American taxpayer’s dime.

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