How to Improve Your Online Research Skills?

If you have ever written a paper for your high school or university task, you have probably experienced a certain blockage where you were unable to find pieces of information required for the paper. Everybody can relate to this problem, but not being able to find valuable info on the web nowadays is an easy problem to solve. All we need to do is learn some research tips and tricks that can help us find what we need in a couple of clicks.

Learn How to Properly Use Google

Although Google is all about keywords, it uses a complex algorithm that penetrates websites and tries to offer the best possible result for your input. For example, if you are wondering whether there is a
Cherry casino in Japan, you just type this search query into the search bar and you get the info in seconds. However, users can type many special characters to indicate which keywords should go together and to mark many other things. Furthermore, Google offers search filters that can sort and filter your results in order to help you reach the relevant ones more quickly.

Check Every Wiki Citation

Wikipedia is a great source, but not a very reliable one. In fact, the academic world regards Wikipedia as a source which you shouldn’t rely on. We wouldn’t go as far as that, but we would advise checking the source of every claim and further examining it. Wiki sources are actually a great way to obtain additional information for your paper.

Access Academic Databases

On the other hand, Wikipedia is not the only source of information that you can use for your paper. There are a couple of useful academic databases that contain papers, journals, books, and many other important works of researchers all over the world. However, not every work is free, and some databases ask for a monthly subscription in order to allow you to access their data.

Organize Your Research

Chrome and other browsers offer a couple of useful options to bookmark and organize your sites so that you can access them in a couple of clicks and obtain information that you need the most at any time. Furthermore, make sure to use tools such as Google Drive and Google Spreadsheet to keep track of your research and break it down into smaller parts.

Ask for Help

In the end, failing to find the piece of information you need is not the end, as there are other people who may have aces up their sleeves and can help you with anything.

First of all, you can create threads on forums and ask people who are experts in your research field to help you.

Furthermore, you can obtain emails from some researchers whom you consider valuable and send them a message asking them to help you. You will be surprised by how many people are happy to share their work with you!

Finally, if everything else fails, you can go offline and visit your local library where you can ask the librarian to assist you with your research and recommend useful books. This is the most difficult path to take, but it is the most rewarding one as well, especially if you manage to find what you were looking for all along.