 Hi people, welcome to my channel, I'm back again with another interesting video and in this particular video I'm going to talk about do's and don'ts that you must keep in mind if you are writing a research paper or if you are a part of PhD. Now the rules that I'm going to talk in this video applies also to the people who are either in their MFIL or who are writing MA dissertation. Now I would also like to mention here is that I have made a lot of other videos on the same topic in the past few weeks, I have talked about how to choose a topic for your research paper or PhD, I have made a video about PhD entrance, I have also talked about how to write a PhD thesis and also how to plan a research proposal. All these videos are collectively combined in a playlist so that it becomes easy for you to locate it on my channel and the link of that playlist is somewhere given in the i button above so if you have a lot of doubts, a lot of questions bubbling in your head about PhD, about research, about choosing a research topic then that's the playlist which will help you and I'm pretty sure that after going through those videos you will find that I have answered almost all your questions and doubts. If you have any further questions, any further doubts feel free to put that in the comment section below and I'll be more than happy to make further videos on those topic. Now in this video I'm going to address some important rules that you must keep in mind if you are writing a PhD thesis. Now I have seen that a lot of students are unaware of these rules because of which their PhD is rejected at the end. The first important rule that you must keep in mind is that there's a difference between academic writing and creative writing. PhD or research is not a creative writing field. It is academic writing, absolute academic writing. Now what is the difference between creative writing and academic writing? Creative writing is imaginative in nature. You can talk about anything and you can make your imagination fly and you can create characters. You can use symbols and imagery and metaphors in order to talk about the topic in a very, very different manner. On the other hand, academic writing is very technical in nature. It is not subjective. Subjective means according to your own interpretation, no. It is a very objective writing, impersonal writing and it has a fixed format unlike creative writing which has a flexible format. You can write in the way you want to write. But a PhD thesis or research paper has a particular format which you must follow. I have already talked about a particular format of research proposal and PhD thesis in my previous videos. You can refer to those videos if you wish to know more about them. So the first important thing that you should avoid is to indulge in a PhD or research paper and write it in a creative manner. It has to have a perfect format. Whenever you are using idea from any particular writer, any past research, you need to quote it and you need to give the source. You cannot say that, okay, this is how I am going to write and I am going to take credits to myself. No, if you have used any idea of any particular writer or theorist, you need to mention the source only then you can keep yourself away from plagiarism. The next important thing that you must remember is organizing your material. Now PhD takes around three years to complete. Now if you have enrolled yourself in PhD, you would be reading a lot of material in this period of three years and you would be using all these materials in your PhD thesis. You have seen a lot of students who work on feminism and then they see some newspaper advertisement or television advertisement which they would like to quote in their particular research but then while they are writing the research, they forget to mention the source and then they find out that their research has been rejected because of plagiarism. Now it is important for you to always keep in mind that whatever you are going to read in the period of three years, all these materials should be collected at a place so that when you are writing your first draft of your thesis, you can mention the source when you are mentioning about the particular writer or particular work. Suppose if you are doing a research on feminism and one day you were just reading the newspaper Times of India and while you were reading, you came across a very good article in the editorial section written by Namita Gokhale. You read it and you found out, okay fine, I can use these ideas in my PhD thesis as well and you did not make a note of that particular article. The day when you are writing the first draft and you are using the ideas of Namita Gokhale, you felt like quoting it that I have taken it from this particular source but then the newspaper is lost. Now you don't know which date was it so that you can get an e-copy and then you can quote the source and then you find that you have to either delete the paragraph which was very good in case of your research or you will further need to twist the language so that you don't find yourself accused of plagiarism. If on the other hand, a student has the habit of collecting information, keeping it in folders so that he can later use it to quote wherever required in the thesis, the student is going to find much easier to do PhD. I am currently enrolled in a PhD program and I have a habit of clicking photos of all the material that I read. Suppose I am reading an article on newspaper and I find it really good and relevant in case of my PhD so I would just click a picture and save it in Evernote. Evernote is an app which will let you to create folders so that you can put all these articles, put all these photos in different, different folders and categorize them according to your own need. And when I would be writing my first draft, I would have a lot of source material which I have read in a period of one, one and a half years and I can use all that material in order to write the first draft and it will become so easy for me to write the first draft because you will be reading a lot of stuff in one or two years of your PhD and when in the third year you would be drafting all these things, you will find that you have forgotten almost all the information. So if you want to keep yourself away from this particular problem, have a habit of organizing your stuff at one place. It can either be a folder, a hard folder where you can just keep photocopies of the material or it can be a software or a soft copy of an app where you can keep all the images of all the sources you're reading. Suppose if you're doing a research on feminism and you saw a very good ad on television and you felt that you can code that ad so why don't click a video of that app and keep it in your Evernote app. So once you keep it while you'll be writing the first draft, you can use that advertisement in order to highlight another important facet of feminism in India and that is going to make your research even more beautiful, even more authentic. The next important mistake that I have seen students committing in their PhD is excessive quotations. I have seen a lot of PhD thesis where the entire thesis chapters are filled with quotations one after the other. The student has just quoted from different sources. If you look at such a PhD, you will find out that it is not an original work. You have just quoted from different sources and it's an amalgamation of different PhD researchers. You have nothing original in there. So it is important that you keep quotes to bare minimum. Quotes are only for authentication. If you're using an idea from a source, you need to quote it but then it should always be followed by your own interpretation. It's a rule in PhD that from one particular source, you cannot quote more than 800 words. If you're reading an entire book on feminism, which is somewhere around 300 pages long, from that entire book, you're not allowed to quote more than 800 words in your PhD thesis. So make sure that your thesis is an original work. It has quotes for authentication but then every quote is followed by your own interpretation and quotes should not be so long that the researcher and as well as the other members who are associated in the jury later on finds out that there is nothing original in this work and they would reject it because it doesn't fulfill the purpose of research. A lot of time I've seen students unaware of the fact that how they need to do PhD or how they need to write a research paper. Now, if I simplify the process, it can be divided in two parts. The first part is reading a lot of study material on the topic you're doing your research. So you need to read a lot of primary sources as well as secondary sources material. Suppose you're doing research on Mahesh Datani and Girish Karnar. So definitely you need to first read the place that you have selected for the research. After that, you need to also read a lot of critical works on these two writers or on the theories which you are using in order to interpret these two writers. So the first part in any research would include reading a lot of material and while you're reading you need to organize all the material so that in the second part you can use the material which you have read. So the first part would include reading and understanding and interpreting things. The second part would include writing down your findings, your conclusion. So after you've read the place of Mahesh Datani, Girish Karnar, you've read a lot of critical works on them, newspaper articles, maybe you've referred to a few TV shows or you've referred to a few research papers which were earlier written on these two writers, you then sit down to write your research paper based on your finding and when you write your research paper, the first draft should include everything that comes in your mind. Whatever you've studied, you can keep on writing everything that you have in your mind. That becomes the first draft. Now after you've written the first draft, you need to revise that first draft. Once you read the first draft again, you will find that you've included a lot of repetition, you have included a lot of duplication. So just remove the repetition and duplication, trim the sentences, make it simpler. One very important thing to note here is that academic writing or research writing needs to be as simple as it can be, as precise as it can be. Rather than using a word visualize, it's always better to use the word view and rather than using the word view, it's always better to use the word see in your research. All the three words more or less mean same but rather than using complicated words like visualize, always use similar simple words, monosyllabic words like see and that is what will make your research specific and authentic. So make sure that you know the research process. First is reading, organizing the source material and then is writing down your interpretation, revising it again and again till the time it becomes simpler, authentic and precise. And finally the last important thing to note is to follow a format. There are two major formats which are followed in research in India. One is MLA, Modern Language Association and the other one is APA, American Psychological Association. Now these two formats can be used in order to quote in your entire research. There's a particular format of quoting things. If you're quoting a newspaper article it needs to be quoted in a particular manner. If you're quoting a book then it needs to be in a particular format. If you're quoting a TV show then it needs to be a particular format. A YouTube video needs to be presented in a format. So throughout the research make sure that you use any one of these formats. Either you stick to MLA and everywhere you go by what MLA eighth edition says or you go by APA format. Okay that's up to you but make sure that you don't mix these two things. At places you are following APA, at places you are following MLA that is not going to make your research authentic. Either stick to MLA or to APA. So in this video I highlighted five important rules that you must have in mind if you are doing research in field of English literature. The rules that I have given here is valid for MA dissertation, PhD, MFIL or in case of any research paper that you're writing. I hope that this video was able to clear some of your doubts related to how to go about with the research. I have already given you the link of a playlist where a lot of other videos on PhD is given. You can also visit my website arpithakarva.com and check out for the list of writers which are very important from net point of view. If you are struggling with UGC net English literature preparation then you can also join the online course that is that we are running on our website. Apart from that you can also follow us on different social media platforms so that you can participate in the free go net quiz and also get updated about the recent notifications of UGC and NTA. If you have not yet subscribed to YouTube channel I think it's time to do so because I would be uploading a lot of other important videos related to UGC net are related to paper one, paper two, research. So if you are really enthusiastic about studying and teaching people then this is the channel for you. You can also put your doubt or your questions in the comment section below and I would never mind if you would like and share the video with your friends. So that's it for this video lecture. We'll meet soon in the next video lecture till the time we meet next. Happy learning. Keep loving literature. Stay tuned to arpatakarwa.com