Finding a topic

If you are still at the very beginning of finding a topic for your academic paper, think about which subjects from your studies you would like to explore further, which professional direction you want to take, or which issues you care about. You can also use techniques such as Freewriting or Clustering. As soon as topics emerge that genuinely interest you, you should proceed more systematically to be able to decide on one of them.

To do so, you can use the following questions. Try to answer the questions in the table below for each topic that interests you. At this stage of your academic work, it is normal that you cannot answer all questions yet.

You will quickly notice:

• What genuinely interests you
• What is feasible
• What you need to narrow down further
• Where you still need to research

Even if you have already made your choice, you should still use these questions.

Your answers will form an exposé – essentially the travel route for your paper. You can change the route along the way, but those who set off without any plan rarely arrive on time or at the right destination.

Registering your paper

When registering your paper, you must also provide the title. The title of your paper appears on your degree certificate and will therefore accompany you for the rest of your life. It should be easy to understand and not too awkward or too long.

Avoid company or product names as well as abbreviations, that are not widely known, in the title.

After registration, only editorial changes are still possible. The changes must not be so substantial that they appear to be a change of topic. Further changes are only approved by examination boards in exceptional cases.

Narrowing down your topic

To phrase your topic precisely and to work on it thoroughly, you should narrow it down.

Elevator pitch: Imagine you meet an important person in the elevator. You have three minutes to present your current project as convincingly as possible.

Formulating your topic

When narrowing down and formulating your topic, you should repeatedly ask yourself the following questions:

• What belongs to my topic, and what does not?
• Which considerations go too far when working on the topic?
• Which details can I leave out?

Frequently asked questions

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Why cite at all?

• To prove facts: You state where your information comes from, ideally tracing it back to the original source. This not only respects copyright but also gives your readers the opportunity to examine methods and details for themselves.

Example: 90 percent of Wikipedia authors are male (Bayer 2013).

• To build on existing knowledge: In academia, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You cite to refer to the ideas, theories, and findings of others – allowing you to continue the discourse rather than starting from scratch.

Example: The term “invention” is often equated with the concepts of “discovery” or “creation” (cf. Müller, 1998, p. 13).

• To keep it concise: If something is already written elsewhere, a reference is usually sufficient. In academic writing, it’s common to trust the audience to either accept the claim or check the source themselves.

Example: Outreach services are a traditional methodological approach in social work. For centuries, almoners would visit people experiencing hardship to assess their needs and provide aid. At the same time, they were tasked with monitoring how the poor lived and preventing abuse of the support system (cf. detailed discussion in Sachße/Tennstedt 1980).

Quotes often serve several purposes at once:

Example: With regard to the use of ocean thermal energy for power generation, research on structural pipes between 1970 and 2000 focused on using water as a heat carrier. Heat transfer and resistance coefficients were measured [6–17]. Companies provided additional measurements using water [18, 19]. A few studies also examined gases as heat carriers [11, 20].

What types of quotations are there?

There are two types of quotations: direct and indirect. In both cases, you must always add a reference to show where the quotation comes from.

With direct quotations, you reproduce the original wording exactly. This is marked with quotation marks and a reference.

Example: “One of the main pioneers of this model is Goffman with his concept of stigma or stigmatization” (Metzler, 2011, p. 101).

Use direct quotations sparingly. In the humanities and social sciences, you should cite directly when the wording is particularly striking or original. In the natural and engineering sciences, direct quotations are rarely used.

With indirect quotes, you take ideas, results, etc. from another text but rephrase them in your own words. These also need a reference.

Example: According to Metzler, Goffman – who developed the concept of stigma or stigmatization – is one of the key early figures of symbolic interactionism (2011, p. 101).

How do I cite?

There are many ways to cite in academic writing: footnotes, in-text references with author names and year of publication, numbers, or combinations of numbers and letters in square brackets.

There’s no single “correct” citation style. What matters is that you stay consistent throughout your entire text and don’t mix styles!

How do I know which citation style to use?

• Ask your lecturers – they often have a preferred style you should follow.
• Learn about the conventions in your discipline. See our articles: Citing in the Social Sciences, Citing in Business Studies, Citing in Engineering and Natural Sciences.
• If your lecturers don’t specify a style, you can choose one yourself. It’s best to go with a well-documented style (DIN, Harvard, APA, IEEE etc.).

What is a bibliography?

The bibliography includes all the sources you cited in your text – and only those. As it should allow readers to trace each source, the entries must be detailed enough to locate the exact work if needed.

The bibliography must be complete and consistent.

The format of the bibliography depends on the citation style used. Sources are usually listed alphabetically.

What do I have to cite?

In academic writing, you must mark every idea that is not your own. The only exception is general knowledge within your discipline.

That sounds easier than it is. Especially at the beginning of your studies, it can be difficult to recognize what counts as general knowledge. The good news: it gets easier over time. Until then, these rules of thumb may help:

You don’t necessarily need to cite:

• Things your readers are expected to know.
• What common sense would suggest.
• Content found in general reference works.

You must always cite:

• If an idea or result can be traced back to a specific author or study.
• If the statement is controversial or debatable.
• Any wording you copy exactly.
• If you include data from other research.

Frequently asked questions

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To access the OPAC, you must be connected to the university network or – if accessing from outside – establish a VPN connection.

Frequently asked questions

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In order to access the OPAC, you need to be within the university network or establish a VPN connection from outside.

Literature recommendations

Questions

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Zotero offers numerous advantages for managing literature and knowledge:

A detailed guide to managing literature with Zotero can be found in the training materials from the library.

For Ohm staff, the texts are available in full text via VPN.

To access the OPAC, you need to be on the university network or – if you are off-campus – establish a VPN connection.

Frequently Asked Questions

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What does research actually mean in this context?

In this context, research aims to gather existing knowledge on a specific topic and integrate it into your own research process. A thorough search allows you to close your own knowledge gaps, identify research gaps, and place your work within the context of existing studies.

To navigate the landscape of information with confidence, it is important to identify and define your own information needs. These are shaped by the aspects of the question you aim to answer.

The definition of your research question in the context of searching literature involves:

• a structured collection of search terms
• and their meaningful combination into search queries.

Next, the goal is to find and gain access to the required information in the form of scientific literature.

A central starting point for this is the library: It provides access to over 200,000 printed books, more than 400,000 e-media resources, and several million academic articles.

What is the OPAC?

The first point of contact in any research process is the library catalogue (OPAC). It contains the library’s entire collection at the title level. This means it provides information about which books, e-books, journals, and newspapers are available through the library.

The OPAC is therefore suitable for searching for foundational literature and for checking whether a specific journal or issue is available.

Why use academic databases?

In the next step, academic databases come into play. They enable targeted searches for individual articles from scientific journals.

An overview of the most relevant databases for each faculty is available on the library website.

The databases differ in topic – ranging from highly specialised subject databases to interdisciplinary databases covering a wide range of topics.

In addition, they differ in terms of availability of the literature they index: Full-text databases provide the entire text for each entry, whereas bibliographic databases only refer to the existence of the article.

Thanks to the internet, it is usually possible to check availability with just a few clicks and, if necessary, place an interlibrary loan request.

You can find a detailed script about searching for literature for your specific degree program in the library’s training materials.

Frequently asked questions

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Citation suggestions for figures

For each variant, it is important that you cite the image source consistently, transparently and as precisely as possible. In some academic disciplines and cultures, it is not customary to mark your own illustrations, but only altered and fully reproduced ones.

For deeper insight and subject-specific use of figures and tables (available via VPN connection):

• Ebster, Claus; Stalzer, Lieselotte (2017): Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftler. Stuttgart, Vienna: UTB GmbH; Facultas (UTB, 2471). See Chapter 7.
• Hirsch-Weber, Andreas et al. (2016): Wissenschaftliches Schreiben und Abschlussarbeit in Natur- und Ingenieurwissenschaften. Stuttgart: Verlag Eugen Ulmer. See Chapter 5.

Use as image quote

If you use the figure as evidence, explain it and integrate it into your work, then you do not need to ask for permission.

In the following box the decisive sentence is quoted, taken from the article: Copyright and academic research: what are the key issues that affect you as an author?

“[…] quotations are only permissible if they are intended to support an argument. Use of quotations without any commentary, e.g. for illustrative or decorative purposes, is not permitted under the right of quotation and therefore may only be carried out with the consent of the author or copyright owner and payment of remuneration.”

– Source: publisso.de

The function of figures

In academic work, unnecessary illustrations and graphic decoration are out of place.

Use figures – your own and others with source reference – as substantive additions, and refer to your figure in the running text.

The use of figures is also formulated in the so-called Copyright Act. You can find more information in the Act on Copyright and Related Rights (Copyright Act) § 51 Quotations.

Create or reconstruct figures yourself

Lucidchart and Visio are examples of tools you can use to create figures yourself. We compared both and created an evaluation table so that you can choose the right tool for you.

These two articles form the basis of our preliminary evaluation:

Comparison 1: Visio vs Lucidchart Flowchart

Comparison 2: Lucidchart vs Visio: Key Differences

Frequently asked questions

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What is the SMART method?

The SMART method includes five components that you must consider when formulating goals. The word SMART in this case does not only mean clever, but stands for specific, measurable, attractive, realistic, and time-bound. These are the criteria with which you can define your goals so that you can actually achieve them.

How does the SMART method work?

Formulate your goals using the SMART criteria:

• Specific (meaning concrete): Make sure the wording is clear and unambiguous. Also formulate your goal in such a way that it depends only on you to achieve it.
• Measurable: Quantify your goal, e.g. in pages or hours. Ask yourself: “How will I know that I have achieved my goal?”
• Attractive: Your goal should be so attractive and meaningful to you that it is truly worth investing time and energy in it.
• Realistic: Formulate your goal so that it is a challenge for you but still remains achievable.
• Time-bound: When formulating your goal, make sure to set a clear deadline by which the goal should be achieved. Sometimes it also makes sense to define when you will start working towards the goal.

Formulation examples

Frequently asked questions

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Areas of application

In the natural and engineering sciences, one distinguishes between:

• more theoretical theses (simulation, calculation)
• practical theses (experiment, field trial, experimental setup; see Hirsch-Weber et al. 2016, p. 81)

In the social and economic sciences, theses are often empirical, i.e., data are collected, e.g., through a questionnaire or interviews.

Literature: Hirsch-Weber, Andreas et al. (2016): Wissenschaftliches Schreiben und Abschlussarbeit in Natur- und Ingenieurwissenschaften Stuttgart: Verlag Eugen Ulmer. Full text via VPN.

Across disciplinary boundaries, the research method should be comprehensible for the target group and justified in a plausible way. Usually, the method is explained and justified briefly in the introduction or in detail in a separate chapter.

Material list for empirical work

Frequently asked questions

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Using scientific articles

Scientific articles are published in academic journals. Therefore, they have a minimum level of verified quality, e.g. through double peer-review procedures. So-called review articles offer a good introduction and overview of a thesis topic, and original articles present specific research findings on a topic. Scientific articles are particularly suitable for finding and deepening a thesis topic and can among others be researched via the Electronic Journals Database (DBIS). It is worthwhile to ask your supervisors which journals are relevant. Problems in research can be clarified via the thesis consultation of the library.

Structure of the articles

Despite certain conventions in the individual scientific disciplines and detailed requirements from publishers and editors, a basic structure for scientific articles has developed. It includes the following parts:

1. Title
2. Authors, address(es)
3. Paper abstract
4. Keywords
5. Introduction
6. State of research (literature review)
7. Methodological approach (field research)
8. Results and discussion
9. Conclusions/research perspective
10. Acknowledgments
11. References

Examples of academic journals can be found in the Padlet.

Frequently asked questions

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