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First let’s start with a question: what is “research gap”? Research gap is a research question or problem which has not been answered appropriately or at all in a given field of study. Research gap is actually what makes your research publishable, why? Because it shows you are not just duplicating existing research; it shows you have a deep understanding of the status of the body of knowledge in your chosen field; and finally it shows that you have conducted a research which fulfills that gap in the literature.
Researchers, particularly those pursuing Master’s or PhD often find it difficult to identify the gaps in the body of knowledge in their own chosen fields. Identifying gaps and generating research questions can be regarded as the first and most important step in writing a research paper. Of course there are many approaches for overcoming this difficulty, but finding original and innovative topics, and distinguishing gaps in the literature is never an easy feat. There are different approaches to employ and not all researchers, especially younger ones, are aware of them. Here, we will try to briefly discuss them.
For starters, considering the gap finding issue, three classes of researchers can be distinguished:
So far we have discussed three classes of researchers each of whom chooses a topic in a different way. But what if you are not knowledgeable in your field? What if you do not want to choose a topic based on your professor’s interest? What if environmental factors are not of importance for you? Well, there are other approaches you can use in order to find a gap, topic or a popular trend in your chosen field of study; some are simple and some other sophisticated:
Now the above mentioned were some general and rather simple approaches to finding gaps, research questions and topics. There are also tools and more sophisticated approaches which can save you research time and give you better overview of the current trends and areas of interests in your field of study:
There are other websites and tools such as Social Mention, Springer, Google Ads, and BroadReader which provide more sophisticated information regarding the queries such as their popularity, various bars and charts which demonstrate the trends in different time spans, the most recent articles that have been downloaded and their related tags ad etc. You can find a more detailed discussion of these tools in the following mind map:
http://tcfex.com/research-tools-box-ale-ebrahim/
As you work with these tools and manipulate them you begin to understand how they work and which one is best for your field of study. But keep one thing in mind, try to use only one of them and master utilizing it. These tools can save you an enormous amount of research time and effort and open new doors in your life. Do not underestimate their value and start using them.
And, one more thing for professional researchers:
Well, here is a food for thought: what we discussed above was the conventional approaches to gap spotting and generating topics and research questions. However, there always other and new ways of approaching research questions. For instance, Alvesson and Sandberg state that although gap spotting is the prevalent way of constructing research questions, these “established ways of generating research questions rarely express more ambitious and systematic attempts to challenge the assumptions underlying existing theories” (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011). Thus, they propose an alternative method:
Our aim in this study is to integrate the positive and the negative research agenda by developing and proposing problematization as a methodology for identifying and challenging assumptions that underlie existing theories and, based on that, generating research questions that lead to the development of more interesting and influential theories within management studies (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011).
They have developed a typology of the type of assumptions that can be problematized in the existing theories and proposed a set of methodological principles to approach the problematization concept. Although appealing, the problematization method can be a bit risky, since it may involve challenging existing paradigms and their underpinning ontological and epistemological assumptions. In fact, Alvesson and Sandberg too mention that “challenging assumptions is often risky, since it means questioning existing power relations in a scientific field, which may result in upsetting colleagues, reviewers, and editors and, thus, may reduce the chances of having an article published” (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011).
So if you dare, there can always be new ways of approaching research questions, although the method proposed by Alvesson and Sandberg may not, for obvious reasons(!), be suitable for young researchers at all and as all university professors tell their students, “don’t try to take on too ambitious projects at first”.
References
Alvesson, M., & Sandberg, J. (2011). GENERATING RESEARCH QUESTIONS THROUGH PROBLEMATIZATION. Academy of Management Review. doi:10.5465/AMR.2011.59330882
Well we need to focus in various dynamics that may affect any situation and condition formula can show us the way to find any research gap, also we can have conference and discussion confronting any odd clearing misunderstood word and god mannerism.