Writing a Research Paper for Mechanical Engineering Conference: 10 Point Checklist

Writing a research paper for a Mechanical Engineering Conference does not come easy, it is indeed a head scratching task. With all the researches, empirical studies, experimental analysis and a vast variety of research fields to choose from, one does feel a bit caught up in drafting the perfect research paper as a Mechanical Engineer. Following is a 10 point checklist that one must follow to make this process, smooth sailing:

1. Choose your topic wisely: The first step towards creating a research paper is to pick a topic that interests you the most. The reason is that this topic is what you will be spending your days and nights thinking about. Not only should your topic interest you, but it should also be something you are good at and about which you possess in depth knowledge.  Your topic should be original, fresh, interesting and value adding. It is likely that a list of suggested topics has already been provided, but generally it isn’t exhaustive. You can twist and turn the suggested topics or write on something completely new, according to what the guidelines state.
   
   
2. Review existing literature: You need to know what kind of research has been done previously on the said topic and other related topics. The best way to do the same is to review maximum literature to your fullest capacity. Visit your library, visit online databases of research journals go to websites like Google scholar and select the papers that are most closely related to your research. Once you have these papers in place, you can check their citations and review more literature. A study of existing literature will always provide your research work with perspective.
   
   
3. Do not ignore language:  Engineering research does not provide much room for creativity and language command, but it still is one of the most important aspects when it comes to research writing. Make use of good language skills; make your work grammatically correct, free from errors and high quality. It is by reading this work that people will assess your intellect level.
   
   
4. Make it multi-disciplinary: Civil engineering is a wing of a bigger branch of study, i.e. Engineering. However, to make your research paper more sought for and more successful, try and make it multi-disciplinary. You could link your work to other fields of engineering such as Industrial engineering, Electronic engineering and Robotics engineering. This way other researchers from those fields would be able to refer to your work. You could also use different branches of Civil Engineering in one paper and intertwine them.
   
   Such as: ‘Nanorobotics control design: a collective behavior approach forn medicine’
   This research paper title links Nanotechnology and Robotics which are two extremely new fields of engineering research with one another.
   
5. Link your topic to one that is of an ongoing concern: Reflect on what are the latest revelations and discoveries in your field of research. Find out all the latest innovations have been made in the same regard. Linking your research work to a field of ongoing interest will make it look fresh and very original. It is needless to say how interesting it will appear to evaluators.
   
   For instance: Research scholars at Stanford University developed ‘Marty’, a fully automated sports car to study how cars behave in extreme conditions.
   
   A research performed on a topic like this would not only interest your reviewers and readers but also bring to notice something that otherwise people did not know. 
   
   
6. Pick an area of interest: Civil engineering can have various areas of interests. Such as:
   
   •    Shape Analysis: The study of how the design and shape of machines impact their functionality and performance.
   •    Automation: This branch deals with the automation of otherwise manually operated machinery.  It studies how various instruments can be motorized to minimize human effort.
   •    Multi scale design: In simple words this study is about the magnifying and contracting the scale of various machines. An example is the development of a microsim from the regular sim card that was traditionally used.
   •    Biomechanics: In other words, this is the study of the machines inside a living being. 
   There are many more areas of interest one can pick from, such as Kinematic Analysis and Computer Aided Design and Graphics.
   
   
7. Pick the appropriate Research Methodology: When it comes to fields of engineering, the most commonly used research methodology is one of Empirical Research. Empirical research is one that is done with the help of experimenting. If your research is not dealing with any kind of experimentation but simply an analysis of an already existing study, then you need to undertake Analytical research methodology. At this time you decide the main structure of your research work.
   
   
8. Be clear about what your conclusions and findings should ideally be: There can be times when your research, experiments and so on contradict with what you had earlier thought would be the conclusion of your study. Before changing your perspective about the same, you need to go back and check of you implemented your research with sincerity and if there are no loopholes that need to be addressed.
   
   
9. Do not ignore the presentation: Most conferences these days, require all research paper contributors to present their paper in the form of a presentation in front of a group of academicians, other contributors and even established names in the industry. Here, you have to provide a very short and precise preview about what your paper will deal with. It is important that you highlight the most important and most impressive features about your paper in this presentation so that each one of those people goes back to the conference proceedings and reads your work. If your presentation is not engaging, then there is a high chance people wouldn’t acknowledge your paper no matter how substantial it is.
   
   
10. Revise: Finally, the last step which in some cases is the most important one is to revise it, proofread it and make it a flawless piece of academic art. You must make it so engaging and self-explanatory that people sharing same interests would want to read it over and over again.