ABSTRACT
Research is central to the building and accumulation of knowledge. There are various ways to accumulate knowledge, including not only research but reliance on expertise, tenacity, and intuition, and this chapter explains the superiority of research for answering important questions. The material differentiates key goals of research, including application, exploration, description, and explanation. The discussion of the value of research includes a careful acknowledgment of the critical role played by triangulation and replication and the biases that might limit the publication of such material and distort meta-analyses. The implications of predatory publishing and retractions are also included in this unit, providing further context to biases and limitations to knowledge building. An additional section provides a thorough description of the parts of a research article, offering criteria for identifying scholarly research and tips for effectively reading it, along with a definition of types of articles other than traditional research publications.
