ABSTRACT
A useful definition of academic research is that it is work that advances knowledge in the discipline. It is not to be confused with the everyday usage of gathering knowledge for yourself, as when a journalist researches a piece she is writing for a newspaper, or when a prospective house-buyer researches the market, or when a producer of a TV documentary researches a scientific topic. In the everyday cases, the knowledge is normally already available (to someone) and the individual is gathering it for their own use. In academic research, the knowledge gained must be original to the subject. One consequence, discussed in Chapter 1, is that your scholarship must be strong enough to demonstrate the originality of the work in the context of the published literature. However, this definition also implies that your work, in turn, must be published, so that it adds to the body of knowledge available to all scholars of your subject.
