Researcher Journey Map

The following is designed to guide you through the research process. You’ll find information and links to helpful resources at every step. If you have any questions not answered here, please contact your subject librarian.

There are federal, state, and private organizations that offer grant funding to researchers. For help identifying possible sources of funding, contact the Office of Sponsored Programs or your subject librarian.   

An important step before beginning your research is a survey of existing published literature on your topic. This step brings you up to speed on existing topic knowledge and ensures your research is adding new knowledge to the topic area and not simply restating existing research.   

Your subject librarian can assist you with a literature review.   

Your planned research project may include collecting original data, or you may be interested in an evidence synthesis project. Examples of evidence synthesis include systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis, scoping reviews, and other methods for analyzing data from the published literature as a whole. Librarians are essential to evidence synthesis research, which requires a highly structured and reproducible search strategy. This research guide describes the evidence synthesis service model available from CMU Libraries.  

If you will be gathering original data, be sure to contact the CMU Institutional Review Board (IRB) for guidance on human subject research (more below) and the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) for guidance on vertebrate animal research.  

Research involving human subject must receive approval to proceed from the Institutional Review Board (IRB). This process ensures the safety of research project participants and compliance with accepted research practices. The Office of Research Compliance can provide guidance on the IRB process.  

Your research will generate data needing to be stored and accessed throughout the project, and perhaps beyond. Several factors to be considered regarding your data:  

  • Where will it be stored? On an internal (CMU) or an external server, for example. Someplace else?  

  • Are there actions you must take to ensure the privacy and/or security of your data?  

  • Who will have access to your data in addition to yourself, and for how long?  

  • How long will your data be retained? Will it be kept beyond the life of the project?  

Questions about storing and maintaining your data on a CMU server can be answered by the Office of Information Technology. They can meet with you to discuss your project and its data needs. Your subject librarian can suggest external sites such as disciplinary repositories. They can also help with organization and making it accessible through the application of metadata.  

This research guide provides a list of recognized repositories suitable for the storage and maintenance of various types of data.  

A data management plan (DMP) is a formal document outlining how the data created by your research will be identified, stored, and preserved during the life of your project. It is an important organizational tool, and a DMP may be a required component of a federal grant award.  

The library has created a helpful research guide about the data management plan. For additional guidance, contact your subject librarian.  

Depending on your research topic, locating existing data in support of your research may be required. The library has created a research guide linking to several important data repositories. If you need help finding additional data, please contact your subject librarian. 

The CMU Statistical Consulting Center will help you analyze, interpret, and communicate your data findings effectively. They are experts in a variety of data analysis tools. 

Once you’ve finished your article, you’ll need to identify possible journals in which you might publish your work. While you may have identified some journals already, your subject librarian can provide more information about other possible titles, including considerations such as impact factor, traditional paywall publishing versus open access with article processing charges (APCs), and predatory practices from publishers.

Your subject librarian can help you track the impact of your article upon publication. They will help you discover how many times your work has been shared, downloaded, and cited by other researchers. This research guide provides a good overview of the impact factor.