what is a novel study in research

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Novelty in Research: What It Is and How to Know Your Work is Original

One of the key prerequisites for researcher success, irrespective of their field of study, is identifying the novelty in research. They hope to make new discoveries that build on the work of others and produce fresh perspectives on existing knowledge in their field. To achieve this, researchers invest considerable time and effort in reading relevant literature, conducting experiments, and staying up to date on the latest developments in their own and related fields. Most journals seek to publish research that is novel, significant, and interesting to its readers. Establishing novelty in research is also critical when applying for funding, which makes it essential to prove this early in the research process. But what is meant by novelty in research and how can one judge the novelty of their research study? This article will help you answer these questions in the simplest manner.

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What is meant by novelty in research?

The word ‘novelty’ comes from the Latin word ‘novus,’ which simply means new. Apart from new, the term is also associated with things, ideas or products for instance, that are original or unusual. Novelty in research refers to the introduction of a new idea or a unique perspective that adds to the existing knowledge in a particular field of study. It involves bringing something fresh and original to the table that has not been done before or exploring an existing topic in a new and innovative way. Novelty in research expands the boundaries of a particular research discipline and provides new insights into previously unexplored areas. It is also one of the first things academic journals look for when evaluating a manuscript submitted for publishing. This makes it essential for researchers to ensure novelty in research in order to create new knowledge and make a significant contribution to their field of study.

How can you ensure novelty in research?

Academics are often immersed in their research and so focused on excellence that it can be difficult to examine your work as an author and judge its novelty in research objectively. But this challenge can be overcome with time and practice by adding research reading to your daily schedule. Assessing novelty in research means evaluating how new and original the ideas or findings presented in a study are, in comparison to existing knowledge in the field. Here are some ways to judge the novelty of research:

• Conduct a literature review: A literature review is an essential component of any research project, and it helps to establish the context for the study by identifying what is already known about the topic. By reviewing the existing literature, researchers can identify gaps in the knowledge and formulate new questions or hypotheses to investigate, ensuring novelty in research.
• Compare with previous studies: Researchers can assess the novelty of their work by comparing their findings to those of previous studies in the same or related fields. If the results differ significantly from what has been previously reported, it can be an indication that the study is novel and potentially significant.
• Read target journal publications: Subscribe to your target journal and other reputed journals in your field of study and keep up with the articles it publishes. Since most high-impact journals typically ensure novelty in research when publishing papers, this will help you keep track of the developments and progress being made in your subject area.
• Assess contribution to the field: One way to assess novelty in research is to evaluate how much it contributes to your specific field. Research that makes a significant contribution to advancing knowledge or addressing important questions is often considered more valuable than those that simply replicate elements from previously published research.
• Consider an alternative methodology: Even if the topic or area of study has been studied, one can bring in novelty in research by exploring various methodologies or by tweaking the research question to provide new insights and perspectives. Researchers can highlight aspects of the study that have not been done before, introduce these in the proposed research design, and illuminate how this will ensure novelty in research.
• Get support from your peers: Engage with your mentors/supervisors, professors, peers, and other experts in the field to get their feedback on introducing novelties in their research. It’s a good idea to join and actively participate in scientific research and scholarly groups or networks where users provide updates on new technological innovations and development.
• Make research reading a habit: An overwhelming number of research papers are published every day, making it difficult for researchers to keep up with new, relevant developments in the world of research. This is where online tools for researchers can help you simplify this process while saving on time and effort. Smart AI-driven apps like R Discovery can understand your areas of interest and curate a reading feed with personalized article recommendation, alerts on newly published articles, summaries to help you quickly evaluate articles, and many other useful features for researchers. By taking the search out of research, it gives you back time that you can then spend to stay updated and ensure novelty in research.

In an ideal world, all research done would be completely original. Yet with rapid advances in technology and research, there are bound to be overlaps with previously published papers. The key here is to find a new way of looking at old problems, trying new methodologies and angles, and coming up with interesting insights that can add to or alter current knowledge in your field of research. Smart online tools have made it easier to read and keep up with the latest in research and we’re sure the tips above will help you better assess your project and judge the novelty of your research study.

R Discovery is a literature search and research reading platform that accelerates your research discovery journey by keeping you updated on the latest, most relevant scholarly content. With 250M+ research articles sourced from trusted aggregators like CrossRef, Unpaywall, PubMed, PubMed Central, Open Alex and top publishing houses like Springer Nature, JAMA, IOP, Taylor & Francis, NEJM, BMJ, Karger, SAGE, Emerald Publishing and more, R Discovery puts a world of research at your fingertips.  

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Home » Research Contribution – Thesis Guide

Research Contribution – Thesis Guide

Table of Contents

Research Contribution

Definition:

Research contribution refers to a novel and significant addition to a particular field of study that advances the existing knowledge, theories, or practices. It could involve new discoveries, original ideas, innovative methods, or insightful interpretations that contribute to the understanding, development, or improvement of a specific research area.

Research Contribution in Thesis

In a thesis , the research contribution is the original and novel aspect of the research that adds new knowledge to the field. It can be a new theory , a new methodology , a new empirical finding, or a new application of existing knowledge.

To identify the research contribution of your thesis, you need to consider the following:

• What problem are you addressing in your research? What is the research gap that you are filling?
• What is your research question or hypothesis, and how does it relate to the problem you are addressing?
• What methodology have you used to investigate your research question or hypothesis, and why is it appropriate?
• What are the main findings of your research, and how do they contribute to the field?
• What are the implications of your research findings for theory, practice, or policy?

Once you have identified your research contribution, you should clearly articulate it in your thesis abstract, introduction, and conclusion. You should also explain how your research contribution relates to the existing literature and how it advances the field. Finally, you should discuss the limitations of your research and suggest future directions for research that build on your contribution.

How to Write Research Contribution

Here are some steps you can follow to write a strong research contribution:

• Define the research problem and research question : Clearly state the problem or gap in the literature that your research aims to address. Formulate a research question that your study will answer.
• Conduct a thorough literature review: Review the existing literature related to your research question. Identify the gaps in knowledge that your research fills.
• Describe the research design and methodology : Explain the research design, methods, and procedures you used to collect and analyze data. This includes any statistical analysis or data visualization techniques.
• Present the findings: Clearly present your findings, including any statistical analyses or data visualizations that support your conclusions. This should be done in a clear and concise manner, and the conclusions should be based on the evidence you’ve presented.
• Discuss the implications of the findings: Describe the significance of your findings and the implications they have for the field of study. This may include recommendations for future research or practical applications of your findings.
• Conclusion : Summarize the main points of your research contribution and restate its significance.

When to Write Research Contribution in Thesis

A research contribution should be included in the thesis when the research work adds a novel and significant value to the existing body of knowledge. The research contribution section of a thesis is the opportunity for the researcher to articulate the unique contributions their work has made to the field.

Typically, the research contribution section appears towards the end of the thesis, after the literature review, methodology, results, and analysis sections. In this section, the researcher should summarize the key findings and their implications for the field, highlighting the novel aspects of the work.

Example of Research Contribution in Thesis

An example of a research contribution in a thesis can be:

“The study found that there was a significant relationship between social media usage and academic performance among college students. The findings also revealed that students who spent more time on social media had lower GPAs than those who spent less time on social media. These findings are original and contribute to the literature on the impact of social media on academic performance, providing insights that can inform policies and practices for improving students’ academic success.”

Another example of a research contribution in a thesis:

“The research identified a novel method for improving the efficiency of solar panels by incorporating nanostructured materials. The results showed that the use of these materials increased the conversion efficiency of solar panels by up to 30%, which is a significant improvement over traditional methods. This contribution advances the field of renewable energy by providing a new approach to enhancing the performance of solar panels, with potential applications in both residential and commercial settings.”

Purpose of Research Contribution

Purpose of Research Contribution are as follows:

Here are some examples of research contributions that can be included in a thesis:

• Development of a new theoretical framework or model
• Creation of a novel methodology or research approach
• Discovery of new empirical evidence or data
• Application of existing theories or methods in a new context
• Identification of gaps in the existing literature and proposing solutions
• Providing a comprehensive review and analysis of existing literature in a particular field
• Critically evaluating existing theories or models and proposing improvements or alternatives
• Making a significant contribution to policy or practice in a particular field.

Advantages of Research Contribution

Including research contributions in your thesis can offer several advantages, including:

• Establishing originality: Research contributions help demonstrate that your work is original and unique, and not simply a rehashing of existing research. It shows that you have made a new and valuable contribution to the field.
• Adding value to the field : By highlighting your research contributions, you are demonstrating the value that your work adds to the field. This can help other researchers build on your work and advance the field further.
• Differentiating yourself: In academic and professional contexts, it’s important to differentiate yourself from others. Including research contributions in your thesis can help you stand out from other researchers in your field, potentially leading to opportunities for collaboration, networking, or future job prospects.
• Providing clarity : By articulating your research contributions, you are providing clarity to your readers about what you have achieved. This can help ensure that your work is properly understood and appreciated by others.
• Enhancing credibility : Including research contributions in your thesis can enhance your credibility as a researcher, demonstrating that you have the skills and knowledge necessary to make valuable contributions to your field. This can help you build a strong reputation in the academic community.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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A Complete Guide to Writing a Novel Study for Students and Teachers

Introduction

Writing a novel study is a significant part of a student’s academic journey, and it tests their comprehension, analytical skills, and ability to communicate. Teachers also come across challenges when planning and reviewing the novel studies to ensure the students get the most out of their learning experience. This guide aims to provide both students and teachers with useful tips and insights into writing an effective novel study.

I. For Students – How to Write a Novel Study

1. Choose your book thoughtfully: Select a book that you’re genuinely interested in or curious about. It helps if the author has created multifaceted characters, compelling plotlines, and engaging themes.

2. Read thoroughly: Prioritize understanding the plot, setting, characters, themes, style, and symbolic motifs of the book.

3. Take notes while reading: Jot down quotes or scenes that capture your attention and might be useful to reference when discussing themes or character development.

4. Analyze the story: As you read, think critically about how elements of the story work together to produce meaning. Analyze the characters, relationships between them, key events in the plot, and various symbols used by the author.

5. Develop an argument or central theme: Craft a thesis statement or central idea that aligns with your observations of the novel. This will act as a foundation for your essay.

6. Create an outline: Map out your essay’s structure by organizing related ideas into a clear hierarchy of main points and supporting examples.

7. Draft your work: Write your essay based on your outline.

8. Revise and edit: Proofread your paper after taking a break from it to look for mistakes in content or style. Consider asking someone else to review it as well for additional feedback.

II. For Teachers – Guiding Your Students in Writing Novel Studies

1. Help students choose their books: Encourage students to go beyond their comfort zones and read books that challenge them. Provide several suggestions covering a wide range of styles, themes, and genres.

2. Establish clear objectives: Determine your expectations for the novel study. Specify requirements about the format, length, and whether the essay should focus on a specific aspect like theme, characters, or plot.

3. Encourage active reading: Teach students the importance of annotating texts, noticing patterns, and asking questions about the story.

4. Facilitate discussions: Debate ideas as a class or in small groups to help students refine their arguments and reinforce their understanding of critical literary concepts.

5. Provide templates or guidelines: Offer examples of novel studies or essay outlines to help students understand how to effectively structure their work.

6. Offer writing workshops: Guide your students in refining research techniques, brainstorming ideas, developing thesis statements, and improving writing skills through regular workshops.

7. Give constructive feedback: Review drafts and provide detailed feedback on content, organization, grammar, clarity, and style.

8.Encourage peer review: Develop a learning environment in which your students can help each other by providing feedback on their novel studies before submission.

A successful novel study requires diligent reading combined with thoughtful critical analysis. By following these practical tips and guidelines for both students and teachers, mastering the art of writing insightful novel studies can become a reality for every student pursuing literary excellence.

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How to Write a Novel Study: A Complete Guide for Students & Teachers

What Is a Novel Study?

A novel study is essentially the process of reading and studying a novel closely. There are three formats the novel study can follow, namely:

• The whole-class format
• The small group format
• The individual format

Each of these formats comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. Which you will use in your classroom will depend on several variables, including the novel study’s purpose, class demographics, time constraints, etc. 

This article will look at activities you can use with your students in a novel study. Though the focus will primarily be on the whole-class format, the activities outlined below can easily be adapted for small-group and individual novel studies. 

But first, let’s take a look at some of the many considerable benefits of the novel study.

What Are the Benefits of a Novel Study?

The benefits of this type of learning are many and varied. Essentially, the novel itself serves as a jumping-off point for a diverse range of learning experiences that can benefit students’ learning in many ways. 

Here are just three of these benefits.

1. Encourages a Love of Reading

As teachers, we are well aware of how much literature can enrich our lives. However, for many of our students, reading is a chore in and of itself and is to be avoided whenever possible.

The novel study sets aside time in class to focus on reading in an engaging manner that not only encourages students to enjoy reading but helps them develop the tools and strategies required to get the most out of the books they read.

2. Builds a Wider Knowledge Base

Sharing books in this manner creates opportunities for students to become exposed to experiences far beyond those of their daily lives. Not only will they enter new and unfamiliar worlds through the portal of fiction, but they’ll also be exposed to the experiences and opinions of other students in the class. These experiences and opinions may differ markedly from their own.

It will also widen the student’s knowledge and understanding of text structure, vocabulary, punctuation, and grammar . Novel studies are an extremely effective way to practice comprehension skills and improve critical thinking.

3. Boosts Class Cohesion

Whole class novel studies help your students to flex their muscles of cooperation as they work their way through a text together. They also help students to understand each other, take on board the opinions of others, and learn to defend their own thoughts and opinions.

While reading is often viewed as a solitary activity, reading in this manner can become a social experience that helps students to bond as a class.

What Should I Do in a Novel Study?

There are many different ways to undertake a novel study in your classroom. 

For example, some teachers like to read the entire novel to their students first before going back through it as a class, focusing then on student interactions with the text.

Other teachers like to weave guided reading activities into their novel study sessions. However, this often works better with smaller groups where students can be grouped according to ability and assigned texts accordingly.

What shape a novel study takes in your classroom will depend on your student demographics and learning objectives. However, we can helpfully divide the various activities into pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading. You can select those that suit your situation best. 

Now, let’s look at some of these.

How to Start a Novel Study

Your novel study begins even before the first page is read. The activities below will help students tune in to the book they are about to read. 

This is a crucial stage of the novel study, especially if the book is of historical significance or deals with historical events and where some background knowledge may be essential for understanding the novel. 

Prereading Activities

• Examine the Covers

Before opening the book, have students examine the covers closely, both front and back. What can they tell about the book before opening it based on:

• The cover illustration?
• The author’s name?
• The blurb on the back?

It’s useful to do this as a whole-class discussion to allow for sharing ideas. Ask questions to encourage reflection and get students to make predictions about the novel based on their answers and observations. For example:

• What information does the cover provide?
• Does the cover illustration intrigue you? Why?
• Does this novel remind you of any other books you’ve read? Why?
• Do you recognize the author’s name? What else have they written?

It can be pretty surprising just how much information you can glean from a novel’s covers.

• Generate a List of Questions

Once students have had a good chance to examine the novel’s covers in small groups, get them to generate questions they have about the book and its contents.

These questions may be based on their expectations in the first activity, but they may also be general questions related to common elements in all novels. For example:

• Where is the story set?
• When is it set?
• Who is the main character/protagonist in the novel?
• Who is the antagonist?
• What is the nature of the central conflict?
• What happens in the climax? Resolution? Etc.

While most of these questions will not be answered entirely until the students have read the novel, asking these questions will get the students thinking about the novel’s structure from the outset. This will be extremely useful for later activities.

• Take a Peek Inside

Now, it’s time to open the book to look closer. Task students to go ‘finger-walking’ through the book and, without reading the novel, explore the book’s pages for more surface information. For example:

• When was the book published? Why is this significant?
• Are there any illustrations inside? What impression do they make?
• Does the book have chapters? What do the chapter titles tell us about the story?
• Open a random page and read it. What language register does the writer use? What point of view is employed?

Encouraging students to work in small groups can be helpful here. You can also ask prompting questions to help students maintain focus during this activity.

During Reading Activities

The whole-class format is perhaps the most widely used in the classroom context. In this format, each student will usually have a copy of the text and follow along while the teacher or another student reads. 

The reading will pause at intervals to allow the students to engage in discussion, ask questions, or complete various activities supporting learning goals related to the text they have been reading.

In general, novel study activities will focus on:

• Building vocabulary
• Improving comprehension
• Making text-to-text connections
• Making text-to-self connections
• Making text-to-world connections

In the following section, we’ll look at each of these in turn.

Reading is a fantastic way to build vocabulary; when your students encounter new vocabulary while reading, encourage them to employ several strategies to decipher the word before resorting to their dictionaries.

Firstly, what clues to the word’s meaning can the students find in the word itself? Do students recognize the word’s root or affixes? Does it resemble any other words they already know the meaning of?

Secondly, students should look at the context in which the word is used, not just in the sentence itself but also in the preceding and following paragraphs. What clues can the students find to the word’s meaning?

After analyzing the parts of the word and exhausting context clues, students can look up the word in dictionaries. However, they will still need to do some legwork to make the new word stick. Some valuable ways of committing a new word to memory include:

• Sketching a visual interpretation of the word
• Making a list of synonyms of the word using a thesaurus to assist
• Apply the target words in personal contexts (in conversation/writing sentences)
• Reading Comprehension

Vocabulary is only one aspect of comprehension. Novel studies afford students a valuable opportunity to develop their deep comprehension abilities.

Beyond just understanding the meaning of the words in a novel, students will work on their understanding of skills such as:

• Identifying the central idea/themes
• Examining character/plot development
• Distinguishing between fact and opinion
• Summarizing
• Inferencing
• Comparing and contrasting

While activities for teaching some of the more basic comprehension skills may be more self-evident, activities for teaching higher-level skills, such as inferencing, may require a bit more thought and planning.

We can define inference as the process of deriving a conclusion based on the available evidence in the text combined with the student’s background knowledge and experience. 

Put simply, inference involves reading between the lines.

Inference = What is in the text + What I already know

To encourage students to use inference while completing a novel study, ask questions building on prompts such as:

• Why do you think…
• What do you think would happen if…
• What can you conclude about x based on what you’ve read?
• How does the writer feel about…
• How do you think x feels?

If you want to learn more about teaching inference in the classroom, check out our thorough article on the topic here .

• Making Connections

While vocabulary building and developing reading comprehension skills are a big part of what novel studies are all about, this type of reading lends itself to a deeper exploration of the power of the written word.

Too often, our students read prescribed texts without ever making any personal or profound connections to the material they read. Students can better understand what they are reading by exploring ways of connecting to a novel. There are three main types of connections we can explore:

• Text-to-self connections
• Text-to-text connections
• Text-to-world connections

Let’s look at how students can make each type of connection in a novel study.

Text-to-Self

This is all about the student making a personal connection and responding to the text as an individual. Essentially, this type of connection is about encouraging the students to share their thoughts and feelings on various aspects of the novel. This sharing can take the form of oral contributions to class discussions and debates or in the form of a written response.

Either way, question prompts are a great way to kick things off. Here are some examples to get the ball rolling.

• What does this incident remind you of in your own life?
• Which character do you identify with the most?
• Have you ever been in a similar situation? What happened?
• What would you do in this situation?

Text-to-Text

These connections are all about the student linking the novel they are studying to other texts they have read or seen. This could include other novels, comics, nonfiction books, websites, and poems.

Here are some useful prompts to encourage your students to make text-to-text connections.

• Have you ever read anything like this before?
• How is this text similar to/different from other texts you’ve looked at?
• What other fictional character does the hero of this novel remind you of?

Text-to-World

Making a text-to-world connection requires students to think about the novel in terms of the wider world. Here, students forge links with the broader culture and current affairs. Text-to-world connections will frequently require students to tie the novel into other areas of learning, such as social studies and the sciences.

Here are a few helpful text-to-world prompts.

• How do the events described in the novel relate to real-world events?
• What issues explored in the novel are pertinent in today’s world?
• How does the world described in the novel relate to the world we live in now?

Post-Reading Activities

The number of possible activities you can do to complete a novel is almost endless. Which activities you choose will depend on what aspect of the novel and/or objectives you are trying to teach. Here are just a few popular tasks students regularly complete after they finish reading a novel.

• Create a timeline of events.
• Graph the plot .
• Write a character profile.
• Design an alternative book cover/blurb.
• Write a summary of the novel.
• Write an alternative ending.
• Have a formal debate based on themes or issues explored in the novel.
• Write a book review.

Well, that’s enough to start a novel study in your classroom. However, if you’d like to read more on reading comprehension strategies you can employ in your novel studies, check out our depth article on the topic here .

The flexibility of the novel study format lends itself well to almost any age group; just be sure to choose a text that matches the general reading ability of your class. For older kids, you may even want to involve them in deciding what text to study. 

However you decide to choose your novel, just be sure to read the text thoroughly in advance to stay one step ahead of your students – and don’t forget to have fun with it!

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How to Plan a Novel Study Step-by-Step

If you’ve been teaching with a reading textbook or basal reader, the idea of guiding your readers through an entire novel unit can be overwhelming at first. Add planning your first novel study to the mix, and it can be enough to dissuade even veteran educators. However, incorporating novels and chapter books into your reading instruction doesn’t have to be scary or stressful.

Today I want to share the steps I use to plan my novel studies. I’ll walk you through the process step-by-step and show you approachable strategies for getting started.

I’ll also share a free novel study planning roadmap I created to help you plan for your novel study.

What is a novel study?

Before we dive into planning your first novel study, it is essential to make sure we’re on the same page regarding what a novel study is…and isn’t.

First off, a novel study is NOT a way to effectively teach phonics and decoding.

Younger or struggling readers will also need explicit, sequential phonics instruction to continue building their word attack and decoding skills.

In addition, a novel study is NOT teaching a book.

We aren’t quizzing kids on what happened on page 54. We don’t need them to just be able to regurgitate the text. A novel study is so much more than that.

The reality of the situation is we should always center our focus around the fact we teach kids. A novel study allows those kids to develop their reading comprehension and thinking skills through high-quality literature. It lets them practice and refine their skills related to the standards in a much more engaging format than the typical reading textbook.

A novel study is an opportunity to build a love of reading.

When done as a whole group, it can create a shared experience that builds communities and creates connections.

And with the right text, it can help the skills and strategies you’ve been teaching your readers become tangible.

What is the purpose of a novel study?

There is no single purpose for doing novel studies in the classroom. In fact, the purpose of the novel studies you do may differ across the year.

That being said, it is important to understand why novel studies are a common practice in many classrooms.

There are so many great benefits of using novel studies in your classroom . For starters, a literature-rich curriculum has been shown to improve reading and writing skills (Fook & Sidhu, 2010).

Novel studies can also expose students to perspectives or experiences. They help readers visualize and develop an understanding of things that have never happened in their lives. Even when a novel covers a familiar experience, it often offers a different perspective.

Conversations about reading can also be a tool for building students’ abilities to carry on an intellectual discussion with peers and develop social and communication skills.

That said, novel studies take a significant amount of time. To make them successful, it’s important to approach them with purpose and planning.

Planning Your First Novel Study: A How-to-Guide

Now that we’re on the same page with the background information, it’s time to dig into the steps to planning a novel study.

I’ll break down each step below, but here’s the general overview:

• #1 – Set your purpose.
• #2 – Identify target standards.
• #3 – Pick a framework & texts.
• #4 – Determine your timeline.
• #5 – Map your unit.

If you’re all about action, grab my Free Novel Study Planning Roadmap. That way, you can start working through the process right away!

Ready to plan that novel unit?

Step 1: set your purpose..

This step is really about making sure you’re focused on backward design. When you started considering a novel study for your class, you had a purpose. If you aren’t sure, consider asking yourself some questions –

• Why did you decide this might be the next logical step in your instruction?
• When you finish this unit, what are you expecting your students to know or be able to do?
• What are you hoping students will carry into the real world?

Sometimes this will relate to a few core comprehension standards. However, you’ll often find that your novel study serves a larger purpose.

Maybe you’re introducing students to the characteristics of a specific genre. 

You might also use a novel study to introduce a historical period or event you discuss in social studies. 

Regardless of whether your purpose has cross-curricular connections or is singularly focused on a specific reading component, you must begin with the end in mind by defining this goal.

Step 2: Identify target standards.

Now that you’ve identified why you’re doing a novel study, it’s time to focus on the standards.

This is where you’ll begin creating your plan of action, which you’ll dive into throughout the next few steps.

One benefit of novel studies is the ability to connect multiple standards. That said, we all know that some standards could use extra attention.

Summary, for example, often gives students a hard time, and it is also a great skill to address through the lens of a novel.

As you work through this step, look at your recent reading data and identify 2-3 standards that have been particularly troublesome for your class.

These will be the standards you aim to address 2-3 times throughout your text.

You should also keep these steps in mind as you begin to consider the books you select and how you’ll organize your student groups.

Step 3: Select your framework & text(s).

So far, you’ve focused on the big picture, considered your novel study’s purpose, and outlined the core standards you need to pay extra attention to. With these things in mind, you can start digging into the details.

It’s time to choose your texts and the framework for organizing your study. You can either start by selecting specific books for students to read or focus on grouping them first. Both approaches are effective, but complete this step before moving on to the next phase.

Here’s what I mean. If you’re trying to build a shared background understanding of a historical period, you may want to do a whole class novel study with lots of conversation.

If you’re delving into the complexities of friendships and their impact on characters, consider using book clubs. This approach allows students to share their personal insights and lessons learned from their reading experiences.

For example, a whole-class novel study might not be the best fit if your students have varied reading levels or must meet different standards. In this post, we will look at various ways to organize student groups.

Common Novel Study Formats in the Classroom

Not surprisingly, most novel studies are done in one of three formats. These are:

• Whole-Class or Whole-Group Novel Study
• Small-Group Novel Study – Literature Circles or Book Clubs
• Independent Novel Study

Each format offers positives and negatives, so you may find that your students end up experiencing all three across the course of a school year. The most important thing is that the format you select aligns with your set purpose and can be used to address the target standards.

Knowing that, let’s examine the advantages and disadvantages of group and independent reading by breaking down each format.

Whole-Class Novel Studies

In a whole-class novel study, everyone reads the same book. Each student has their own copy and can choose to read out loud. This approach differs from a read-aloud, which is more about listening and enjoying the story. Here, students actively read and see the words.

During the reading, the class might pause for discussions. You can use extra materials like movie clips or news articles to enrich these talks or demonstrate thinking processes.

After reading, students often write their thoughts or summaries. For longer texts, some independent reading may be done to finish the chapter.

This format usually follows a pattern: read, discuss, respond. Students read together, discuss as a group, and then write independently to reflect on their thoughts.

The key aspect of a whole-class novel study is that all students work with the same standards, text, and additional resources.

Advantages of Whole-Class Novel Studies

• Builds community and provides a shared experience to hook later lessons upon
• Easier for the teacher to plan and monitor – makes it great for beginners
• Can serve as an invitation to help students discover a new series or genre of book.
• Provides opportunities for struggling or reluctant readers to engage in rigorous discussions about literature and access lessons on the same higher-level comprehension skills as peers.
• Allows all readers to access the same culturally relevant or meaningful texts.

Disadvantages of Whole-Class Novel Studies

• Easy to incorporate ineffective/harmful practices – like round-robin reading.
• It is harder to encourage equal participation – reluctant learners may sit back and allow peers to dominate the discussion.
• Too often, it becomes one-size-fits-all teaching without differentiation in the novel study activities.

Small-Group Novel Studies – Literature Circles/ Book Clubs

If you’ve got children at various readiness levels or a large class, you may decide that small groups would work better for your novel study.

With a small group novel study, each group has its own text. They may be working on the same skills as other groups or a different set of skills.

The small group reads together and discusses daily reading. Roles are often used to help manage the group’s time together.

After finishing, students may complete a reflection or respond to a question that connects to the discussion.

Advantages of Small Group Novel Studies

• Excellent for supporting social skills and student conversations
• Offers opportunities to explore a theme or idea from numerous perspectives.
• Allows students to have a text that is more accessible to them w/ peers at the same general reading level.
• Each group can have tasks tailored to their individual needs.  
• It provides a semi-structured opportunity for students to take charge of their learning

Disadvantages of Small Group Novel Studies

• Groups can be challenging for teachers – not ideal for beginners.
• Requires planning for several novels and the ability to monitor and support different groups of learners simultaneously. 
• Groups can quickly get off task or off-track in their discussions without an adult monitor.
• Missed teaching opportunities while circulating among groups.
• Difficult to unify pacing so all groups are ready to move on to a new unit at the same time.

Independent Novel Studies

In this format, students complete a novel study independently or with one-on-one instruction from a teacher or guide. 

With an independent novel study, each student has a different text based on their own interests or needs. They read independently (or with the teacher) and then work to respond to literature.

Mini-lessons may be provided to small groups working on the same skill, but the student works independently overall.

Advantages of Doing Independent Novel Studies

• Offers each student a chance to find a book that piques their interest.
• Great for classes with students with diverse interests or skill levels.
• Promotes independent study skills and puts students in control of their own learning.
• Great for advanced learners or as a way to engage early finishers in an extended project.
• Removes element of comparison between peers
• Can be done on a student-by-student basis to supplement the curriculum
• Offers students near mastery the opportunity to apply comprehension skills

Disadvantages of Independent Novel Studies

• Large amounts of planning & prep
• Requires the teacher to read and be familiar with multiple texts. 
• Not for struggling, reluctant, or unmotivated learners unless done one-on-one.
• Not ideal for instruction – designed more for practice/skill application

Selecting Text for Your Novel Study Activities

Since we’ve spent some time outlining the different frameworks you might select for your novel study, I’ll use this section to outline how you’ll select your texts.

Please know that I recommend reading any novels you plan to use in classroom novel studies before you make your selections.

However, I know this isn’t always feasible. Therefore, at a bare minimum, you should look at the synopsis and some reviews online to ensure you don’t end up surprised by some unexpected content or language.

The last thing you want is to expose students to something they aren’t ready to deal with an angry parent or administrator over your novel selection.

That being said, when it comes to picking your novels, you’ll find many different ideas about how to make your decisions.

Quite honestly, much of the decision comes down to your goal and classroom situation, and you’ll likely find no two years are alike.

The great news is that novel study is meant for flexibility. Given the current status of online learning, you may want to select texts that are available digitally, such as those from platforms like Epic . 

(Don’t worry; I’ll be sharing more about how to adjust a novel study for digital learning soon.)

For those of you doing in-person learning, you might also consider whether you’ve got enough copies of a book available on your campus before you select it. If you need ideas for places to find inexpensive class sets of books, check out my post about ways to build your classroom library on a budget .

You’ll also want to consider your students’ current abilities. Selecting a book that is too difficult or too simple can cause students to disengage.

While many conversations are held about the importance of picking a book at the right level for your readers, the reading level is only a small part of what you need to consider.

You’ll also want to consider your students’ background experiences, interests, and passions. For example, selecting a book about a group of teenage girls trying to make the dance team may not be the best choice for your football-loving preteen boys. You’ve got to consider the audience you’re hoping to reach.

Research has shown that students prefer books that reflect some aspect of their lived experience (Ghani, 2009). Texts that discuss the social and relationship issues that arise during youth are also great choices for building connections. 

The appropriateness of the content is also critical. That said, this can be a bit more challenging when you have a young reader with advanced skills or an older reader who struggles. 

To help you get started, I’ve included a list of 100 popular novels in the free guide . Your school or local librarian can also be a great person to connect with to get suggestions.

Step 4: Create your timeline.

Now that you’ve established your foundation, you’ll want to create a timeline and plan how you’ll assess student understanding. 

When I consider how long a novel study should take, I consider the time I’ll be able to devote to the book each day and any scheduling concerns (like extended breaks).

As a personal preference, I try to break the novel evenly into weeks beginning on a Monday and ending on a Friday. While we may have pre-reading activities or post-reading activities that fall outside that window, I find that planning using a weekly calendar makes things easier to manage. 

I’ve included a planning table in the free Novel Study Roadmap to help you as you begin planning. 

I also like to consider the book or books I’m using in my novel study. Longer novels typically require longer units. I don’t want to rush so much that we miss opportunities for conversation and learning. However, I also don’t want to drag it out if the text is short.

By creating a general timeline, I can see how best to break the novel into digestible chunks and where each of the standards I identified in step 2 would best fit.

Step 5: Map Your Unit Plan for the Perfect Novel Study

We’re finally here!! Mapping your first novel study is the final step before you can implement it.

At this stage, you’re digging into the meat of your novel study. You’ll find that my approach to the mapping process may be a bit different from that of other novel study advocates. For me, two significant components to consider while mapping are comprehension skills and vocabulary.

I personally advocate that you focus on one comprehension skill each day.

As I said earlier, we teach kids, not books. There is no reason I should ask a student to sit down and respond to 10 questions about the two chapters they read.

Instead, I’d prefer to ask them ONE question that really gets them to apply the comprehension strategy and their own thoughts and ideas to better understand the text. 

When I conduct a novel study, this format allows me to provide more targeted instruction and focus on building mastery versus surface level. My experience has been that it makes it easier for students to take that skill and apply it later.

I also recommend limiting the number of vocabulary words you study in depth. You’ll want to cover both academic and text-based vocabulary, but I tend to stick with one word for in-depth study each day.

I’ll discuss the specifics a bit more as we work through the mapping process, but since we’ve already discussed the comprehension standards you’ll address, let’s begin there.

Selecting Comprehension Skills

The great news is that you’ve already created a list of reading comprehension standards your students need to work on. (Typically, these are the higher-order thinking skills, like inferring and generating summaries, but it could be almost anything.)

You’ve also already read the book (or at least a good feel for it). That means you’re ready to start matching the standards with the plot of your novel(s).  

(Note that if you haven’t read the text yet, you will likely need to do so as you work through the mapping process.)

As you start to read the novel, find natural breaking points that create approachable chunks of text for students to tackle in the time available. You’ll also pay attention to where your target standards fit within the breakdown. You’ll find that some parts of the book are better aligned to specific comprehension skills than others. This can be a huge help when planning your novel study activities.

For example, you may find that one day’s reading contains numerous examples of cause-and-effect relationships, so you can select that standard to accompany the day’s lesson. 

As you begin to plug your target standards into your plan, you’ll likely find some reading sections that could be matched with nearly any standard. I recommend leaving these for last. This lets you determine what skills you may not have included or have not been given adequate time for and assign them accordingly.

Once you’ve mapped out your target standards and filled in aligned skills for the remaining sections of the reading, you can write your daily comprehension focus in student-friendly language.

I add these to my calendar as the “Skill of the Day.”

From there, I also generate a deep thinking question connected to the daily skill. (Although sometimes I draft these as I’m reading the chapters and assigning skills, this is the stage where I polish the questions.)

For example, I could ask students to identify the narrator and point of view of a story. This would adequately cover the standard in many grade levels.

However, my goal is to get students thinking, talking, and writing about their reading, and listing the narrator and point of view is a simple one-sentence answer.

As an alternative, I might ask students to explain how the narrator’s perspective impacts the reader’s understanding of the story. By doing this, I’ve pushed my students to identify the narrator and point of view while encouraging them to think about impacting their experience as readers.

Whether you’re working with children or adolescents, finding ways to build deep thinking and opportunities to share their own perspectives. At the same time, applying comprehension skills creates a richer, more meaningful, and much more engaging experience for learners.

Identifying Key Academic & Text-Based Vocabulary

After I’ve aligned all my comprehension skills, I like to take time to review the reading and select the text-based and academic vocabulary that will support my student’s understanding.

Since vocabulary can be a barrier to struggling learners , I aim to go deep rather than wide. This means my students may be exposed to a number of new vocabulary words, but they are only expected to master a handful each week. 

For each day, I select one text-based vocabulary word that we work to break down and master. These are the terms you’ll explicitly teach as part of your novel study activities.

You may introduce context clues or dictionary skills. You may also teach students to analyze figurative language for vocabulary building.

Regardless of the strategies you teach, you’ll also want to consider having students define the word in their own terms, create a nonlinguistic representation, and hook the term (via synonyms and antonyms) to words they already know.

The main thing is to keep vocabulary instruction short and to the point.

In about 10 minutes, you can teach and find ways to apply most vocabulary words beyond the text…because we teach kids, not books (see the theme here?).

Consider Pre-Reading Hooks and Post-Reading Culminating Activities

Finally, you’ll want to consider how you’ll introduce and wrap up your novel unit. You’ll also want to consider any tech tools or websites that may help you do this.

Depending on students’ familiarity with the book(s) or topics you’ve chosen, you may find it beneficial to do some pre-reading novel study activities to create links to background knowledge and activate schema. I’ve shared some of my favorite ideas here: Pre-Reading Activities for your Novel Unit .

For younger learners or books set in unfamiliar periods, this may include reading some nonfiction books or watching informational videos.

Adolescents may read related newspaper or journal articles to help them build the foundational understanding.

Regardless of what you select, be sure that the material offers a hook that students can connect to their reading and is a purposeful use of class time. 

You may also want students to share their learning to wrap up your novel unit. This can be especially powerful when students read different books than their peers.

Projects and group discussions are both common ways students are asked to share their experiences. However, many others exist and might be a better fit. Finding an engaging post-novel activity doesn’t have to mean tons of prep or a boring book report. There are so many other great post-novel activities that your readers will actually enjoy!

No matter what you choose, be sure to consider how you’ll differentiate and make sure you’re using instructional time effectively.

Preparing to Teach Your Novel Study Unit

You’ve done it! Your novel study unit plan is complete. You’ve decided what you’ll teach, how you’ll structure the lessons, and how long it will take. 

As you prepare to start teaching your unit, consider how often you’ll review and score literature responses. You might also spend some time teaching students a specific strategy for constructed responses, like the RACE writing strategy .

Try to be realistic. If you don’t truly feel you’ll be able to read 25 journals every day, be sure your unit’s effectiveness doesn’t depend on you doing that. (Although it can help to take a quick look daily to ensure students are on the general right track or whether adjustments may be needed.)

Creating rubrics with key expectations can be a helpful tool to make the assessment process more objective and simplify things for students. You can customize these depending on the skill being addressed or find a consistent rubric that you may use throughout the novel study. 

No matter what you decide to do, NO WHOLE BOOK ASSESSMENTS!

Seriously, if we’re really teaching KIDS, not books, there is no value in doing a test over the book.

Once you’ve got those things in place, you’re ready to get started!

Get the Free Novel Unit Planning Roadmap

If you’ve made it this far and would like the templates to start planning your first novel study, here’s one more chance to do so!

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Why is novelty mandatory for a Ph.D. degree?

The institute I am studying at has added the following requirement recently:

A PhD scholar must publish two papers in his/her corresponding field in SCI journals.

This means that a student cannot get PhD without two SCI rated papers. To the best of my knowledge, novelty is a mandate for such journals; hence, novelty has became mandatory for a student to get PhD in my institute.

In this context, I have the following query: Why is novelty mandatory for a PhD degree?

Consider a scenario in which a student is ambitious and wants to do research on an open problem or famous unsolved problem in his/her field. The student cannot attempt to research such a topic since research may be locally saturated, and he/she cannot come up with a novel idea. Does the rule not restrict the research on such problems? I can see the alternatives like tutorial papers, survey papers, etc., but some of these require only highly experienced geeks.

Note : Assume that neither the PhD student nor the PhD supervisor is an extraordinary person in that particular field.

• research-topic
• publishability

• 53 Before the requirement about two papers in SCI journals, did your institute award Ph.D.degrees without any requirement of novelty? In my opinion, that would be very strange and not consistent with what a Ph.D. should mean. –  Andreas Blass Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 4:55
• 6 I don’t understand the last paragraph of your question. Why should a requirement for novelty be a problem for ambitious students? –  Thomas Steinke Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 5:59
• 33 No sane advisor would allow a student to base his thesis 100% on proving the Riemann hypothesis. If the student insists and somehow manages to convince the advisor to do so, then he should consider the option that nothing will come out of it – this was his own choice to start with, so he should accept the consequences. If the rules state that two papers with novel results are a requirement, one needs to have results. Negative results are also results, and often very important, but "I've done research for 4 years but absolutely nothing worked; give me a PhD" is not enough. –  user68958 Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 8:25
• 17 One of the first lessons of PhD studies is that you’re likely not as smart as you think and that you’re likely to fail if working on famous unsolved problems. –  ZeroTheHero Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 13:56
• 18 @O.R.Mapper Even the most ambitious student has zero influence on whether there still is anything novel to discover. — This is true, but vacuously so. There is always more to discover! –  JeffE Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 20:12

4 Answers 4

Novelty is a basic requirement in research because without novel results, the work is of at best limited usefulness. It's not useless - review papers are useful - but it's less interesting to the people at the frontier. In the case of a PhD, it is supposed to signify a student is now capable of doing research. Research (as opposed to literature review) necessarily involves new and novel results. Therefore novelty is a requirement.

If I understand your last paragraph right, you're wondering about open problems which might be too complex to solve in one go. But in that case, you still get new and novel results - they might be partial results, but they're still results. The same goes for research using new methods that turn out not to work: knowing where not to look is not as useful as knowing where to look, but by narrowing the parameter space, it's still useful.

• 25 @hanugm certainly not, most PhD students get such results. How else did your predecessors at your institution get awarded PhDs? They discovered enough new things to publish two SCI-indexed papers. See also corey979's comment. –  Allure Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 10:34
• 53 @hanugm at my institution every single PhD student has new and novel results. The importance of the results vary, with some having papers at Nature/Science and others publishing at very insignificant local journals, but they always have results. That's what you do in your PhD. You do stuff no one did before. Whether someone cares about it is another thing, but it's still new. –  Gimelist Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 11:36
• 17 @hanugm That may be true, but the single most important criterion for awarding a PhD is whether the student was able to obtain (publishable) original results. The importance of these results will be the largest factor in determining the grade of the PhD. Writing an excellent review of the literature is usually not enough for a PhD, although it is a popular format for Master's theses. –  Earthliŋ Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 11:56
• 5 Also note that there are doctoral degrees that do not require original research, or at least not anything close to the levels of originality and substantiality required for a PhD. Examples include the DA (Doctor of Arts) degree, as well as many professional degrees such as MD, JD, PharmD, and DDS. A Ph D is a research doctorate. –  Robert Columbia Commented Dec 3, 2018 at 2:58
• 4 To improve this answer: "novelty" suggests it has to be a new concept. It might be better phrased as "new information". An essential part of science is reproducing and testing concepts from other teams. This is not creating a novel idea yourself; but documenting whether the new concept also works for you or not, and the ways your results differ from the original team's, is essential for good science. And that's absolutely PhD paper material because it's new information, even if it isn't novel. –  Graham Commented Dec 3, 2018 at 9:40

This answer will be a bit different and not limited to the sciences as the other current answers seem to be. It will also apply to many similar degrees not designated PhD. I'll use the term "doctorate" as an abbreviation for "research doctorate" to distinguish it from other degrees such as those that are clinically focused, for example.

Study for a doctorate (PhD and similar degrees) in a field is intended to teach you how to carry out scholarship in that field, whatever it is. Scholarship is always intended to be the extension of knowledge . A successful scholar extends what is known in the field of interest. In literature, for example, you can study Dr. Faustus by Goethe and give a perspective never considered before. This would be, as are many (most?) studies, very narrow. But it can also be very deep. If someone says that your thoughts aren't actually novel, but a simple extension of things written a few (or a lot of) years ago, then those thoughts don't really extend knowledge . So, if all you can accomplish are derivative works, without novelty, then you haven't reached the point of being able to extend knowledge in your field.

The actual accomplishment need not be earth shattering in its implications. Most are not - even in mathematics and the sciences. But you have to be able to say something that is interesting to other scholars, preferably something that will permit them to extend their own work in new ways not yet considered.

There are a lot of ways to demonstrate that you are, indeed, able to extend knowledge in your field. A requirement of publication in a good journal is just one way and it is easy for the faculty to judge, since the reviewers and editors of the journal help them in their judgement task. Not so many years ago, in mathematics, there was no requirement to publish before obtaining the doctorate and your "proof of ability" was measured only in your dissertation as evaluated by the local faculty, perhaps with some supplementing.

Research in any field is directed at extending the "known world". You need to demonstrate the ability to do that to earn a doctorate and to be known as a "doctor" of the field. Only "novelty" will do.

• 2 The notion of scholarship is really enlightening. Thank you! –  ebosi Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 17:30

A PhD thesis demonstrates the candidate's ability to perform research. Research, by definition, adds something novel to the body of knowledge.

Research: The systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions ( Oxford English Dictionary )

My answer derive from following definition of the PhD and its thesis.

The purpose of a PhD is to train a research student as an autonomous scientist and a good researcher — i.e., as someone deserving the grade of Doctor. The objective of a PhD thesis is hence to demonstrate to one’s peers that its author can be considered in this way by reporting the successful* completion of a high-quality piece of research .

Depending on one's field, the monograph-style thesis can be replaced by a set of published peer-reviewed paper. The objective remains the same.

The question is then "What is an autonomous scientist and a good researcher?"

Being a good researcher means first to do science well , second to do good science , and third to do a lot of science . Doing science well means following its ethical rules , being thorough , honestly and appropriately reporting one’s results , crediting one’s peers for their work and acknowledging one’s work limitations , using the adequate tools and methods to solve a problem, and doing research that is reproducible . Doing good science means addressing a relevant scientific gap , an issue that is influential, a research problem that matters for science, the society, and the industry. Doing a lot of science means to tackle a large-scale problem, to address subsequent research gaps , to contribute to multiple issues of a coherent sub-field. One must, however, note that these criteria are conditional to one another . Doing a lot of science serves no purpose if one does not do good science. And more importantly, doing good science serves no purpose if one does not do science well.

To this, I would add that (it is my opinion, and one may disagree) the job of a researcher is to do science . And doing science means reporting new knowledge that is as truthful as possible . This is achievable using the scientific method that is commonly acknowledged as the best method for creating/unveiling (depending on your ontological positioning) reliable new knowledge.

So, to pragmatically answer your question:

• the purpose a a PhD is to train you as a scientist ,
• producing new (and highly reliable) knowledge is quintessentially the role of a scientist .

Hence, you cannot be recognized by your peers as a scientist (i.e., being awarded the _Doctor_ title) if you don't prove that you can produce new reliable knowledge by yourself .

The confusion might come from the fact that — as it has been highlighted in comments — scientists do literature review, and literature review are useful and valuable. However, they are not the core of what is a scientist.

Post-scriptum

It it worth highlighting again the last quoted paragraph:

These criteria are conditional to one another . Doing a lot of science serves no purpose if one does not do good science. And more importantly, doing good science serves no purpose if one does not do science well.

Thus, I think that, when doing a PhD , one should mainly focus of the quality of one's contribution, rather than breadth or scale.

In other words: what matters is not that much what you have proven, but how you have proven it.

Of course I had the dream of a breakthrough thesis. Yet I think that, during a PhD, it is more important to produce only a few robust, well designed experiment and well reported results on a minor "research gap"; rather than aiming to tackle a large scale issue without being able to produce robust results or reliable conclusions.

It's only once you'll have proven that you are a good researcher and autonomous scientist, that you'll be able to secure a job as a scientist/researcher.

And then you'll have time (and money, and support, and experience, …) to shoot for the stars . Yet this is not the objective of a PhD . Everything in its own time.

Citations are excerpt of… the preface of my PhD thesis.

* Note that "successful" is to be understood as "We have completed each step of the scientific method" . I.e., it does not consider whether results are positive or negative.

• 2 This answer has some excellent points — e.g. the core answer that a PhD thesis must demonstrate the candidate’s capability as a scientist, and that’s why it needs novelty — mixed in with some very tendentious and field-dependent claims, like the idea ‘“successful” is to be understood as “We have been able to demonstrate with certainty that” rather than “there is a correlation/impact/link between A and B”.’ — there are whole fields of science where this is a complete category error as to the nature of research. It would benefit from focusing more on the uncontroversial key points. –  PLL Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 14:12
• @PLL PS: Out of curiosity/interest, could you please elaborate on your point ("there are whole fields of science where this is a complete category error as to the nature of research.") — e.g., with some examples? –  ebosi Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 14:32
• Also interestingly enough is doesn't provide insight to the behind the scenes workings of the publication and review process which are machines which need much maintenance akin to the legal systems in some sense of the terms. –  Jay Commented Dec 2, 2018 at 16:33
• 2 "...you cannot be recognized by your peers as a scientist if you don't prove that you can produce new reliable knowledge by yourself." That might be an example of jumping to conclusions. I could recognize someone as a scientist even without that proof, for example by having enough trust that anyone could be a scientist in principle. –  NoDataDumpNoContribution Commented Dec 4, 2018 at 10:01

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• PMC10220166

Novelty in research: A common reason for manuscript rejection!

Nishant kumar.

Department of Anaesthesia, Lady Hardinge Medical College and Associated Hospitals, New Delhi, India

Zulfiqar Ali

1 Department of Anesthesiology, Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India

Rudrashish Haldar

2 Department of Anesthesiology, Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Science, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

We often hear back from reviewers and editors of scientific journals that a particular manuscript (original research, case report, series or letter to the editor) has not been accepted because it lacks novelty. Though disheartening, the reason for such a response from said reviewers needs proper elucidation, as a moral obligation from the editorial board towards the authors of the manuscripts.

Research, as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary is ‘a detailed study of a subject, especially in order to discover (new) information or reach a (new) understanding’. [ 1 ] Novelty on the other hand is defined as ‘the quality of being new, original, or unusual’ or a ‘new or unfamiliar thing or experience’. Therefore, adding the adjective novel along with research is actually one of the most common redundancies that is similar to ‘return back’ or ‘revert back’ and denotes one and the same thing! [ 1 ]

Without delving into the nitty-gritty of the English language, novel research can be best described as one or more elements of research that are unique, such as a new methodology or a new observation that leads to the acquisition of new knowledge. It is this novelty that contributes to scientific progress. Since the main aim of research is to unravel what is unknown or to challenge views or ideas that may or may not be based on sound scientific principles, this exclusivity of novel research therefore allows us to expand our horizon beyond the realms of known domains. [ 2 ]

Having defined novelty in research, one of the most common mistakes that researchers commit is confusing novelty with originality. These terms are often used interchangeably. Originality implies the genuineness of the work and signifying that the said work has not been copied from any other source. Originality can always be examined by plagiarism checkers, and data is often analysed for duplication or fabrication only if there exists a certain doubt regarding its factuality. A study, therefore, can be mutually exclusive i.e. novel, but not original, or it can be original but not novel. It is the latter that reviewers and editors encounter most often.

The most common scenario encountered in anaesthesia related manuscripts that lacks novelty is the substitution of the same anaesthetic technique to different surgical procedures or patient populations (based on gender or age), with no expected change in the result. Here, the hypothesis and study designs are almost identical; however, the agents are replaced with different ones. A classic example is the comparison of the duration of analgesia with a longer acting analgesic or that of a local anaesthetic with a shorter one. The intrinsic properties of a drug are already well known, and, irrespective of it being an abdominal surgery or a limb surgery, the drugs are going to behave according to their pharmacological properties. Similarly, modern airway devices, such as video laryngoscopes, have conclusively been proven to be better aids than the conventional ones. A comparison of any new laryngoscope would definitely be a novel idea, in terms of whether it outperforms the existing device. If a certain number of studies, systematic reviews, or metanalyses have already been published on that particular device or drug, the study undertaken cannot be considered novel unless the results of the aforementioned study, utilising sound scientific principles, actually challenge or contradict the existing ideas.

Another common scenario faced by the reviewers or editors is the anaesthetic management of common or uncommon syndromes or diseases. They are often well described in literature, but when managed as per the existing guidelines and expected challenges they do not constitute novelty. A case report is novel and worth publishing if an unforeseen or unanticipated event has occurred or the case has been managed in a unique or unconventional manner or significant innovative skills or equipment have been employed. However, due caution has to be exercised as this should not lead the researcher to be overtly adventurous or show undue bravado by going against the principles of patient safety.

Now here lies the contradiction. We have been harping on novelty, introducing new ideas, and challenging old fixed ideas when conducting research and reporting cases. However, at the same time, due caution must be exercised, and one must not to be adventurous, unconventional, or bold. There is a fine line of distinction between these two. Herein comes the role of ethics, a separate topic of discussion altogether.

Research or advancement may not always be novel just by intervention or experimentation. Theoretical or hypothesis testing may also contribute paradigm-changing findings. Some of these may include thought-based experiments, rectifying or logical rearrangement of existing knowledge, re-evaluating space and time, utilising principles of philosophy, and analysing already existing data from a new and different perspective. [ 3 ] A thorough literature search is pivotal for designing a novel research project as it helps to understand known facts and gaps. An attempt at bridging identified research gaps adds to the novelty of the study. [ 2 ]

Another aspect of novel research is technological advancement. Most research starts from an idea, a thought, or an observation that further leads to hypothesis building, experimentation, data collection, analysis, and, finally, principle building. Technological advancement may stem from any of these phases. Novelty in research propels the industry to excel and outdo itself. [ 4 ]

Can novelty in research be measured? The answer is a resounding yes. Traditionally, it has been measured through peer reviews and by applying bibliometric measures such as citation or text data, keeping in mind their inherent limitations. However, word embedding is a new technique that can reliably measure novelty and even predict future citations. However, this is currently limited by publicly available word-embedding libraries and its high costs. [ 5 ]

To the average author and reader, novelty adds to their knowledge and makes them aware of complications that they may encounter. It offers a way out by conventional or different measures, within the realm of scientific, ethical and principles of social justice, should they get stuck, keeping in mind the quote of Hippocrates: ‘ Primum non nocere’ ( First, do no harm ).

Take back your planning time with engaging, no-prep resources!

What is a novel study?

By  MARISSA DESPINS  Updated Sept 19, 2023

What is a novel study? As a middle school or upper elementary teacher, you already know that teaching students to read is so much more than decoding words on a page. Once your students have mastered the fundamentals of phonics, fluency, and vocabulary, a novel study can take them to the next level of their learning journey. This post is the first in my series on planning novel studies your learners will love. It focuses on the essential question of “What is a Novel Study?”

Looking for a FREE Step by Step Novel Study Planning Guide? Click on the image or button below to download your FREE guide!

For more information on teaching specific novels, you won’t want to miss our posts on teaching Because of Winn Dixie , Wonder , The Hunger Games , Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , and The Outsiders!

To start our exploration, we first have to clarify what a novel study is not. It’s not simply a matter of studying a book’s plot. It isn’t just about quizzing students on the events that happened on a specific page. So, what is a novel study then?

Novel studies go far beyond teaching a book. A novel study is an opportunity to teach your students how to engage with a book in a meaningful way. It encourages them to look beyond the words on the page and to read between the lines, developing critical reading comprehension and analytical skills that will benefit them for years to come.

What’s more, novel studies allow your students to become active participants in their own learning experience. When done well, a book study strikes a balance between teacher guidance and student-led analysis, empowering your students to develop, practice, and refine their reading comprehension and analysis skills. And perhaps the best outcome of a successful book study is the creation of a safe space where students can foster a love and appreciation for reading. As an English teacher, there’s nothing more rewarding than that!

A novel study presents a fantastic opportunity to accomplish several goals with a cohesive approach. To begin with, it allows for the simultaneous address of multiple learning objectives and state standards within a single unit. Moreover, novel studies provide an ideal setting for integrating reading and writing skills, fulfilling the aspirations of ELA teachers.

How do novel studies benefit student learning?

One of the greatest benefits that students derive from novel studies is the invaluable exposure they gain. Novels serve as gateways to diverse experiences and perspectives, allowing students to step into worlds outside their own. As our own experiences shape us, students often have limited exposure to different cultures, historical periods, and unfamiliar circumstances.

In addition to expanding their horizons, students acquire essential skills beyond the content of the book. Collaborative activities and discussions require them to collaborate, practice active listening, and consider the viewpoints of others. Engaging with the novel offers students numerous opportunities to develop a sense of perspective, appreciating that people think and work in diverse ways.

Furthermore, novel studies provide a unique context for vocabulary acquisition. Unlike traditional methods such as spelling bees or weekly vocabulary lists, students encounter new words organically within the context of the story. This approach offers a more meaningful and authentic understanding of vocabulary, as students see words being used in real-world situations.

If you are struggling with choosing the perfect book for your next novel study, you won’t want to miss our lists of favorite middle school and upper elementary novels!

Are you looking for more information on novel studies?

Check out these related blog posts below!

Novel Study Text Selection Tips

Building Novel Study Engagement

Benefits of Teaching Novel Studies

Hatchet Novel Study Activities

Middle School Novel Study Favorites

Upper Elementary Novel Study Favorites

On the hunt for novel study activities?

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How to Research a Novel: 9 Key Strategies

by Joslyn Chase | 2 comments

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Have you ever started a story, gotten halfway through, and realized you don't know key facts about your story's world? Have you ever wondered how to find out the size of spoons in medieval England for your fantasy adventure story? Is that even relevant to your plot, or could you skip that fact? Here's how to research your novel.

As fiction writers, our job is to sit at a keyboard and make stuff up for fun and profit. We conjure most of our material from our imagination, creativity, and mental supply of facts and trivia, but sometimes we need that little bit of extra verisimilitude that research can bring to a project.

When it comes to research, there are key strategies to keep in mind to help you make the most of your time and effort.

9 Strategies to Research a Novel

Readers who’ve posted reviews for my thriller, Nocturne In Ashes , often comment about how well-researched it is. While that can be a positive sentiment, that’s not really what you want readers to notice about your book. The best research shouldn’t call attention to itself or detract readers from the story so I’m always relieved to hear those same reviewers go on to rave about the thrills and suspense.

When you're writing, you want to get the facts right and create a believable world. Doing research for your novel is the way to do that. But you also don't want to get sucked into a research hole, so distracted by the local cuisine of a small town in 1930s France that you never actually write. And you want to hook your readers with a page-turning story , not a dissertation on some obscure topic.

Here are nine key research strategies I’ve learned to write an effective (and exciting!) story.

1. Write first, research later

Research can be a dangerous enterprise because it’s seductive and time spent in research is time taken away from actual writing of the creative process. Getting words on the page is job one, so it’s important to meet your daily writing goal before engaging in research.

So if the piece you’re working on requires research, your first order of the day should be to write something else that doesn’t need research, something you can draw purely from imagination and your own mental well. Fill your word quota, practice your skills, meet your production goals, and THEN move on to research, so you don't derail your writing process with it.

I always have multiple works in progress. I’m writing project A while researching project B and thinking about and planning projects C through M.

2. Research is secondary; telling a good story comes first

After all the precious time boosting your knowledge of historical events or the feel for a subject, this point might hurt: only use a tiny fraction of your research in the story.

Don’t give in to the temptation to dump everything you've learned into the story. Sure, it’s fascinating stuff but you risk burying the story in scientific or historical detail.

A little bit of researched material goes a long way. Only use info related to the issues your character would know about and be concerned with. Leave out the captivating but irrelevant details.

Your research should enhance the story, not dominate it.

3. Write for your fans

Your story should be targeted to the readers who love what you write—your fans. Stop worrying about the five people out there who might read your story and nitpick that your character used the wrong fork or wore the wrong kind of corset.

A lot of writers fake it or write only from the knowledge they do have. They don’t let their lack of esoteric knowledge get in the way of the story. They do research for their novels, grab a few details for the sake of authenticity, and wing the rest.

With the exception of 11/22/63, Stephen King does very little research, but there are few who can write a more riveting story.

4. Don’t obsess over accuracy

Frankly, there are instances and reasons where you don’t really want to be accurate. For example, if you write historical romance, research might show that people of that time period rarely bathed and lost most of their teeth and hair at a young age. That’s probably not how you want to portray your heroine and the man of her dreams.

Sometimes, including a historically or scientifically accurate detail would require pages of explanation to make it credible for today’s audience—almost a surefire way to lose your reader. When in doubt, leave it out.

And no matter how hard you work at it, you’re not likely to cover every detail with one hundred percent accuracy, so don’t obsess over it. Do your best, but remember—story is what matters, not accurate details.

5. Go with the most interesting version

When researching an event, you’ll usually find a number of different accounts, especially when using primary sources, none in perfect agreement with the others. When this happens, do what the History Channel does—go with the most entertaining version of events.

Remember, you’re a storyteller, not a historian. Your goal is to grab and hold your reader’s attention and keep them turning pages. If it makes you feel better, you can include endnotes with references so interested readers can dig deeper into the “facts.”

6. Keep a “bible”

This is especially important if you’re writing a series. You can’t be expected to remember every important detail about the characters and settings you put in book one when, years later, you’re working on book seven.

Record these details in an easy-to-reference format you can come back to later to provide continuity and reader confidence in your ability to tell a coherent story.

7. Don’t fall down the wormhole

I love doing research. It’s fun, fascinating, and absorbing—so absorbing, it can suck you in and keep you from moving on to the writing. You need to be able to draw the line at some point. As Tina Fey says in her book, Bossy Pants , “The show doesn't go on because it's ready; it goes on because it's 11:30.”

Know when it’s time to leave the research and get to the writing. Pro tip: set yourself a time limit or a deadline. Even if you don't “feel” finished with research, you'll have a clear marker for when you have to put the research down and get back to writing.

8. Save simple details for last

Sometimes when you’re writing along in your story, you’ll find yourself needing a simple detail. Make a notation, resolve to come back to it later, and move on. Don’t let this interrupt or distract you from getting the story down on the page.

Later, you can come back and do the minimal research to fill in these little details like a character name , a location, a car model, etc. Shawn Coyne calls this “ice cream work” because it’s fun and feels frivolous after the concentrated work of writing the story itself.

9. Finish THIS project before starting another

One great thing about research is that you learn so much and find the seeds for so many new story ideas. The challenge is to not get distracted from your current project.

Make a note to yourself to pursue these other ideas somewhere down the road. Let those seeds sprout and grow in the back of your mental garden, but keep your focus on the story you’re writing now .

Resources: Where to Actually Research Your Novel

I’ve touched on how to do the research. Here, I’m adding a few suggestions about where to go for the goods.

• Wikipedia, and don’t forget to dig into the links at the bottom of the article
• Reenactor sites for historical battles, uniforms, etc.
• Costuming sites
• Travel guides
• Writer’s Digest Writer’s Guide to Everyday Life in … fill in the blank (these are loaded with details of landscape, clothing, household items, and more)
• Biographies and autobiographies, and don’t overlook their bibliographies and footnotes
• Blog posts of expert and amateur historians
• Journals and diaries
• Weather reports
• Price lists, to find out how much were salaries, groceries, mortgage payments, etc.
• Birth and death certificates, court documents
• Etymology websites
• Museum exhibits and gift shops, including the little touristy booklets, maps, tour guides
• Libraries! Talk to a reference librarian—they’re awesome at plumbing resources.

Novel research rocks!

Research really is intriguing and a lot of fun. There’s so much to discover, but beware because you can get lost in it and never find your way out. You’re better off under-researching than over-researching, so know when to get out and move on.

Also, be aware that your novel's research requirements will differ somewhat based on the genre you’re writing . For instance, with historical fiction, you need to give your readers a travel adventure into the past with sensory details to draw them into the time period.

With science fiction, you need to be able to extrapolate from scientific fact and theory to the fictional premise of your story. In doing so, don’t get bogged down in the journey from point A to point B. Just get to the conclusion. The more you explain, the less credible it sounds to the reader.

With fantasy, it’s the little world-building details that count for so much. Know what your reader expects and craves and meet those demands.

And no matter how much research your book requires, don't discount your personal experience with being human—those emotional, intellectual, and philosophical experiences often cross time and space.

I wish you many happy hours of successful novel research, but don’t forget to write first!

How about you? Do you do research for your novels? Where do you turn for information? Tell us about it in the comments .

Use one of the prompts below or make up your own. Conduct a little research—just enough to add verisimilitude to the scene, a few telling details. Spend five minutes researching two to three facts that will help you set the scene. Then, take the next ten minutes to write a couple of paragraphs to establish the character in the setting.

The death of her father leaves Miss Felicity Brewster alone in regency England and places upon her the burden of fulfilling his last wish—that she marry a safe, respectable gentleman.

Accused of treason, Frendl Ericcson sets out to find his betrayer and restore his honor.

Dr. Vanessa Crane makes a breakthrough in her nanotechnology research. But will her discovery benefit mankind, or destroy it?

With the help of his mortician friend, Victorian-era detective Reginald Piper must use cutting-edge forensic methods to solve a string of murders.

When you are finished, post your work the Pro Practice Workshop here and don’t forget to leave feedback for your fellow writers! Not a member yet? Check out how you can join a thriving group of writers practicing together here.

Joslyn Chase

Any day where she can send readers to the edge of their seats, prickling with suspense and chewing their fingernails to the nub, is a good day for Joslyn. Pick up her latest thriller, Steadman's Blind , an explosive read that will keep you turning pages to the end. No Rest: 14 Tales of Chilling Suspense , Joslyn's latest collection of short suspense, is available for free at joslynchase.com .

I wish I’d read point 6 – keep a bible a couple of years ago before I wrote my 450k word magnum opus, because I’m now writing several supplemental short stories in that universe and I’m forever digging through for minor character’s names, details of meeting places etc

My current WIP is involving a lot more research than I expected. I had to re-write a hunting scene twice, because the first version, which I showed to a real bow-hunter, had him going after the deer right away, and my hunter-friend said to wait a half hour before you start tracking a deer. I don’t hunt myself, so I took his word and re-wrote it, but my gut said it wasn’t right. So I did some surfing and found both his advice, and advice that said you should go after a hip shot right away (basically agreeing with what my gut said should be happening). So was he wrong, were the sources that agreed with me wrong, or was he getting a wrong impression of what was going on? I decided I was overly in love with the opening sentence of the scene and re-wrote the whole thing yet again, using the “simple details” I’d discovered to clarify the deer had taken a hip shot. Minor scene, but a major position: it’s introducing the #2 member of my hero team.

Could it wait until later? Possibly, but I’m seriously considering serializing this thing, so the beginning chapters might be getting published before the end chapters of the first book get written, and I’m hoping for seven books out of this (probably close to 1M words total).

The Devil is in the details!

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How to organize novel research

Follow this step-by-step guide to learn the modern process of organizing research in Milanote, a free tool used by top creatives.

How to organize novel research in 7 easy steps

Whether you're writing a sci-fi thriller or historical fiction, research is a crucial step in the early writing process. It's a springboard for new ideas and can add substance and authenticity to your story. As author Robert McKee says "when you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you'll have choices galore."

But collecting research can be messy. It's often scattered between emails, notes, documents, and even photos on your phone making it hard to see the full picture. When you bring your research into one place and see things side-by-side, new ideas and perspectives start to emerge.

In this guide, you'll learn the modern approach to collecting and organizing research for your novel using Milanote. Remember, the creative process is non-linear, so you may find yourself moving back and forth between the steps as you go.

1. First, add any existing notes

You probably know a lot about your chosen topic or location already. Start by getting the known facts and knowledge out of your head. Even if these topics seem obvious to you, they can serve as a bridge to the rest of your research. You might include facts about the location, period, fashion or events that take place in your story.

Create a new board to collect your research.

Create a new board

Drag a board out from the toolbar. Give it a name, then double click to open it.

Add a note to capture your existing knowledge on the topic.

Drag a note card onto your board

Start typing then use the formatting tools in the left hand toolbar.

2. Save links to articles & news

Wikipedia, blogs, and news websites are a goldmine for researchers. It's here you'll find historical events and records, data, and opinions about your topic. We're in the 'collecting' phase so just save links to any relevant information you stumble across. You can return and read the details at a later stage.

Drag a link card onto your board to save a website.

Install the  Milanote Web Clipper

Save websites and articles straight to your board. 

Save content from the web

With the Web Clipper installed, save a website, image or text. Choose the destination in Milanote. Return to your board and find the content in the "Unsorted" column on the right.

3. Save quotes & data

Quotes are a great way to add credibility and bring personality to your topic. They're also a handy source of inspiration for character development, especially if you're trying to match the language used in past periods. Remember to keep the source of the quote in case you need to back it up.

Add a note to capture a quote.

4. Collect video & audio

Video and movie clips can help you understand a mood or feeling in a way that words sometimes can't. Try searching for your topic or era on Vimeo , or Youtube . Podcasts are another great reference. Find conversations about your topic on Spotify or any podcast platform and add them into the mix.

Embed Youtube videos or audio in a board. 

Embed Youtube videos or audio tracks in a board

Copy the share link from Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud or many other services. Drag a link card onto your board, paste your link and press enter.

5. Collect important images

Sometimes the quickest way to understand a topic is with an image. They can transport you to another time or place and can help you describe things in much more detail. They're also easier to scan when you return to your research. Try saving images from Google Images , Pinterest , or Milanote's built-in image library.

Use the built-in image library. 

Use the built-in image library

Search over 3 million beautiful photos powered by Pexels then drag images straight onto your board.

Save images from other websites straight to your board. 

Roll over an image (or highlight text), click Save, then choose the destination in Milanote. Return to your board and find the content in the "Unsorted" column on the right.

Allow yourself the time to explore every corner of your topic. As author A.S. Byatt says "the more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free".

6. Collect research on the go

You never know where or when you'll find inspiration—it could strike you in the shower, or as you're strolling the aisles of the grocery store. So make sure you have an easy way to capture things on the go. As creative director Grace Coddington said, "Always keep your eyes open. Keep watching. Because whatever you see can inspire you."

Download the  Milanote mobile app

Save photos straight to your Research board. 

Take photos on the go

Shoot or upload photos directly to your board. When you return to a bigger screen you'll find them in the "Unsorted" column of the board.

7. Connect the dots

Now that you have all your research in one place, it's time to start drawing insights and conclusions. Laying out your notes side-by-side is the best way to do this. You might see how a quote from an interviewee adds a personal touch to some data you discovered earlier. This is the part of the process where you turn a collection of disparate information into your unique perspective on the topic.

That's a great start!

Research is an ongoing process and you'll probably continue learning about your topic throughout your writing journey. Reference your research as you go to add a unique perspective to your story. Use the template below to start your research or read our full guide on how to plan a novel .

Start your research

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The Importance of Novel Studies

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When I was in teaching in the fourth grade classroom I used a a variety of approaches to meet the needs of my learners. One of my favorite reading tools was novel studies. In today’s blog I will be talking about the importance of novel studies and why you should be using them in the classroom.

But first, what is a novel study?

A novel study is, simply put, when the class reads a novel and studies it. This can be done in many ways: as a teacher read aloud or each student having their own copy are two ways to use novel studies in the classroom. In a novel study the teacher is the one guiding the students through the book. This differs from book clubs or literature circles where students take the leadership roles. I would switch between novel studies and literature circles often. Want to read more about literature circles? Check out this blog post .

1. Exposure

Novel studies are great for exposing students to books that they wouldn’t have necessarily picked to read themselves. Not every student will love every book pick, but exposing students to a wide variety of novels is helpful in expanding book choice.

2. Improve Comprehension

I have done novel studies in two ways. The first was to read aloud the book while the students listened and responded. The second way is similar, except each student had a copy to follow along. Novel studies are excellent to improve comprehension because you are able to stop as you read, ask questions, and clarify the text.

3. Showcases Good Reading Skills

While reading the novel aloud the teacher will be modeling good reading skills. Some of the skills include fluency, intonation, the thinking process, etc. The teacher will use the novel study as an opportunity to teach the students how to be good readers. They will model inferencing, summarizing, visualizations, connections, questions, and so much more.

4. Speaking & Listening Skills

When working through a novel study students will need to listen and respond to their teacher and peers. Discussions will happen about the book. Students will be making connections, asking, and answering questions. They will be taking turns to speak, listening to what their peers are saying, and responding to the conversation.

5. Even Big Kids Love Read Alouds

When I taught fourth grade my students would get SO excited when I read novels aloud. They would beg for more. It was nice down time for them to sit back and listen. They were learning so much. This time was especially helpful for my reluctant readers because they were able to enjoy reading without the stress of reading itself.

I have clarified the importance of novel studies and their usefulness in the elementary classroom. However, that doesn’t mean more work for you! There are so many resources at your fingertips; you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Want to try novel studies in your own classroom? Save your time with pre-made novel studies!

See all my novel studies by clicking here.

Friendship According to Humphrey

Something Upstairs

Punished Novel Study

This is a personal favorite because it lends itself to novel studies so well. It is about a boy who is punished and to cure the punishment has to search for examples of literary devices.

My name is Jen and I’m the face behind Endeavors in Education.

I have a passion for ELA and science. I am even STEM certified. Now I spend my time hanging with my kids, blogging (endeavorsined.com), and creating for my TpT store Endeavors in Education.

I’m so happy you’ve joined me on this journey!

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There is no denying that the Digital Era has impacted every aspect of the world, including academics and research. Many of these changes have brought significant advantages in global development, such as the ability to communicate with someone regardless of their location or to expand the reach of a business to engage a wide customer base. So much success has been created because of technology, but it has also brought a few disadvantages.

The global and competitive aspect of research means that scholars have to work a bit harder to stand out from the competition in their field if they want to make impacts and obtain research funding grants. To do this, innovation must be combined with novel approaches. But what defines novelty isn’t always cut and dried in the academic landscape.

Defining Novelty

For many people, the word “novelty” is associated with the newest toy on the shelves at Christmas. The connotation includes ideas of something that is superficial but shiny, exciting but quickly discarded after the initial “novelty” wears off. In research, this term means something completely different.

To a researcher and a funding source, a novel idea means something that is unique in the field or scope you’re analyzing. It can be a new methodology or a new design that sets the stage for new knowledge. It could be an approach that purposefully attempts to add more understanding to the current knowledge base. 

In general, it’s a characteristic of research that takes a topic that has already been the focus of experiments in the past and puts a new and original spin on it. Scholars can do this by changing factors like the design itself, the location or demographics of previous studies, or shifting the database entirely. The best way to know if your idea is novel or not is to do in-depth preliminary research and compare your idea with what is already out there on the subject.

Arguments Against Novelty and For Tradition

Scholars today find themselves facing an extra obstacle in the quest for publishing their work in a prestigious journal. Many of today’s publishing companies are looking for novelty over authenticity and expertise. This is because research journals want to publish work that is going to be cited, which is usually a topic that is new and exciting.

The arguments against this often support the claim that many of these “novel” studies don’t have enough support backing them because they focus on the “shiny” aspects of the research rather than the data that backs up the outcome. Funders award grants based on innovative ideas, but then the research that is necessary to substantiate these novel approaches and build on those precarious foundations is pushed to the side. When a grant request has ideas such as “innovative” and “novel” in it, it’s more likely to be approved, and then published, than those that build on those same approaches.

Why a Balanced Approach is Necessary

Some researchers argue that this push for novelty is exactly part of the reason why the field of science is currently in a reproducibility crisis. The focus on getting novel articles published has taken over the in-depth analysis of research in peer review. A balanced approach is required in order to ensure that progress continues to be made in all fields, but that the work published is put through rigorous review processes to ensure replicability and legitimacy.

When scholars see the reward that comes with inflated claims and specific adjectives to define their research as novel, the temptation arises to compromise the neutrality of the process. In the rush for reward, there is neglect in providing evidence to support each claim.

On the other hand, some journals are attempting a counterbalance to prevent weak articles. They want to ensure every idea that’s even remotely incomplete is addressed, which isn’t always feasible and can even be a deterrent to the reader. If a basic idea should be widely understood by someone reading the journal, the fact that the author lays it out anyway can be seen as condescending or a waste of the reader’s time.

Instead, a balanced approach is necessary, in which the editors attempt to scout out the long-term impact of a novel idea and how it might affect future studies. These newer ideas aren’t always backed with solid evidence at the time. It can take years for this to develop. But as a whole, robust work needs to be balanced with reproducible research.

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What Does the Term ‘Novel Study’ Mean?

Understanding novel studies is significant in the context of both teaching and learning literature. A novel study, essentially, revolves around close reading and in-depth exploration of a novel either individually or in groups. This structured approach to reading often forms a key part of classroom curriculum, with its effects far-reaching beyond just building a love for reading.

What is a Novel Study?

Novel study refers to the process where the class reads a novel together, pausing for thorough discussions, questioning, and comprehension checks. It can be done in a variety of formats including whole-class, small groups, or individually. It not only encourages a love for reading but also helps students to understand and analyse literary elements such as plot, characters, themes, and vocabulary.

Benefits of Novel Studies

• Encourages Reading: Novel studies offer an engaging method of reading practice, encouraging students to find pleasure in the activity of reading itself.
• Builds Knowledge Base: It provides insights into diverse experiences and expands the students’ knowledge of text structure, vocabulary, and grammar.
• Boosts Class Cohesion: Group novel studies promote cooperation and understanding among peers, transforming reading into a social experience.
• Increases Comprehension: Novel studies enhance reading comprehension skills by introducing context clues, summarizing, comparisons, inference, and other vital strategies.

Implementing Novel Studies

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to conducting novel studies. The format and activities can widely differ based on several variables including demographics, time constraints, and the purpose of the study. The methodology usually involves stages such as pre-reading activities to prepare students, during-reading activities to help them understand the text, and post-reading activities to reflect on the novel’s content.

In conclusion, a novel study is a powerful educational tool that encourages critical thinking, fosters a love for reading and promotes extensive learning. Whether you’re a teacher looking to enhance your classroom practices or a student aiming to improve your reading skills, incorporating novel studies can reap significant benefits.

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Research in 60 Seconds: Using Tech to Improve Readability

Whether it’s solving the world’s biggest problems or investigating the potential of novel discoveries, researchers at UCF are on the edge scientific breakthroughs that aim to make an impact. Through the  Research in 60 Seconds series , student and faculty researchers condense their complex studies into bite-sized summaries so you can know how and why Knights plan to improve our world.

Name:  Ben Sawyer

Position(s):  Associate professor of industrial engineering and director of The Readability Consortium

Why are you interested in this research? My mother was a children’s librarian focused on building collections, and my father was a high school teacher, and then a professor of education. My own early work was focused on attention and distraction, and I became fascinated by how people get information out of machine systems, and into their minds. My present research centers around human performance in reading: how can we best move information into your awareness, so you can do something with it.

Who inspires you to conduct your research? I’m inspired by people working hard to understand [information, including] children, soldiers, analysts, physicians, and older adults all looking to find the information they need to get them to their goal and keep them safe on the way. My father worked with children with dyslexia, and it’s amazing how much parity I see between the struggles of those kids and the struggle of a physician trying to move through a 60-year medical history in a clunky interface in time to make a good decision for an anxious patient. I’m inspired by that struggle, which all of us face to a greater degree every day.

How does UCF empower you to do your research? UCF provides access to a brilliant community of students and collaborators. Industrial engineering is a friendly and collaborative faculty. I’ve met so many fascinating students in my classes and have been privileged to have some of them join my research group. I have graduated a few of these as scientists and engineers. I love the diversity at UCF: people from every imaginable walk of life are on this campus, and the perspectives they bring to this research make it possible. Moreover, I like the people I get to work with, and I wake up every day happy to see them and excited to move our work forward. I feel very lucky in this.

What major grants and honors have you earned to support your research? My readability research is primarily funded by industry. The consortium’s founding members Adobe and nonprofit Readability Matters provided the initial foundation for a community that now notably includes Google and Monotype. We also are beginning to work with these companies to attract state funding directly, including a 2023-24 $1 million appropriation from the State of Florida.

Why is this research important? Billions of readers have too much to read. The information age is only as miraculous as our individual abilities to access infinite information. The written word, one of the great engineering accomplishments of human history, was literally developed on reeds and animal hide. This research is founded in the idea that writing and reading, is due for an update. Rebuilding the written word to help humans of the information age is also an opportunity for languages that have not benefited so strongly from the digital revolution. Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali and other scripts are underserved by modern Latin alphabet centered digital infrastructure but are receiving large investments as billions of these readers move online. Our readability research provides an opportunity to build equity in these languages, while working from evidence-based first principles of readability.

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Plastic strain-induced transition in silicon reveals novel transformation sequence

Researchers from Iowa State University and HPCAT recently performed measurements on silicon using the novel rotational diamond anvil cell and found that shear and non-hydrostatic compression results in formation of Si-II at lower pressures and at ambient temperature. This study spearheaded by long-time HPCAT user, Prof. Valery Levitas (Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering and Murray Harpole Chair in Engineering at Iowa State University), was recently published in Nature Communications.

Traditional pressure and stress-induced phase transitions (PTs) between numerous phases of Si, the most important electronic material, have been studied for decades. However, plastic strain-induced PTs are entirely different and promise numerous discoveries. It was predicted theoretically that a reduction in the grain size leads to an increase in the yield strength (Hall-Petch effect) and then to a decrease in the yield strength (inverse Hall-Petch effect). Correspondingly, the minimum pressure for strain-induced PT first reduces and then increases. This was confirmed with the appearance of Si-II and is opposite to what we observed in the hydrostatic compression experiments. Pressure in small Si-II and Si-III regions was found to be ~5-7 GPa higher than in the parent Si-I. Both results strongly support the suggested mechanism of strain-induced PTs by nucleation at the tip of the dislocation pileup. For Si powder with an average particle size of 100 nm, strain-induced PT Si-I→Si-II initiates at 0.3 GPa versus 16.2 GPa under hydrostatic conditions (i.e., pressure is reduced by a factor of 54!); for 30 nm Si, it is 4.9 GPa versus ∞, since this PT does not occur at all under pure compression. 

Plastic straining also changes the sequence of PTs and leads to the coexistence of four Si phases. Based on the understanding gained from our studies, several long-standing puzzles have been resolved. Most importantly, retaining Si-II at ambient pressure and initiating the reverse Si-II→Si-I PT, have been observed. Single-phase nano Si-III has been obtained in the relatively large region of the sample after compression of 100 nm Si to 11.6 GPa and unloading within several minutes. This contrasts one of the existing techniques of producing Si-III, which requires quenching from 14 GPa and 900 K over three days. Nanocomposite of two semiconducting phases Si-I+Si-III in 100 nm Si retained after unloading from 5.2 GPa may have useful material properties.

Our results open a new direction in developing the scientific foundation for plastic strain- and defect-induced material synthesis. Retrieving the desired nanostructured pure phases or mixture of phases (nanocomposites) with optimal electronic, optical, and mechanical properties is possible with this technique. These results also challenge the current theoretical description of these phenomena. Concurrently, reduction in the PT pressures by more than an order of magnitude and their nontrivial scale dependence require serious reconsideration for other engineering problems. Thus, they are important for understanding and optimizing surface treatment (polishing, turning, etc.) of strong brittle semiconductors and ceramics, developing regimes of their ductile machining by promoting PTs to ductile phases, and for friction in NEMS/MEMS. Also, these results warn us that some Si phases may appear during surface treatment of Si wafers and friction while they are undesirable.

Details of this study can be found in the following publication - Yesudhas S., Levitas V.I., Lin F., Pandey K. K., Smith J., Unusual plastic strain-induced phase transformation phenomena in silicon, Nature Communications, 2024, Vol. 15, 7054, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51469-5

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Research: How to Build Consensus Around a New Idea

• Devon Proudfoot
• Wayne Johnson

Strategies for overcoming the disagreements that can stymie innovation.

Previous research has found that new ideas are seen as risky and are often rejected. New research suggests that this rejection can be due to people’s lack of shared criteria or reference points when evaluating a potential innovation’s value. In a new paper, the authors find that the more novel the idea, the more people differ on their perception of its value. They also found that disagreement itself can make people view ideas as risky and make them less likely to support them, regardless of how novel the idea is. To help teams get on the same page when it comes to new ideas, they suggest gathering information about evaluator’s reference points and developing criteria that can lead to more focused discussions.

Picture yourself in a meeting where a new idea has just been pitched, representing a major departure from your company’s standard practices. The presenter is confident about moving forward, but their voice is quickly overtaken by a cacophony of opinions from firm opposition to enthusiastic support. How can you make sense of the noise? What weight do you give each of these opinions? And what does this disagreement say about the idea?

• DP Devon Proudfoot is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Studies at Cornell’s ILR School. She studies topics related to diversity and creativity at work.
• Wayne Johnson is a researcher at the Utah Eccles School of Business. He focuses on evaluations and decisions about new information, including persuasion regarding creative ideas and belief change.

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COSAM News Articles 2024 01 Auburn researchers seek novel approach to study aerosols implicated in respiratory virus transmission

Auburn researchers seek novel approach to study aerosols implicated in respiratory virus transmission

Published: 08/06/2024

By: Maria Gebhardt

Paul Ohno , assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is the recipient of a prestigious National Institutes of Health (NIH) award for $370,348 over the next two years.

“Respiratory viruses exhibit different transmission rates due to environmental factors such as temperature and humidity,” said Ohno. “With this award, my lab, the Ohno Research Group , is developing and applying new techniques to characterize respiratory aerosols to help better understand the physical basis for these effects and ultimately inform approaches to mitigate respiratory virus transmission.”

The tiny particles studied by Ohno are around one micron in diameter or smaller. “Smaller particles stay in the air much longer than larger particles, allowing them to transport viruses over longer distances. However, being around 1/100 th the diameter of a human hair makes it more complex to study and analyze these particles” added Ohno.

So, Ohno is building a new, innovative instrument to do just that.

“Fluorescence, or the emission of light by excited molecules, is one of the only techniques sensitive enough to study such small particles at realistic concentrations while they are suspended in air,”  explained Ohno.

Because fluorescence is not inherently sensitive to properties of interest like pH, viscosity, and phase state, the Ohno Group first introduces into the particles specific molecules, known as probe molecules, that are sensitive to these properties.

“Then, we excite these molecules with a laser and detect the color of the light that comes out,” said Ohno. “For example, a more blueish color might indicate a particle that is phase-separated akin to oil and vinegar salad dressing, while a more reddish color might indicate a well-mixed particle.”

Recent research has suggested that the mixing state of the particles may play a key role in determining changes in virus viability at differing relative humidity levels, motivating the interest of the Ohno Group in this property.

The NIH award is through an R21 Technology Development Program that supports researchers to develop high risk, high reward approaches.

“Once we have good tools to measure the key properties of these aerosols under realistic environmental conditions, we and other researchers will be able to deploy them to directly connect these properties to virus viability and transmissibility,” Ohno explained.

Ohno is not the only researcher that was genuinely excited for this exploratory award.

“I am extremely proud of the work that third-year graduate student Angel Gibbons has done in my lab,” said Ohno. “She laid much of the groundwork for this award, and will be presenting her work at the annual meeting of the American Association for Aerosol Research in Albuquerque, NM this fall.”

Gibbons says that her initial inspiration came while hearing a talk that Ohno was giving.

“Dr. Ohno's primary focus was on developing and applying in situ techniques to study environmental aerosols, and this triggered several ideas in my mind. I immediately thought about applying the same approach to characterize human respiratory aerosols. The backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a profound impact on my family and close friends, heightened my curiosity about virus transmission,” said Gibbons.

The researchers hope to provide not only new research findings, but also new instrumentation that could be used in a lab or in public settings. “Fluorescence is a relatively simple experimental technique. We think that our instrumentation could ultimately be streamlined and deployed in a variety of settings, including in crowded indoor environments or on mobile platforms such as drones to study particles in the air,” Ohno said.

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The physics behind the most annoying thing that could ever happen to you: a paper cut, the physics behind a very annoying thing that could ever happen to you: a paper cut.

Scientists have figured out what type of paper is the most prone to cut skin. Kaare Jensen, associate professor of physics at the Technical University of Denmark, explains.

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Study combines data, molecular simulations to accelerate drug discovery

New research involving the uc college of medicine may lead to finding effective therapies faster.

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital have found a new method to increase both speed and success rates in drug discovery.

The study, published Aug. 30 in the journal Science Advances, offers renewed promise when it comes to discovering new drugs.

“The hope is we can speed up the timeline of drug discovery from years to months,” said Alex Thorman, PhD, co-first author and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences in the College of Medicine. 

Researchers combined two approaches for screening potential new drugs. First, they used a database from the Library of Integrated Network-based Cellular Signatures (LINCS) to screen tens of thousands of small molecules with potential therapeutic effects simultaneously. Then they combined the search with targeted docking simulations used to model the interaction between small molecules and their protein targets to find compounds of interest. That sped up the timing of the work from months to minutes — taking weeks of work required for initial screening down to an afternoon.

“Accuracy will only improve, hopefully offering new hope to many people who have diseases with no known cure, including those with cancer."

Alex Thorman, PhD Co-first author and postdoctoral fellow

Thorman said this faster screening method for compounds that could become drugs accelerates the drug research process. But it’s not only speed that is crucial. 

He added that this newer approach is more efficient at identifying potentially effective compounds.

“And the accuracy will only improve, hopefully offering new hope to many people who have diseases with no known cure, including those with cancer,” Thorman said.

It can also create more targeted treatment options in precision medicine, an innovative approach to tailoring disease prevention and treatment that takes into account differences in people's genes, environments and lifestyles. 

“An accelerated drug discovery process also could be a game changer in the ability to respond to public health crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Thorman. “The timeline for developing effective drugs could be expedited.” 

Feature image at top: Collection of prescription drug bottles and pills. Photo/Provided.

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The University of Cincinnati is leading public urban universities into a new era of innovation and impact. Our faculty, staff and students are saving lives, changing outcomes and bending the future in our city's direction.  Next Lives Here.

Other co-first authors included Jim Reigle, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, and Somchai Chutipongtanate, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences in the College of Medicine.

The corresponding authors of the study were Jarek Meller, PhD, a professor of biostatistics, health informatics and data sciences in the College of Medicine, and Andrew Herr, PhD, a professor of immunobiology in the Department of Pediatrics in the College of Medicine. 

Other co-investigators included Mario Medvedovic, PhD, professor and director of the Center for Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Services in the College of Medicine, and David Hildeman, PhD, professor of immunobiology in the College of Medicine. Both Herr and Hildeman have faculty research labs at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. 

This research was funded in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health, a Department of Veterans Affairs merit award, a UC Cancer Center Pilot Project Award and a Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Innovation Fund award.

Those involved in the research are also co-inventors on three U.S. patents that are related to their work and have been filed by Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. 

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Researchers from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital have found a new method to increase both speed and success rates in drug discovery. The study, published Aug. 30 in the journal Science Advances, offers renewed promise when it comes to discovering new drugs.

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