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One catalogue of research methods — learn how each one works, when to use it, and what it can’t do.

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MethodStatistics1,836AI & ML1,661Decision Sciences932Research Methods1,354Measurement1,745Causal & Evidence532Research Practice118
248 methods in Research PracticeClear
Real methods matching your filter.
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academic writing

Abstract Writing

An abstract is a self-contained, concise summary of a research article that enables readers to quickly understand the study's purpose, methods, results, and conclusions without reading the full paper. Abstracts are the primary gateway to published literature: they appear in journal issues, bibliographic databases (MEDL

2 sources1950
qualitative research

Action Research

Action research is a collaborative research methodology in which researchers work with practitioners and community members to investigate a problem, implement change, and evaluate outcomes, cycling through reflection, action, and learning. Developed by Kurt Lewin (1946), action research bridges research and practice, a

3 sources1946
implementation science

Adoption Scale

Innovation Adoption refers to the extent to which an innovation, evidence-based practice, or new technology is actually used by the target population or in the target setting. Adoption is typically measured as the percentage of eligible users/staff who have adopted the innovation by a specific time point, or the trajec

2 sources1983
research skills

Altmetrics and Article-Level Metrics

Altmetrics (alternative metrics) measure the online attention and societal impact of research by tracking mentions in social media (Twitter), news outlets, policy documents, blogs, videos, and other online sources. Introduced formally in 2010 by Jason Priem and colleagues, altmetrics address limitations of citation-bas

3 sources2010
research ethics

Animal Research Ethics — 3Rs Principle

The 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) is the ethical framework governing humane animal research, established by Russell and Burch (1959) and now adopted globally by research institutions, funding agencies, and regulatory bodies. The 3Rs require researchers to: replace animal research with non-animal methods wher

3 sources1959
academic writing

APA Style Guide

APA (American Psychological Association) Style is a citation and formatting standard widely used in psychology, education, social sciences, and increasingly in health sciences. APA uses author-date in-text citations (e.g., Smith, 2021) linked to a reference list at the end of the manuscript. The 7th edition (2020) is t

2 sources1957
publication ethics

Article Retraction Process

An article retraction is the invalidation of a published article due to serious flaws (data fraud, major methodological errors, ethical violations) that undermine its conclusions. Retractions are distinct from corrections (which address minor errors) and are initiated by authors, editors, or institutions when integrity

3 sources1948
bibliometrics

Author Bibliographic Coupling Analysis

Author bibliographic coupling analysis (ABCA) maps the current intellectual structure of a field by linking authors through the references they share. Introduced by Dangzhi Zhao and Andreas Strotmann in 2008, the method extends classic bibliographic coupling — which couples two documents when they cite the same earlier

1 source2008
bibliometrics

Author Co-Citation Analysis (ACA)

Author co-citation analysis (ACA) maps the intellectual structure of a research field by treating authors, rather than documents, as the units of analysis. Introduced by Howard White and Belver Griffith in 1981, ACA rests on a simple premise: when two authors are repeatedly cited together in the same later papers, the

2 sources1981
bibliometrics

Author-Keyword Co-Occurrence Mapping

Author-keyword co-occurrence mapping reveals the conceptual structure of a research field by analyzing the keywords authors attach to their papers. It is a form of co-word analysis, the technique Michel Callon and colleagues introduced in 1983 to study how scientific problems are constructed through the language of the

2 sources1983
implementation science

Behaviour Change Wheel

The Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) is a systematic, evidence-based framework for designing behavior change interventions. Developed by Michie et al. (2011) and built on the COM-B model (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation→Behavior), the BCW guides practitioners through a structured process: diagnose behavior change barri

3 sources2011
research ethics

Belmont Report

The Belmont Report (1979) is the foundational US ethical framework for human subjects research, established by the National Commission following the Tuskegee Syphilis Study scandal. It articulates three core principles—Respect for Persons, Beneficence, and Justice—that form the basis for institutional review and regula

1 source1979
bibliometrics

Bibliographic Coupling

Bibliographic coupling is a method that identifies intellectual relationships between documents by measuring their shared references. Two papers are considered 'coupled' when they cite the same sources, indicating they address related research questions or draw from the same conceptual foundations. Introduced by Kessle

2 sources1963
scientometrics

Bibliometric Analysis

Bibliometric analysis applies statistical and mathematical methods to bibliographic records — publications, citations, authors, journals, and keywords — to measure and map the structure, output, and intellectual evolution of a research field. It is widely used to identify influential works, prolific authors, productive

2 sources1969
bibliometrics

Bibliometric Laws: Lotka, Bradford, Zipf

Three foundational empirical laws describe the structure and distribution of scientific information: Lotka's Law characterizes author productivity (most authors publish few papers; a few publish many), Bradford's Law describes journal concentration (a small number of core journals contain the majority of papers on a to

3 sources1926
scientometrics

bibliometrix-assisted bibliographic coupling

Bibliometrix-assisted bibliographic coupling applies the open-source R package bibliometrix to construct and analyse bibliographic coupling networks, in which two documents are linked by the number of references they share. The workflow automates record import, network construction, community detection, and summary sta

2 sources1963
scientometrics

bibliometrix-assisted bibliometric analysis

bibliometrix-assisted bibliometric analysis is a structured quantitative approach to mapping a scientific field using the bibliometrix R package. Developed by Aria and Cuccurullo (2017), it provides an integrated environment for importing bibliographic records from Scopus or Web of Science, computing performance indica

2 sources2017
scientometrics

bibliometrix-assisted citation analysis

Bibliometrix-assisted citation analysis uses the bibliometrix R package to systematically retrieve, clean, and analyze citation data exported from major databases such as Web of Science and Scopus. By automating reference parsing, frequency counting, and network construction, it enables researchers to identify the most

2 sources2017
scientometrics

bibliometrix-assisted co-citation analysis

bibliometrix-assisted co-citation analysis combines Henry Small's co-citation measure with the open-source R package bibliometrix to map the intellectual structure of a research field. When two documents are frequently cited together by third papers, they are considered intellectually linked; the bibliometrix package a

2 sources2017
scientometrics

bibliometrix-assisted mapping review

A bibliometrix-assisted mapping review combines the structured scope-and-search logic of an evidence mapping review with the analytical power of the bibliometrix R package. Instead of manually categorising studies, the researcher leverages bibliometrix functions — keyword co-occurrence networks, thematic clustering, an

2 sources2017
scientometrics

bibliometrix-assisted narrative review

A bibliometrix-assisted narrative review combines the quantitative field-mapping capabilities of the bibliometrix R package with the interpretive flexibility of a traditional narrative review. Bibliometric indicators — publication trends, author and country productivity, co-citation networks, keyword co-occurrence — ar

2 sources2017
scientometrics

bibliometrix-assisted PRISMA-based review

A bibliometrix-assisted PRISMA-based review combines the structured, transparent reporting framework of PRISMA with the quantitative science-mapping capabilities of the bibliometrix R package. The approach embeds bibliometric analyses — such as citation analysis, co-authorship mapping, and keyword co-occurrence — into

2 sources2017
scientometrics

bibliometrix-assisted rapid review

A bibliometrix-assisted rapid review combines the speed and pragmatic focus of a rapid review with the computational power of the bibliometrix R package. Researchers use bibliometrix to automate citation import, deduplication, descriptive statistics, and science-mapping tasks, compressing the bibliometric phase of a ra

2 sources2017
scientometrics

bibliometrix-assisted science mapping

bibliometrix-assisted science mapping is a computational approach that uses the bibliometrix R package to retrieve, clean, and analyze large bibliographic datasets, producing structured visual maps of how knowledge in a field is organized, interconnected, and evolving over time. It combines descriptive bibliometrics wi

2 sources2017
scientometrics

bibliometrix-assisted scientometric analysis

bibliometrix-assisted scientometric analysis is a reproducible, R-based workflow that applies the bibliometrix package to analyse the structure and dynamics of scientific fields using publication metadata. It integrates descriptive statistics, citation metrics, and network analysis — co-citation, bibliographic coupling

2 sources2017
scientometrics

bibliometrix-assisted systematic literature review

A bibliometrix-assisted systematic literature review integrates the R package bibliometrix — developed by Aria and Cuccurullo (2017) — into the standard systematic review pipeline to automate and visualize bibliometric performance and science-mapping analyses. It combines the transparency and reproducibility of a proto

2 sources2017
scientometrics

bibliometrix-assisted thematic evolution analysis

Bibliometrix-assisted thematic evolution analysis uses the bibliometrix R package to trace how research themes emerge, mature, decline, or transform across successive time periods within a scientific field. By combining co-word analysis with strategic diagram visualisation, the workflow maps the intellectual structure

2 sources2017
bibliometrics

BM25 Probabilistic Ranking (Okapi)

BM25, the Okapi 'Best Matching 25' function, is the dominant classical ranking function in information retrieval and the workhorse term-weighting scheme behind most lexical search engines and bibliographic databases. Developed by Stephen Robertson, Karen Spärck Jones and colleagues at City University London and formali

2 sources2009
academic writing

Book Chapter

A book chapter is an original scholarly contribution comprising a single chapter within an edited academic volume (book). Unlike journal articles (independent publications in a periodical), book chapters are integrated parts of a larger work edited by one or more scholars. Book chapters allow greater length (5,000–15,0

3 sources1750
research skills

Boolean Search Operators

Boolean search operators are logical functions—AND, OR, NOT, and parentheses—used to combine and filter search terms in bibliographic databases, library catalogs, and search engines. Named after mathematician George Boole (1815–1864), Boolean logic has been applied to information retrieval since the 1960s. These operat

3 sources1847
bibliometrics

Burst Detection (Kleinberg) for Emerging Topics

Kleinberg burst detection identifies periods during which a feature in a document stream — a keyword, a phrase, or citations to a particular paper — suddenly surges in frequency, signaling an emerging topic or a moment of intense attention. Introduced by Jon Kleinberg in 2003 to find bursty structure in streams such as

1 source2003
academic writing

Case Report

A case report is a detailed clinical account of one patient's diagnosis, treatment, and outcome, typically used to describe novel, unusual, or educational cases not previously reported. Unlike controlled studies with comparison groups, case reports are observational, non-comparative, and generate hypotheses rather than

3 sources1800
qualitative research

Case Study Research

Case study research is an intensive, contextual investigation of a single case (or small number of cases) to explore a phenomenon in depth. Developed systematically by Robert K. Yin (1984) and Robert E. Stake (1995), case study research employs multiple data sources (interviews, observation, documents, artifacts) to pr

3 sources1984
research methodology

CASP RCT Checklist

The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) RCT Checklist is a practical, widely adopted tool developed by the UK-based Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (founded 1993) for assessing the methodological quality and relevance of published randomized controlled trials. Unlike numeric scoring scales, it uses 11 struct

1 source1993
research skills

Citation Analysis

Citation analysis is the systematic study of how scholarly works are cited by subsequent research, used as a proxy for research impact and influence. Founded formally by Eugene Garfield in 1955 (introducing citation indexes), the field encompasses metrics ranging from simple citation counts to sophisticated indices lik

3 sources1955
bibliometrics

Citation Context and Sentiment Analysis

Citation context and sentiment analysis is the scientometric text-mining technique that reads the words around a citation to recover why one paper cites another and with what attitude. Standard citation counting treats every citation as an equal, polarity-free vote, but Simone Teufel, Advaith Siddharthan and Dan Tidhar

2 sources2006
bibliometrics

Citation Distribution Modeling (Lognormal/Tsallis)

Citation distribution modeling studies the statistical shape of how citations are spread across papers and uses that shape to compare impact fairly across very different fields. The pivotal result, from Filippo Radicchi, Santo Fortunato, and Claudio Castellano in 2008, is that although raw citation distributions differ

1 source2008
bibliometrics

Citation Half-Life and Literature Obsolescence

Citation half-life measures how quickly a body of literature ages by finding the median age of the documents being cited. Borrowing the metaphor of radioactive decay, Robert Burton and R. W. Kebler proposed in 1960 that scientific literatures grow obsolete at characteristic rates, and that the half-life, the time withi

2 sources1960
research skills

Citation Management Tools

Citation management tools are software applications that store, organize, and format bibliographic references. They allow researchers to import citations from databases and websites, annotate and tag articles, organize references by project, and automatically generate formatted in-text citations and bibliographies in m

3 sources2001
bibliometrics

Citing vs Cited Half-Life Asymmetry

A journal has two half-lives, and comparing them reveals its temporal personality. The cited half-life measures the median age of the articles the journal is cited for, capturing how long its own work stays useful. The citing half-life measures the median age of the references the journal's articles make, capturing how

2 sources1960
research ethics

Clinical Trial Registration

Clinical trial registration is the prospective documentation of a trial's key information (hypothesis, design, population, outcomes) in a public registry before enrollment begins or results are known. In 2005, the World Health Organization established the requirement that all clinical trials be registered in an interna

4 sources2005
bibliometrics

Co-Authorship Network Analysis

Co-authorship network analysis is a method that maps research collaboration patterns by treating authors as nodes and co-authored papers as edges in a network graph. The structure, density, and centrality patterns of this network reveal how researchers connect, collaborate across institutions and disciplines, and form

2 sources2001
bibliometrics

Co-Citation Analysis

Co-citation analysis is a method that identifies the intellectual structure of a research domain by examining how frequently pairs of documents are cited together in other publications. When two papers are frequently cited together in the literature, they are considered co-cited, indicating they are conceptually relate

2 sources1973
scientometrics

Co-word Analysis

Co-word analysis is a scientometric technique that quantifies how often pairs of keywords, subject terms, or title words appear together across a corpus of publications. By treating simultaneous occurrence as a proxy for conceptual relatedness, it constructs networks and clusters that reveal the intellectual structure,

2 sources1983
research methodology

Cochrane RoB 2.0

RoB 2 is the Cochrane Collaboration's updated methodology for assessing the risk of bias in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Published in 2019, it replaced the original Cochrane RoB tool with a more structured, transparent approach using signalling questions and domain-based judgments to evaluate five critical sour

1 source2019
bibliometrics

Collaboration Distance and Erdős Number Analysis

Collaboration distance analysis measures how closely connected scientists are through chains of co-authorship. Two researchers who have written a paper together are at distance 1; if they share a co-author but never wrote together, distance 2; and so on. The most famous instance is the Erdős number, the collaboration d

2 sources2001
academic writing

Conference Paper and Proceedings

A conference paper is original research presented at an academic conference, typically via oral presentation or poster. Conference papers are published in proceedings (collection of papers from a conference) and indexed in databases (Scopus, Web of Science). Unlike journal articles requiring 12–24 months for publicatio

3 sources1900
research ethics

Conflict of Interest in Research

A conflict of interest (COI) in research exists when a researcher has financial, professional, or personal interests that might bias their research judgment or outcomes. Conflicts are inherent in research communities—researchers often have legitimate stakes in their research's success—but unmanaged conflicts compromise

3 sources2013
implementation science

Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research

The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) is a five-domain model designed to systematically evaluate the factors influencing implementation success of evidence-based interventions in health systems. Developed by Damschroder et al. (2009) and refined through extensive use across health domains, CFIR

3 sources2009
research methodology

CONSORT Reporting Checklist

The CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) Statement is a 25-item evidence-based checklist and flow diagram developed to standardize reporting of parallel-group randomized controlled trials. First published in 1996 and updated in 2010 (CONSORT 2010), it is endorsed by over 600 journals including The Lance

1 source2010
bibliometrics

Contemporary h-Index

The contemporary h-index, introduced by Sidiropoulos, Katsaros, and Manolopoulos in 2007, modifies Hirsch's h-index to reward recent scientific activity over old laurels. The plain h-index never decreases and treats a citation earned decades ago the same as one earned last year, so a researcher who has stopped publishi

2 sources2007
publication ethics

COPE Guidelines for Publication Ethics

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), founded in 1997, is an international organization of journal editors and publishers that promotes and advances research integrity and publication ethics. COPE provides practical guidance through flowcharts, position statements, and ethical guidelines addressing misconduct (fa

3 sources1997
research methodology

COSMIN Checklist

COSMIN (COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments) is a systematic framework and 10-item checklist developed by Mokkink et al. (2010) to evaluate the methodological quality of studies that assess the measurement properties of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), questionnaires,

1 source2010
bibliometrics

Crown Indicator (CPP/FCSm)

The crown indicator, written CPP/FCSm, was the field-normalized citation impact measure developed at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) in Leiden and described by Moed, De Bruin, and Van Leeuwen in 1995. It compares a unit's observed citation rate with what would be expected given the fields, document

2 sources1995
research methodology

Data Collection Methods

Data collection methods are the specific techniques and instruments used to gather information from research participants or sources. Common quantitative methods include surveys (questionnaires, interviews), physiological measurements (blood pressure, lab assays), behavioral observations, and administrative/secondary d

3 sources1980
research ethics

Data Fabrication and Falsification

Data fabrication and falsification are serious forms of research misconduct involving intentional misrepresentation of research data. Fabrication means inventing data that were never actually collected; falsification means altering authentic data to change the meaning. Both undermine scientific integrity, waste researc

3 sources2005
research ethics

Data Protection and Privacy in Research

Research involving human subjects generates sensitive data: medical records, genetic information, behavioral responses, economic or social information. Regulatory frameworks—HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in the U.S., GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in the European Union, and para

4 sources1996
qualitative research

Data Saturation in Qualitative Research

Data saturation is a foundational principle in qualitative research describing the point at which data collection yields no new themes, codes, or insights—additional data becomes redundant. Introduced by Glaser and Strauss (1967) in their work on grounded theory, saturation guides decisions about sample size and when t

4 sources1967
publication ethics

Data Sharing and Open Science

Data sharing and open science are practices that maximize research transparency and reproducibility by making raw data, analysis code, and methods publicly available alongside publications. The replication crisis (widespread failure to reproduce published findings in psychology, medicine, and other fields) revealed tha

3 sources2010
research ethics

Deception and Debriefing in Research

Deception in research—withholding information about study procedures, hypotheses, or true purpose—is ethically permissible under limited circumstances when specific criteria are met. The regulatory framework (45 CFR 46.116(a)(5) in the U.S.; APA Ethical Code Section 8.07) allows deception if: (1) it is not reasonably p

4 sources1982