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For students writing a research paper, such as an extended essay or a project report

Scientific sources for your research paper: find, check, cite

A research paper at school is often the first time you work with real studies. The challenge is not finding something, it is finding sources that carry your argument and knowing how much they prove. This guide takes you from your topic to a reliable set of sources.

Updated on 20 October 2026

The question

How do I find scientific studies for my research paper, judge how much they prove and cite them correctly?

Step by step

  1. Step 1

    Turn your topic into a researchable question

    Narrow it down: who, what, compared with what? "Learning with laptops" is a topic. "Do students learn more from lecture notes written by hand than from notes typed on a laptop?" is a question you can research.

    In Theoria: The Student Research Toolkit generates research prompts, critical analysis questions and method explanations for your school project.

  2. Step 2

    Search in several places and in English

    Use your school library, Google Scholar and subject databases. Most studies are published in English, so note your search terms in English as well. Keep a list of where and with which terms you searched.

    In Theoria: In Theoria you can search for papers and ask a research question: Deep Answer draws on several studies and links the sources.

  3. Step 3

    Check every source with five questions

    Who published it and where? Is it peer-reviewed or a preprint? What type of study is it? How large is the sample? Has it been corrected or repeated by others? Write the answers down; they belong in your discussion of sources.

    In Theoria: AI Peer Review helps you list the strengths and limitations of a single paper.

  4. Step 4

    Look for replications and later studies

    A famous study can be questioned later. Search for the title together with "replication", and look at newer studies that cite it.

  5. Step 5

    Cite the original and document AI use

    Cite the study itself, with its DOI, and quote from the paper, not from a summary. Follow your school's rules on stating which AI tools you used and for what.

    In Theoria: If you have a PDF of a study, you can import it: Theoria extracts the text into a private article for the analysis tools and deletes the original PDF after extraction.

Worked example

Handwritten notes or laptop notes?

A classic question for a research paper, and a good lesson in checking sources.

The well-known study
Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014, Psychological Science) report three studies in which students who took notes on laptops did worse on conceptual questions than students who wrote by hand. Their explanation: laptop users tended to transcribe the lecture word for word instead of putting it into their own words.
A correction
In 2018 the journal published a corrigendum to the article. Read it before you cite details.
The replications
Morehead, Dunlosky and Rawson (2019) published "a replication and extension" of the study. Urry and colleagues (2021, Psychological Science) repeated Study 1 directly with 142 participants (74 on laptops, 68 by hand). Laptop notes again contained more words and more verbatim passages, but the authors conclude that their results do not support the idea that handwriting improves immediate learning through better encoding.
What this means for your paper
Do not build your argument on one study. Present the original finding, the replications and what is still open, and say exactly what was measured: a quiz shortly after watching a lecture.

The best source is not the most famous one, but the set of studies that together show what is known.

Where AI reaches its limits

  • AI can invent or mix up references. Never cite a source you have not opened yourself, and check author, year, title and DOI.
  • An AI answer is not a citable source. Cite the studies it is based on, after you have read them.
  • AI can make a weak study sound convincing. The five questions in step 3 apply to every source, however you found it.
  • Your school decides whether and how AI may be used for graded work. Clarify this with your supervising teacher before you start.

Start your source search

Ask your research question in Theoria and see which studies come up. With a free account you can open papers, ask Albert and save analyses in your library.

With your own learning path you can work through real papers on your topic step by step and build an evidence-based answer of your own.

Start for freeReading papers with AI

Sources

  1. Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1159-1168. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614524581The original study of the worked example.
  2. Corrigendum: The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking (2018). Psychological Science, 29(9), 1565-1568. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618781773Published correction to the original study.
  3. Morehead, K., Dunlosky, J., & Rawson, K. A. (2019). How Much Mightier Is the Pen than the Keyboard for Note-Taking? A Replication and Extension of Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014). Educational Psychology Review, 31(3), 753-780. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09468-2Replication and extension of the original study.
  4. Urry, H. L., et al. (2021). Don't Ditch the Laptop Just Yet: A Direct Replication of Mueller and Oppenheimer's (2014) Study 1 Plus Mini Meta-Analyses Across Similar Studies. Psychological Science, 32(3), 326-339. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620965541Direct replication of Study 1 with mini meta-analyses.

Publication details checked against Crossref and arXiv on 20 October 2026.

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