How do you generate ideas?

[kerprof]

I believe it is important to generate the novel ideas to be successful in research, securing grants and scholarship etc.,

Please advise how you are successful in generating the ideas and translating them to help sustain your research activities (proposal, funding, publications etc.,).

[Ruralguy]

I'd start with:

What are the unanswered questions in your current scholarship?

Which unanswered questions in the current literature tie in best to what you are doing or interested in doing? (so, implies staying current with literature)

For pedagogically related work, might ask what in the field needs addressing in terms of what students are expected to know (and what they still don't know well).

As far as funding goes, I think it helps to find out what has been funded before, what are some agency trends, etc.

[Parasaurolophus]

I just generate ideas.


More seriously, I keep a document full of paper ideas and very brief plans of how to write them up. Every time I get an idea, I write it down. Sometimes I get ideas for good titles, and think up a paper to match the title.

I read widely. Inside my subfield, outside my subfield but in my degree field, and well outside my field too. I think this is key to generating new research projects. I attend lots of conferences, too, mostly for the same reasons: hearing a talk is pretty close to reading the paper, but less time-consuming. Plus, lots of ideas get thrown around in the Q&A.

Finally, I pay attention to calls for papers for conferences, special issues, edited volumes, and prizes. These will often explicitly suggest avenues of exploration, and you can easily mine those even if you don't finish in time to submit. But if you do submit, it's often easier to place your work in these topical collections than in the more ordinary venues.

[Parasaurolophus]

Alternately--but this is a tough row to hoe, and is often rather disingenuous--you can identify your field's sacred cows and work to tear them down. Doesn't require much imagination in the early stages, you just have to know where to look for evidence to the contrary. Some ingenuity may be required to sell your story to referees, however.

[adel9216]

I just generate ideas.


More seriously, I keep a document full of paper ideas and very brief plans of how to write them up. Every time I get an idea, I write it down. Sometimes I get ideas for good titles, and think up a paper to match the title.

I read widely. Inside my subfield, outside my subfield but in my degree field, and well outside my field too. I think this is key to generating new research projects. I attend lots of conferences, too, mostly for the same reasons: hearing a talk is pretty close to reading the paper, but less time-consuming. Plus, lots of ideas get thrown around in the Q&A.

Finally, I pay attention to calls for papers for conferences, special issues, edited volumes, and prizes. These will often explicitly suggest avenues of exploration, and you can easily mine those even if you don't finish in time to submit. But if you do submit, it's often easier to place your work in these topical collections than in the more ordinary venues.

Same here. I have a Trello board where I write my ideas or things I am noticing as gaps when I read, etc.

[ergative]

Most of my ideas come out of previous projects of mine that had funky results. I just submitted a mini grant this month to follow up on an odd interaction I wasn't expecting in a previous experiment, and after my dissertation showed a pattern of results that was really odd, I followed up on that with a further experiment to poke at that pattern and see how far it would go. (Answer: not terribly far.)

I also get some ideas by just talking to colleagues. Another branch of my research followed the following pattern: (i) I went to a colloquium and had a lot to say during the Q&A (ii) the speakers at the colloquium asked me to collaborate on a follow-up project (now submitted for publication) (iii) I was chatting about this project to some other colleagues and they had good ideas (iv) We realized we worked well together, and came up with a really cool project that combines all of our expertise in a very cool way (v) The big grant proposal for that project will get submitted this week.

Parasaurolophus is also right about going to conferences and paying attention to what's happening in your field. Conferences are a great place to get new ideas just from the concentration of people sharing their work in the most condensed, snappiest, exciting way possible. My dissertation project was sparked by a keynote talk at a conference when I was a baby grad student.

[polly_mer]

Like ergative, I get a lot of ideas through my previous work and having a lot of questions during conferences/seminars.

The problem I have had since I was a baby grad student is too little time and energy to follow up on everything, not a lack of ideas themselves.

[Kron3007]

Like ergative, I get a lot of ideas through my previous work and having a lot of questions during conferences/seminars.

The problem I have had since I was a baby grad student is too little time and energy to follow up on everything, not a lack of ideas themselves.

Same, I have more back burner projects than I can manage.  They are usually logical extensions of previous work based on either odd results or developing solutions to problems that we encountered.  Often the solutions we develop to solve our specific issue have much broader application, so what is a small project can easily develop into something much bigger


I think this is typical for lab based researchers, but don't think it really applies to many other fields. 

[mamselle]

I have at least twenty "splinter spin-offs" from my humanities work.

I sometimes wonder if I'll get to finish them in this lifetime or if they'll survive me.

In fact, given the imbalances in STEM/STEAM funding, I suspect there are actually more of us doing humanities research with orphaned 'joeys' in the pouch than in the sciences.

But--and betty_p's moniker used to say, "I'm not bitter..."

;--》

M.

[Hegemony]

Yeah, the problem over here is not generating the ideas, but generating the time to do anything with the ideas.   

[youllneverwalkalone]

+1000 to what hegemony just wrote.

To the OP, in addition to what others have said (conferences, read widely, etc) I find peer reviewing and editorial work in general to be great sources for new ideas.

[Bede the Vulnerable]

I may be an outlier here.  But I have had my last three book ideas--including the one I'm working on next--while teaching.  In all three cases, I was looking for something to assign/recommend to students on an important topic for the course, and I realized that there wasn't anything.  This term I taught a new prep.  A student in the class asked me what he should read about Irish Americans and Basket Weaving.  I told him I'd check.  Turns out there's not a book on the topic, and only a couple dated articles.  I very recently pitched such a book to an acquisitions editor at Ivy U Press.  Within 36 hours, I had a request for a proposal from the series editors. 

I feel that the student should get extra credit . . .

[apophenia]

Hi all, hoping for some advice. I'm currently doing graduate work in the humanities, and struggling with this trend where I look at a text and do research, think I've hit on something new and interesting, but then find that it's already been done.

*Reading the Three Little Pigs*

>"Wow, this story really seems like an allegory for industrialization!"

Adjunct, Ann. (2007) "Industrialization before Industrialization: Labor, Nation, and National Security in The Three Little Pigs." Journal of Masonry in Literature.

Ann Adjunct, Direction State U. "Ann Adjunct not found."

>"Well, that's okay. I'm really more interested in the wolf in this story!"

Prokofiev, Sergei. (1920) "The Wolf as Antagonist in World Literature" Canis Lupus in World Mythology.

Hotshot, Big. (2018) "Special Issue: Wolves Again, but Sexier!" Journal of Invitation-Only Studies.

Ryder, Cottails. (2018) "Agreed!"

Is this sense of being scooped all the time normal? Is this just a sign of poor training? Am I doomed to be derivative forever?

[San Joaquin]

It's normal, and if you keep reading you will realize that perhaps you have something to add, or that something tangential could be developed in a new venue. 

Also, sometimes great research already written needs a periodic refresh to see if things have changed.

[youllneverwalkalone]

Hi all, hoping for some advice. I'm currently doing graduate work in the humanities, and struggling with this trend where I look at a text and do research, think I've hit on something new and interesting, but then find that it's already been done.

*Reading the Three Little Pigs*

>"Wow, this story really seems like an allegory for industrialization!"

Adjunct, Ann. (2007) "Industrialization before Industrialization: Labor, Nation, and National Security in The Three Little Pigs." Journal of Masonry in Literature.

Ann Adjunct, Direction State U. "Ann Adjunct not found."

>"Well, that's okay. I'm really more interested in the wolf in this story!"

Prokofiev, Sergei. (1920) "The Wolf as Antagonist in World Literature" Canis Lupus in World Mythology.

Hotshot, Big. (2018) "Special Issue: Wolves Again, but Sexier!" Journal of Invitation-Only Studies.

Ryder, Cottails. (2018) "Agreed!"

Is this sense of being scooped all the time normal? Is this just a sign of poor training? Am I doomed to be derivative forever?

In this day and age it's quite hard to come up with something that hasn't been said and done to some degree. It's no coincidence Google Scholar's motto is "standing on the shoulder of giants".

That said, you should look at glass half-full: as a graduate students your ideas are already so good that leading researchers in your field are working on them. Just keep going and you'll find your spot.