Introduction

Guidance about conducting scientific research.

Scientists produce deliverables like publications and software artifacts. Creating the deliverables assumes many research skills and awareness of procedural principles. The goal of this list is to make these assumed skills and principles explicit.

For example, a research paper is a specialized form of writing. Junior researchers, who want to write research papers, must first internalize the 'specification' of a research paper. Ideally, junior researchers learn these skills during doctoral studies. However, in reality, doctoral study experiences vary wildly in, e.g., environment and mentorship quality. Therefore, this collection provides a standardizing public resource, for junior researchers and advisors, that is independent of immediate circumstances. Most entries are drawn from computer science.

This list is related to other official awesome lists (like scientific writing and research tools), but is unique in its emphasis of guidance over technology. There are also several complementary web collections¹ mostly written by a single author. In contrast, this list presents advice from multiple experts, in rich formats, and enables collaborative refinement over time. Most list items are open access (excluding books).