Review the grading criteria for the assignment; these should come from the teacher, usually with the instructions for the assignment. If topics are provided for you to choose from, make your selection. If not, create a topic for your research paper, trying to keep the topic as narrow as possible. For example, researching the symbiotic relationship between clown fish and sea anemones is a fairly narrow topic. It focuses on one aspect of the clown fish's existence, while providing enough room to discuss other sub-topics, such as behavior patterns that differentiate clown fish from others, which may be attributable to the symbiotic relationship shared with the anemone.
Research the topic using your school library, local library and online sources. Credible sources for a research paper include textbooks, articles from professional journals and peer-reviewed sources. The "International Journal of Ichthyology" is a professional journal; "Time" magazine is not. Peer-reviewed sources are generally published articles based on scientific research that has been reviewed and approved or accepted by other professionals in that field.
Gather a list of sources you will use in your research paper, making certain that at least 90 percent of the sources are "scholarly" or from textbooks. All of the sources you select should have something to do with your research paper topic. Generally, if the paper is to be 10 to 15 pages in length, have a minimum of 10 scholarly sources used as references; for a 20 to 30 page research paper, 12 to 20 scholarly sources would be good.
Read the articles and information you have gathered, and make notes of key ideas, information or data from each source. To help with organization later, write each note on a separate index card, and on the back of the card write the source (journal, article, or book) and the page and paragraph location of the notes taken. This will save a ton of time and frustration later when compiling the paper. Keep your index cards in a safe place, and review them daily while working through the reading.
Lay the index cards out on a clean surface and begin to create the structure of your paper. Match index cards with similar or related information until all the index cards are sorted into multiple stacks. These stacks define the topics you can cover within your research paper.
Review the stacks, one at a time, and create a heading title for each. The heading title should be a word or short phrase that sums up the information on the cards. For example, a stack of cards containing notes on the physical properties of sea anemones could fall beneath the heading "Properties of Anemones" in your paper. Any notes that are your opinion, findings, conclusions or personal beliefs should be labeled as such and worked into the paper's conclusion.
Write an outline for your paper using the heading titles created in Step 6 as the main ideas in the outline; put them in a coherent order, and make the first main point "Introduction" and the last "Conclusions." Any information from the index cards or other reading can fall beneath these heading titles in the outline format. When finished, review the outline to see that it meets all grading criteria from the teacher's instructions. Also make sure there is enough information to meet the page requirement, and remember, the title page and references do not count in the page length.
Open a writing document in MS Word or another writing program. Set up the page according to the format, such as size-12 font, double-spaced, one-inch margins and header and footer, if required. Write the title page with the title information centered on the page, then hit Control and Enter to begin a new page and start writing on page two.
Write the paper, following your outline and using your index cards. Save the document frequently. Whenever a quote or information is used from the index cards, use the article and page info you wrote on the back of the index card to properly cite the source. When the conclusion is finished, hit Control and Enter to begin on the next new page and list your references according to the format for the paper. For example, if the paper format requires it, all references may need to be placed in alphabetical order or numbered according to in-text citations.
Read through your research paper several times, adjusting grammar, spelling or awkward sentences. Before finally saving and printing, go to the references page and check to be sure that any corrections you made in the body of the paper are reflected on the references page; in other words, if you added information to the paper, took something out, or moved text around in the paper, the reference number or order may have changed, so you will need to make sure the references match the final version of the paper.