Learn · Research planning

How to find your next research project: turn a field into a map

The problem is rarely too few ideas. It is that you have no way to choose between them. Here is how to turn a field into a map you can actually decide from, and how to tell a real gap from one you only assumed.

After this guide you will be able to:

Lay a field out as a small, decidable map instead of a list.
Audit each part as evidenced, assumed, unknown, or a real gap.
Pick a next project you can defend, not just the newest idea.

Why more ideas don't help

Ideas collect in notebooks. Datasets sit half-analysed. Papers wait as drafts, and every AI chat adds five more directions. More input is not what is missing. What is missing is a structure for deciding, so the ideas stop competing and start sorting themselves.

The method: one thesis, a few axes, a grid

Structure beats brainstorming. Do it in three moves.

Name one core thesis. The single claim your field, or your corner of it, turns on.
Choose a few axes. The two or three dimensions along which that thesis varies: population, method, mechanism, setting, whatever your field cuts by.
Fill the grid. Each combination of axis values is a cell, a possible project. Now you are looking at the space, not a pile of ideas.

Then audit every cell

This is the step that turns a map into a decision. Mark each cell honestly:

Mark	Meaning
Evidenced	Someone has done this; the evidence exists. Not a gap.
Assumed	Everyone believes it, but check whether anyone has actually shown it.
Unknown	Genuinely open, but maybe unanswerable or not worth it.
Real gap	Open, answerable, and worth doing. Your candidate projects.

The audit is the whole point. A gap you only assumed is where wasted years go: you build a project on "no one has looked at this", and a reviewer finds the three papers that did. Marking each cell forces the check before you commit.

Why the map is worth the hour. A finished map does two jobs at once. It shows you the real gaps, and it shows a supervisor or a funder that you looked at the whole field before choosing, which is exactly the case a grant has to make.

Build the map, audited, in an afternoon.

You have the ideas and the reading. What you do not have is the structure that turns them into one defensible next project. That is not a lack of thinking: nothing in a normal workflow makes you lay the field out and check each cell. The Research Domain Cube is that structure, built: one core thesis, three axes, twenty-seven project cells, each audited as evidenced, assumed, unknown, or a real field gap. It structures and records the decision. It does not decide the science for you. The thesis, the axes, and the call on each cell stay yours.

See the Research Domain Cube · €29

Related guides

See also how to write a scientific paper once you have chosen the project. More guides are on the Learn page.