Learn · Research planning
Find your next research project without another brainstorm
You already have ideas. They are in notebooks, half-analysed datasets, and the AI chat that produced twelve more before lunch. The useful question is not “what could we study?” but “which gap survives checking?”
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.
We need more ideas.We need a way to choose.
Your idea list is not a strategy
This is not a discipline problem. Nothing in a normal workflow forces the check between an interesting idea and a defensible project, so every idea stays open and the newest one always looks strongest. A structure for deciding closes that loop: once the ideas share one map, they 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. Give each cell one of four labels:
| Mark | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Evidenced | Someone has done this; the evidence exists. Not a gap. |
| Assumed | Everyone believes it; check whether anyone has shown it. |
| Unknown | Open, but perhaps unanswerable or not worth the years. |
| Real gap | Open, answerable, and worth doing. Your candidate projects. |
The audit is the 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 a first map in an afternoon.
You have the ideas and the reading. What is missing is the structure that turns them into one defensible next project. The Research Strategy Kit lays out one core thesis, three axes, and twenty-seven possible project cells, then records whether each is evidenced, assumed, unknown, or a real gap. It structures the decision. The thesis, the axes, and the judgment on each cell remain yours.
See the Research Strategy Kit · €29Related guides
Chosen a cell but not yet a question? Turn a year of reading into a question takes a gap area to one finishable sentence. Then see how to write a scientific paper once the study is underway. More guides are on the Learn page.