There is no one foolproof way of getting ideas for papers. You have to find the ways that work for you. In the first part of this chapter, we present you with different ways in which you can develop ideas for your research projects. Of course, it is not enough to have ideas. To be a successful researcher, you also need the ability to evaluate your ideas and find out whether they are good ones. You do not want to waste your time on bad ideas. The second part of this chapter deals with the evaluation of your ideas. And once you have come to the conclusion that yours is a wonderful idea, it will be important for you to sell your idea. How do you convince others that your planned study is one that is worthwhile to conduct, and how do you convince an editor of a journal and reviewers that your paper is worth publishing? Especially creative ideas are often hard to sell. Therefore, the third part of this chapter shows you some ways to sell your ideas.

GENERATING IDEAS

Generating Ideas by Consulting with Others

In many colleges and universities, the faculty is among the most underutilized of resources. In the senior author's first semester of teaching at Yale, he set aside three hours each week for office hours. He encouraged – sometimes he practically begged – students to come see him during those hours for advice on papers, projects, and the like.