How to choose a research question?

“Science is a network—to make discoveries, follow the links of that network!” Says Jari Saramäki in his new post.
https://jarisaramaki.fi/2025/01/29/how-to-choose-a-research-question/

“Identify impactful and highly cited papers and try to figure out why they are important. Then, use Google Scholar or some other tool to find out who cites them; just look at the abstracts of the citing papers to get the big picture and then dive into the details of those pieces of work that sound relevant to you. This is, in my view, a more useful way than trying to read all the literature in detail, in some random order.

Everyone knows about Einstein’s theory of relativity, but few are aware of all the earlier efforts that went into developing ways to synchronize clocks across countries and continents using electric cables. Yet Einstein was undoubtedly familiar with this!”

🎞 Bonus video: Jari on Crafting Questions & Linking Thoughts: https://youtu.be/HwdZS6Fy8X8