#Research for Semi-Scholarly Articles

##General

Semi-scholarly article writing is distinguished from more academic writing, by the amount of time spent on research, time spent perfecting the article, and the lack of preparation for submission to a particular academic journal. The goal is scholarly but creative self-publication. There is need to adopt any particular form, or meet any specific external requirement. It is an aesthetic but intellectual production, with no judge other than the author.

###Timeline
* Phase I might take a few days of focused writing.
* Phase II and III collection might take a day. Ingestion and digestion might take a week- however the goal is to identify _*value*_ and quickly cast aside anything that won't help the paper.
* Phase IV might take a couple days to a week. This will likely consist of quickly rewriting, then polishing. 
* Phase V is simply the self-publication phase.

Using this approach, you should be able to produce an article no less than once per month.


##Phase I. Writing, Brainstorming, Idea formation, Exhaustive Reductionism.

* Write all initial and original ideas before doing any research.
* Think it through, as if no research had ever been conducted, and no methodology was determined. You are the first; you are the trail-blazer of this topic, and are building the field from scratch.
* Rapidly destroy and replace any idea that doesn't feel right, but expand as well.
* Goal is the best reductionism possible using your own mind. Following that, think about what is artful. What is the gestalt involved? How would religion approach it? 
* Once the efflux of ideas is complete, or stagnation occurs, move to phase II.


##Phase II. Collection, and Incubation. Find Key Theories, Build a Tree of Knowledge, Reflect.

* First use the web to find the key theories and contributors. Take it from an interdisciplinary approach. What does psychology say about this? How about mathematics? How about ethics, business, political science, biology, or economics? How do other cultures see it? All you are doing here is building a comprehensive understanding of all that has been done on the topic.
* Read reference entries for each of the promising areas above. Read general encyclopedias, dictionaries, then move to specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias.

##Phase III. Journal research.

* What are the best articles, what do you think is most important. You are not going to read every article... Just read those that are key based on the views of experts, and then choose and read those you think are important.

##Phase IV. Rewriting.

* In this phase, you just rewrite based on your expanded view from the writing. YOu should treat this as though  you are creating a semi conclusive view. You will find your originality intact because of how you started the process, yet you will have formed something based on a combination of your experience, and the experience of many others (hopefully using everything that matters and nothing else).


##Phase V. Editing and Publication.

* At this point you should have at least one other person read the paper, who would provide you honest advice, and will reliably help readability.
