A large majority of Wikipedia contributors have self-identified as male on their profiles and in several studies.
I never thought about this before. I knew that Wikipedia would be biased because everything is. However, I never thought to consider how specifically the demographics of Wikipedia editors could subtly sway the articles. That is very interesting and eye-opening.
Very specific focus; not useful for a general or broad overview of a topic
Journals can be very helpful but also very annoying because of this. When writing papers, finding a good journal on a topic can sometimes feel like finding a needle in a haystack. That's not because journals as a format are bad a whole, but because so many of them are so focused on one area of the topic that they are essentially useless as sources for the paper. It also depends on the topic. Certain topics will have an abundance of journals while others won't have many. In the cases where the topic is niche, sometimes I just pray that there is at least one journal written about the specific topic I am researching.
. Knowing what you want to research will help keep you from getting distracted by ideas that may be interesting, but are only loosely related to your topic.
This is really important to me. If I do not make my research topic very specific, I end up going way too in-depth. It is hard to strike the balance, though. There have been times where I have focused my research on something too niche or specific and have been forced to broaden my scope.
Research is an ongoing cycle of questions and answers, which can quickly become very complex.
Every time I research a topic, it always ends up leading me down rabbit holes. It reminds me of the SIFT method we learned about. The STOP step has been very helpful for me, since when I research and look for sources I tend to end up getting off track investigating other things. I have to remind myself to focus on the task at hand and take a moment to recenter and decide if investigating something further would actually prove beneficial to me or if it would just end up being a waste of energy.