Students feel intimidated and bewildered when asked to write a research paper. Most of the students entering college or university are unprepared to write in a professional way. Academic research and writing at junior school or college level is not the similar that we are asked to do at higher level. Students are used to informal writing disregarding the style, format, grammar and other requisites of professional writing. Writing a research paper requires extreme planning and good writing skills.

If you have are asked to write a good research paper on a specific topic. It can be the most intricate for you to analyze what constitutes good research paper. If you are a novice in the field of research writing, then you need to have a clear understanding regarding the formal and informal research paper. Your instructor has assigned you to write a research paper but you are pondering over whether to opt for formal or informal research paper for getting excellent grades and accomplishment.
For seeking good grades always opt for writing formal research paper for it is a more professional writing. Informal research paper is also persuasive and informative like formal research paper but generally follows less rigid structure than the formal one. It has a relaxed expression of opinion, observation and interpretation. Informal research paper tends to be more personal and direct conversational style.

The formal research paper is more objective and non personal in style. It has a standard format that researchers are bound to follow. It starts from the broad perspective, from general to specific and then back to the general. Its format consists of the following parts:

I. Abstract
It incorporates the essence of entire formal research paper from basic introduction to the collection of data, analysis, interpretation, conclusion and recommendations.

II. The Introduction
It provides the information and basics relevant with the research statement.

III. Data collection
This part describes the methods employed to scan and gather data. It tells whether the data was collected through survey, observation or experimentation. Data collected can be either qualitative, quantitative or both.

IV. Analysis
This is the result section of the analyzed data which uses multiple analytical tools.

V. The discussion part
This section of the research paper describes what you have learnt from the analysis. What is your research statement? What are your analytical results and other arguments in support of the thesis statement?

VI. The Conclusion and Recommendations
This section deals with inference of the analytical results and arguments. In addition to conclusion this section also provides guidelines for further research on the topic.

Whether you write formal or informal research paper there are a number of commonalities and differences. Formal research paper can fetch you the better results and professional excellence than the informal one.