01
Collect
Build your Zotero library
Save papers properly from day one, keep their metadata clean, and make citations a by-product of your workflow.
Welcome to Capstone
Start your research with a system, not a pile of tabs.
A practical guide to finding credible work, keeping track of what you read, writing technical documents, and making steady progress on an undergraduate research project.
Your first week
Three things to set up before the project gets busy.
A little structure now prevents the most common end-of-semester mess: missing sources, inaccessible PDFs, and a report held together by manual formatting.
The guide library
Small guides for the moments that matter.
Follow them in order when you are starting, or jump straight to the problem in front of you.
02
Access
Get papers through UTS
Use the UTS proxy with IEEE Xplore, the ACM Digital Library, and Zotero instead of getting stopped by publisher paywalls.
03
Write
Write technical work in LaTeX
Move beyond Microsoft Word with a reproducible writing setup in Overleaf or a local editor and compiler.
04
Understand
Read research with purpose
Turn searching and reading into decisions: what matters, what is credible, and what belongs in your project.
05
Progress
Make supervision meetings count
Arrive with evidence of progress, concrete questions, and a clear record of decisions and next actions.
06
Explain
Communicate your contribution
Explain the problem, evidence, method, and contribution so a technical reader can follow the argument.
A useful mental model
Research moves in a loop.
You will revisit each stage many times. Progress means the question, evidence, and explanation become sharper on every pass.
- 01 Ask Frame a question worth answering.
- 02 Find Search for credible, relevant work.
- 03 Make Build, test, compare, or analyse.
- 04 Explain Connect evidence to a clear claim.
How to use this site
The standard is not perfection. It is a traceable process.
Good research leaves a trail: where an idea came from, why a decision was made, what was tested, and what the evidence can actually support.
-
01
Use the guide while doing the task.
Open the relevant page beside Zotero, Overleaf, or the library—not three weeks later.
-
02
Bring the result to supervision.
A library, draft, diagram, experiment, or question gives us something concrete to improve.
-
03
Adapt the system to your project.
These are sensible defaults. Keep what helps you work clearly and consistently.
One last thing
You are not expected to know all of this already.
Capstone is where you learn the practice, not where you arrive fully formed. Start with the first step, show your work, and ask when something is unclear.