Light bulb moment!

Light bulb moment = a moment at which an idea or concept all at once becomes clear or at which a new perspective on an existing idea or concept opens.

In the course of my course work I've taken a couple of research methods courses in the counseling and educational psychology curriculum at TAMU-CC. During one such course my classmates were telling me about how they arrived at their dissertation topics: they look at the 'areas for further research' sections of papers and presentations in their field. I thought this was an interesting idea (and felt a little dense for not having recognized the utility of this sections of a paper before) but really hadn't put it into practice until today as I was browsing around in my bibliographies searching for ideas to propose for my qualifying exam (which consists essentially of the literature review and methodology chapters of a dissertation) and/or dissertation.

In re-reading this section of a couple of the most intriguing papers I read last semester I realized something new about writing up research: for those of us who employ this method of idea selection, it is much better to be as specific as possible about the paths that follow-up research should/could take. For instance, it would be much more helpful to a reader if an author said, "Further research reviewing the impact of instant messaging presence indicators in co-located scientists and multimodal communication among remotely located scientists would provide insight into how instant messaging works in informal scholarly scientific communication" than to say something like someone should examine further the impact of instant messaging on scholarly communication.

Yet another way in which a writing should always consider the audience for whom they're writing.