The bane of college students everywhere, and perhaps the root of all evil, research papers are when you go find stuff that someone else with a higher degree than you has already done, and then you paraphrase it. All but one of my research papers in my college career have been like this. I actually learned something from the one exception. You have to start research papers far in advance, because you will be spending a damned long time at the library looking for information that they inevitably will not have, because the universe is sadistic like that.