How can you develop research skills without a mentor?

In absence of a mentor, it will be hard, but not impossible. - try to be a part of peer group - read the literature related to your research area extensively, almost exhaustively. - Identify the gaps in current research. - If you are particularly interested in a topic, try to widen the frontiers by selecting a subtopic in it. - Directly contact those who did the pioneering research. Seek help & guidance. My experience is that they will reply to your emails if you ask genuine queries and do your basic study.

Rethink the word "mentor". It could be a person(s). It could also be the enormous knowledge pool available. Having said that, let your work help you seek out mentors in the field. Keep learning and upskilling from field experiences and general life experiences alike. 5 key points to consider are: 1. Use the six thinking hats approach as and when applicable. 2. Make sure all your research questions serve one overarching problem statement. 3. Check and recheck if your work answers the 5W1H of that one fundamental problem statement. 4. Deliberately seek out researches and conversations on contradictory perspectives. 5. Be authentic in enlisting the limitations of your research.

Plan a research strategy that requires you to use both online databases and physical libraries or archives. Then, treat each obstacle as an opportunity to learn a new skill. Accessing resources in everything from NARA to private research libraries to local historical societies for a passion project of mine was challenging, but it pushed me to find online resources for learning skills and also use librarians, archivists, and other resources. During my doctoral program, I also signed up for every training workshop in research I could find, whether it fit with my current needs or not. Years later, working with NARA documents that hadn't been touched in 100 years, I was glad I had taken a workshop on handling old manuscripts.

Something I wish I had done when I started a 10-year research passion project is establish a consistent index and file naming system for my primary sources. While I'm nearly finished with the book, I still get stalled regularly because I have to go hunting for a single document scan out of thousands. And there are times I can't recall if I even have the document or not. Had I taken the time to use the same structure in my notes and my file folders and kept a consistent naming structure, I'd probably be well into revising by now.

It is like preparing the plan and strategy of how to convince investors, that they should invest in your project. Thus setting up a good research plan, where the research objective needs to be as clear as possible, is one of the crucial factors.