There are no rigid rules to do research. Like cycling or swimming you do it by doing it. As you do it, you learn to do it better. Or give up. Analytical, experimental and other technical skills will prove useful. Knowledge of your field of research will save time. On many instances of doubt, common sense is sufficient and on many occasions of failure, perseverance a must. Extraordinary intelligence is welcome. Genius is rare.
Obviously, communication in all forms is essential for recognition and success. Research and semi-technical articles, monographs, formal and popular books, seminars, talks and lectures, incentive-less web writing, all could and should be done consistently. Staying motivated for enough years is crucial to enhance your chance for delivering, if not anything outstanding, something substantial. To give a weak analogy: Just a boundary or a six makes us literally a one hit wonder. Scoring a century, with or without boundaries or sixers, is still a commendable effort.
Can research method(s) or method(s) to do science be capsuled into an algorithm yielding assured success, irrespective of the user? Such attempts of algorithms are mostly met with counter examples of scientific advancements that happened without practicing those algorithms. To reproduce from Cosma’s Scientific Method note, a quote by Sir Peter Medawar:
If the purpose of scientific methodology is to prescribe or expound a system of inquiry or even a code of practice for scientific behavior, then scientists seem to be able to get on very well without it. Most scientists receive no tuition in scientific method, but those who have been instructed perform no better as scientists than those who have not. Of what other branch of learning can it be said that it gives its proficients no advantage; that it need not be taught or, if taught, need not be learned?
Expounding a theory is to propose and explain a theory.
For Example: The businessman expounded the idea of a new kind of digital learning before the group of investors.
