I know about one very nice book on Research, written by one of the RG members Ian Kennedy, who has also taken inputs from other RG members ! It was about to be published, you can refer to that, according to me, it has practically covered all aspects of doing research. Research takes its own twists and turns, which teach you a lot !!

Thank you Djamel. I actually did not. I am looking for books in which the research skills are well illustrated and discussed. Self-learning is great, I think that was the case with most of the researchers.

I know about one very nice book on Research, written by one of the RG members Ian Kennedy, who has also taken inputs from other RG members ! It was about to be published, you can refer to that, according to me, it has practically covered all aspects of doing research. Research takes its own twists and turns, which teach you a lot !!

@Djamel, your harsh comment made me think of the original question, which is concerned with effective research. We learn walking by doing, obviously, so far so good. But there is far more to learn than just the step after step approach that most of us apply. If you check out Scholar you'll find literature on how to walk effectively for improving health, speed and other factors of life. The same holds for research. I second Jaya's comments on Ian's manuscript, which I had the pleasure to read.

Of course, @Faysal, you could have searched for yourself with [effective "research methods"]. For computing I recommend Joan Oates' work on researching computing and information systems.

Not the book but perhaps could be useful:

http://aclinks.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/the-three-golden-rules-for-successful-scientific-research-by-e-w-dijkstra/