The Research Process by the University of Mississippi Libraries offers excellent advice, from topic selection and refinement to writing and editing. Nor can it be presented as one paraphrased and cited paragraph following another of the same and so on. It has to contain your own original thoughts and ideas . Make sure you have current sources, and a variety of them. This is a requirement for the research paper.
Plagiarism is either an act of ignorance or an act of desperation.
Neither is an excuse. Plagiarism is cheating. Plagiarism is cutting and pasting information obtained from other sources. Plagiarism is downloading papers from the Internet. Plagiarism is using someone else's paper and calling it your own work.