In the paper, you could discuss the following:1)  The  rationale  for  the  research  question.  Why  is  it  potentially  important?  What  could  we learn from it?2)  How  were  you  planning  to  solve  the  research  question  (methodology)?  You  could  also discuss the pros and cons of various research methodologies in history.3)  Summary of what your bibliographic search yielded. What did your preliminary search tell us about the state of research in the subfield that you chose and the topic that you chose? Are there gaps in the research that could be filled by further studies? 4)  You could summarize the abstracts of some of the located items, i.e. According to Smith (2015), Big Science projects exploded in the Gulf starting in 2006, etc.