How to come to know that you have done some thing non-trivial in the research? I am a PhD student. I was working on some problem from last 5-6 months and some days I was able to solve it. I discuss with my research team including my research supervisor. I told them my idea and approach and then they discuss for 40-50 minute and asked me few questions and I gave them answers. They ask me to combine it with my previous smaller result and told me that it is a complete research paper. but here is a problem, I have seen some of the research papers written by some senior colleagues in my research field and with respect those people my research problem and its solution seems less significant. I am not comparing myself with them but with respect to these top researchers my work seems small. Some time I feel that I have done something non-trivial and some time I feel like my research work in trivial.


  Question : How to come to know that you have done some thing non-trivial in the research? One way is to read the research papers of others. What are other ways?
In a recent project I felt that I had somewhat trivial results, and that I needed to add more to it before writing the paper. The new steps turned out to be so non-trivial, and take so long time, that I decided to write up what I had in the meantime. By putting the work so far in the form of a proper paper - you know, with an introduction that attempts to convince others that the work is interesting and worthwhile - I ended up convincing myself that the results were non-trivial and made for a good paper already.

In hindsight I had worked on related stuff long enough that my results seemed less novel to me than they would to another person. So, my advice is to write it up, and trust your supervisor.