In this question, JeffE says that academic research questions are firmly on topic. However, this question is about undergrad research and it seems the question could just as easily relate to graduate level research but it was closed as being off topic.
It seems either the rules are unclear or they are being followed inconsistently. Or, am I simply not seeing something that other people can see?
I think that I would not be nearly so categorical as Jeff—or perhaps I'm viewing what he perceives as "academic research" to be more expansive than my definition. Questions about how to prep for the Intel science fair would be off-topic, but asking how to design a research topic would certainly be fair game.
I think the correct rule to apply in such matters is if it's a question a PhD student (or higher) could reasonably ask. If so, then it's appropriate. So I very much disagree with the close votes, and would support reopening the question.
If the question is about research or anything research-related—e.g., publishing, presenting, literature, professional networking, etc.—it's on topic. If the question is not about research—coursework, specific software questions, generic career advice, homework, etc.—it's off topic.
Undergraduate research, industry research, amateur research; these are all research-related, and therefore on topic.
I think questions about research are on topic. I dislike the idea that any "magic word" (be it the dreaded 'homework' on other sites, or 'undergrad' here) automatically makes a question less valuable, off topic or not worthy of being answered.
Research, even research that will get published in good peer-reviewed journals, presented at conferences, etc. is not the exclusive domain of post-bachelors students and faculty. To give a brief personal example, if this site existed when I was an undergrad, I could have asked questions about how to deal with co-authors who weren't pulling their weight, how long it's reasonable to wait for a journal article to come back from review, what to expect from your first conference presentation, how to handle some drama around publishing, and how to handle some press coverage of your work.
The idea that I wasn't yet in graduate school shouldn't apply to any of that.
I believe that research questions should be on topic. I also believe that questions about "research" projects that are part of the requirements for an undergraduate degree are off topic. I feel this way because in my opinion these types of projects rarely make a sufficient contribution on interesting projects to warrant authorship on the resulting outputs (in the cases where there are any). In this way I don't think of these questions as research questions, but instead as undergraduate course work questions. These types of "undergraduate" questions can be on topic if they are asked in regards to transitioning from undergraduate to graduate researcher. In this way questions about working as an undergraduate in a research group (e.g., the US REU program) in preparation for graduate school would be on topic.
As for the argument that both an undergraduate and a Phd student might ask the same "question", in the case of proc/cons of choosing your own topic, the answers are very different.
