Dealing with unsupervised research as novice researcher
Networking would be my run-to. I'm sure you can find someone that knows enough on the topic to help guide you. 

I had a research paper that I had to do for my programming degree and I had to research programming for different platforms, in my case, web flash games in comparison to mobile game development. 

I knew nothing about the software, code language, or how the 2 different platforms varied in the game industry so instead of just reading other papers, textbooks, and videos I went on to website where these games were found and left comments asking for the Devs to contact me, I contact the site owners themselves about getting into contact with one of their Devs, and I even posted an ad on Craigslist (I did actually find someone that taught courses in the subject though Craigslist and he was the best source I found). 

You really just need to ask around and it's easier to find people than you may think as long as you put effort into it.