You may be one of those students
for whom doing the research is more fun than writing the paper. If
so, you are not alone,
but putting a good research paper together can be much easier if you
know some of the conventions and rules of style and organization
that scientists and others use.
To help you over at least one hump of putting your
paper together, I've collected a list of suggestions that may help you
avoid some of the mistakes that many students make on their first first
drafts. The hints are grouped into several categories:
These guidelines are intended for Hampshire students
working on papers for 100 level courses or Division I exams in biological
sciences, but much of the information is of broad interest to students
working at other levels and on other topics.
1. INTRODUCTION. It is helpful to begin your
paper by telling the reader what the paper is about and how you are
going to address that topic. If you are interested in examining a hypothesis
that grew out of your study of the literature, your research project,
or just life, state that hypothesis early in the introduction. Don't
save it as a surprise.
You should also tell the reader about the kinds of
questions being discussed in the literature. You may have had a difficult
time focusing on just one in this paper. Here is the place to talk about
the larger context that makes the focus of your paper important. Include
here some citations to authors whose works helped you understand these
Look at the two paragraphs that start this page: the
first tells you what this handout is about; the second says what I'm
going to include in it--even to the extent of listing the section headings
in order of their appearance. Such a listing isn't always necessary,
but it is often worth considering.
Start to notice the organization of the research articles
you read that you find pretty clear and reasonably easy to read. You're
not allowed to steal ideas or content, but you are allowed to snitch
elements of writing strategies.
2. REPORTING ON AN EXPERIMENT YOU CARRIED OUT.
If you are writing about a lab or field research project you did, be
as detailed in describing the METHODS as you would like people to be
in a paper whose method you try to duplicate. Identify the instruments
you used by brand and model names or numbers; identify the chemicals
and amounts that were used or were measured; if you used assays or tests,
name and describe them; give full information about your subjects, describe
your experimental design and the rationale for it (what were your controls
and what did those controls control for?).
When reporting on your own study, there is no one
rule about when to keep the categories of RESULTS, DISCUSSION, and CONCLUSIONS
as three separate sections and when to combine them, but let me list
a. Graphs and tables (figures) summarizing the results
should be in the results section. Raw data sheets are generally not
included in a paper. However the figures alone cannot constitute the
results section. Each figure must be mentioned and described in the
text. In fact, a simple rule of thumb is that a person ought to be
able to understand the gist of your results without looking at the
figures and, conversely, a person should be able to look just at the
figures and know pretty much what you found (more about that under
the section on graph and table conventions).
b. The RESULTS section describes your results, the
DISCUSSION section discusses them. Think about the difference. Sometimes
it is difficult to separate the description from the discussion and
you can include both in the same section. But remember to do both
c. If you have a detailed discussion section, it
probably includes your conclusion and you don't need a separate section
to do that. Some papers end with a list of findings or conclusions,
but this is a matter of style or convention in certain journals.
d. One interesting role of a DISCUSSION section is
to allow you to speculate about the significance of the results you
found in your study to understanding larger questions (you can refer
to other studies at this point) or to propose additional work that
you feel your results suggest. This type of discussion usually follows
a more focused discussion of the results themselves and how strong
(or significant) you believe them to be.
3. WRITING A LITERATURE-BASED PAPER. Writing
a review of research done by others does not mean summarizing everything
that has been written on the subject. You still need to narrow down
to one or a few related questions.
- One format for a Division I paper in Natural
Science at Hampshire is to start with the kind of introduction
- Introduce the topic that interests you (with
some citations to the general literature you've read).
- Add to that some of the interesting questions
raised for you or by you as you read and thought more about this
topic (you may have additional citations here to articles or books
you read that really aren't going to fit well into the more focused
part of the paper; still it's important to show what reading influenced
your ideas (it's also a way to show us what reading you have done).
- Then tell the reader which of those questions
you are going to address in your paper.
- End the introduction by explaining how you've
organized the paper to address that question.
- You may say that you've included a short background
section on (explain what it's about) followed by
- a detailed analysis of ## studies (for a 100
level course paper that number will probably be from 2-4). You
might characterize each of the studies in a sentence or two (maybe
each takes a different approach to addressing the question--such
as a case study, an experimental study, and an epidemiological
study) and you'll conclude by
- proposing, on the basis of your analysis, an
experimental question you'd like to see addressed next and an
explanation of how you would design that study in a way that addresses
some of the shortcomings of those you've reviewed earlier.
- If you're including a background section,
design it so that it will help you and your readers better understand
the studies you will discuss. Think about the information you wish
you had before you started reading the more specialized papers. In
this section you will probably cite text book material.
Avoid copying or paraphrasing text material and just tagging on a
citation at the end of each paragraph. Read the section below on proper
citation form, "voice," and plagiarism.
We want to know what you understand not what the authors of the text
understand. If you find anything confusing, just say so (Badger
and Fox (1998) give what they called a vectorial analysis of ECG potentials.
I think the idea of this is to understand more about what the ECG
shows about how the heart is functioning, but I couldn't quite follow
what they said.)--that will give us a chance to help you understand
- Then focus on several studies in the
primary literature, and write analytical
summaries of them. Address the questions being asked, how
the study was designed to address those questions, and how they
analyzed the data.
- One way to end such a paper is to summarize
what conclusions you think can be stated on the basis of the studies
you've reviewed (reminding us of strengths and limitations of experimental
design and data) how well supported or how broadly applicable these
Then propose in some detail a study you would to see carried out that
addresses one of the questions raised in your review.
- Your bibliography should include complete
citations of all the sources you referred to in your text. Check below
for guidelines about constructing bibliographies.
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VOICE, PROPER CITATION
FORMS, AND PLAGIARISM
1. VOICE. What you are really striving for in
your writing is to distinguish your voice or your perspective from those
of your sources. If you are using a source to support an argument you
are making, say so. Tell the reader why you think this evidence is convincing
(or not). But don't ignore opposing views; explain the ways in which
their evidence or arguments fail to support their conclusions. Comment
on the information from the source or use it to show what others think
of your argument. As you find more ways to define your voice, you'll
find your thinking and your writing will become clearer.
You may have been told to avoid using first person in formal writing.
Forget about that for now. We'd like you to experiment with ways to
make your voice clear, and if that means saying, "I'm interested
in this subject because......" then we want to hear that. Through
your revisions, we'll make suggestions of other strategies if you seem
to be overusing first person.
Your voice will emerge clearly if you are careful to
cite authors whose evidence or ideas you are using. The section below
includes some helpful hints about techniques for distinguishing your
voice from your sources and how to cite references in your paper:
2. CITATION CONVENTIONS
A. An example of how and how not to include
references to the literature in your text:
NO. Studies at a major research hospital
have shown that liquid protein diets can result in weight losses of
up to 15 pounds a week (Fat and Blubber, 1969). [Several things
make this a bit sloppy: it's not clear if Fatt and Blubber did the
study so that you had a chance to evaluate the strength of the evidence
yourself or if they just allude d to someone else's work and you are
taking it for granted that their representation of this study is full
and accurate. We can't tell from this if it represents results from
a lot of subjects and we know nothing about the identity or history
of the subjects. What percentage of their weight was actually lost,
what period of time were they on this diet?]
YES Fatt and Blubber (1969) observed a group
of six men who were confined in a dietary clinic at the Chicago Cardiology
Clinic for eight weeks. All six men were described as "morbidly obese."
This term was used by Fatt and Blubber to indicate that none of the
subjects weighed less than 340 lbs. upon entry to the clinic. For
two of these men, weight losses of 15 pounds were observed during
the first week of a six week liquid protein diet of 800 kcal per day.
Weight losses subsequent to that week are reported to have leveled
off to 1.5-4 pounds per week. * [This would be a good point for
your voice to be heard. Comment about ways in which this study supports
your hypothesis or specific ways in which it is limited or insufficient.
You might suggest a study that could build on and improve this one
or use this as a transition to talk about another study that does
address something that is missing here.]
B. Citations not read. If you want to mention
a study you read about but did not actually read, your text reference
"Collins (as reported by Fatt and Blubber,
1969), concludes that...."
The bibliography would include the Fatt and Blubber
reference, not the Collins one.
C. Multiple authors. If an article was written
by 2 or 3 authors, use all the names when referring to them in your
text; if three or more authors are listed, you can shorten them as (Lowry
et al, 1986). (You can use either convention for three names.)
D.Effective use of quotes. THERE ARE TIMES WHEN
IT IS USEFUL TO QUOTE A SOURCE DIRECTLY, BUT IN SCIENTIFIC WRITING,
THOSE TIMES ARE RARE.
- Don't use quotes just because you think the author
says something so much better than you think you can. It probably
isn't true. The author you are quoting wrote something that was intended
to fit into another text and to support or illustrate the point that
she or he was making. You are using ideas you find in many sources
and from your own investigation to develop your own text and support
and illustrate a different set of points than any of the authors you
- Sometimes when you say, "But the author says it
so much better than I can." you really mean that there is something
in the quote you don't quite understand so you don't know how to or
whether to include it. Ask yourself if this is true. If it is, find
out what you don't understand; test yourself by explaining it to someone
else. After you've explained it, write down what you said.
This is a good start and is much better than putting
down a quote that may be inappropriate or that you didn't really know
how to use. If you just can't figure it out and can't find me or someone
else to help, leave it out until you learn more about it or say (write)
that you didn't understand it.
- If a short phrase is common usage or is "truly"
obvious, it is not necessary to quote. For instance, if you believe
that further work needs to be done before one can confidently say
that eliminating cholesterol from the diet will lower the risk of
heart disease and you have demonstrated this by evaluating several
studies that you have shown have weaknesses that might have influenced
the results (thereby making the conclusions drawn either overblown
or inappropriate), then just say that further work needs to be done.
It is not necessary to quote the phrase "further work needs to be
done," unless you want to point out that a particular author understands
that her/his work was not conclusive.
- There are times in scientific writing when using
a quote is useful. If someone has said something so outlandish that
you want to make certain your readers know that it isn't just your
interpretation of that author that is odd, then quote the appropriate
words. If there is a debate in the literature that you believe is
based on the language used, give examples to illustrate that. If you
are particularly inspired by a statement or description, use it, but
be very sparing in this use.
- Never try to fit in a quote so that it works in
smoothly with your writing. If I were to tell you that "students usually
hand in an exact typed version of their first hand written drafts."
(Lowry, 1998), you have no way of knowing whether Lowry was talking
about six students in a writing class at Amherst Regional High School
or about a study of 45,569 first year college writing students sampled
randomly from 15 four year liberal arts colleges over a period of
ten years. What's more important, you don't know whether or not
I know that. It sounds as though I am stating a universal truth
that must be believed because someone published it somewhere.
Why is a statement more believable because someone
managed to get it printed by a publisher than it would be if I had
just said it? It isn't. What is important is, what's behind that statement?
What is the evidence that it is so?
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CONSULT THE STUDENT HANDBOOK TO READ THE
FORMAL DEFINITION OF PLAGIARISM AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF PLAGIARIZING.
Plagiarism is the most serious academic crime possible, and ignorance
of the rules is not considered an excuse for it. But it's not difficult
to avoid if you know what it is and appropriate citation conventions.
Many students aren't quite certain what constitutes
plagiarism and use one of two techniques to avoid it: "paraphrasing"
and "quoting." The first of these is not correct and is still,
technically, plagiarism; the second is correct, but is not an effective
writing technique unless used sparingly.
a. Paraphrasing. Just changing a few words
around or leaving a few words out without properly citing the source
of those words is still plagiarism. The key thing is that you do not
want to misrepresent where your ideas came from; the exact words are
important, but they are secondary to the ideas.
b. Quoting. If you quote directly and footnote
that quote, you have avoided plagiarism, but you may have weakened
your presentation. The reader is interested in your ideas and how
they developed from your observations and from the ideas of others;
if they wanted to read what someone else says on the subject, they'd
be better off reading that author's work directly. Also, since your
style probably differs from the author whose work you are quoting,
it makes for an awkward and jumpy writing style when you try to glue
them together and make it sound as though one person wrote it all.
In class I will give you a one page example (prepared,
I believe by Will Ryan of the Writing Center) that illustrates the difference
between a plagiarized summary and a legitimate summary. This reference
to Will Ryan, by the way, is an inadequate indication of where I got
this material, but it does indicate that it is not mine, and I will
work on finding the correct source.
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BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND FOOTNOTES
1. BIBLIOGRAPHIES. Any research paper you hand
in (even a first draft) should contain a bibliography which includes
all the articles and books you referred to in the text. The assumption
is that you have read these articles and the appropriate sections of
the books. The bibliography should not include references not mentioned
in the text or references you have not actually read.
Listed below are some helpful hints about how to construct
A. Bibliographic conventions. Use any standard
style such as the ones you find in the backs of papers you are reading.
Once you decide on one style, stick to it for all your references.
The only thing I insist on is that you include the title and the first
and last page numbers in your bibliography; not all referencing systems
I prefer the APA (American
Psychological Association) style, because it gives the reader
enough information in the text to keep track of the authors you cite
and how recently the work was published. The bibliography then tells
you the title and exactly where it is published. So that's the style
I illustrate here.
Fatt, F.I. and D.G.Blubber (1996) Effects of a
six week liquid protein diet on morbidly obese men, Am. J. of Clin.
In this example, the 45 refers to the volume
number of the journal. Usually each year of a journal gets its own
volume number. It is often underlined or italicized or made bold to
set it apart from the page numbers. The number in parenthesis is the
issue number for that year. Not all references have it and it isn't
necessary to include. If you use this convention, you can list the
references alphabetically by last name of the first author. Then when
you refer to that source in the text you can say
"Fatt and Katz (1990) examined the responses
of six...." or
"The weights of six men on a liquid diet were followed
(Fatt and Katz (1990)..."
Some people prefer to use citation numbers in the
text (I don't because I like to see who did the work without having
to turn to the back all the time):
"One study (6) examined the responses of six men
to a liquid protein diet."
or use superscript small numbers 6. In this case,
the bibliography would list the references in order of their first
appearance, and the entries would be numbered. Fatt and Katz would
be reference #6.
When more than three authors occur, you may refer
to them in the text as first author followed by et al. But in the
Bibliography, never use et al. Instead, include all the authors'
names. Once you become familiar with a field, you can often tell something
about the nature of the work by seeing who some of the authors are.
The name of the major author (head of the lab for instance) usually
appears either first or last. So it's important to be able to find
reference to all the authors in your bibliography.
B. Edited books. Sometimes a technical
book was organized by one or more people (editors) but individual
sections or chapters were written by others. In that case, you can
cite the authors of the individual chapters and treat their chapter
as an article. In the bibliography, list it under the authors' names
and indicate the year of publication, title of the article, name of
the book, and names of the editors.
C. References not cited. If you find you have
collected or read a lot of articles or books that just don't fit into
your paper but you'd like your reader to know of them, include a separate
listing called "Sources of Interest not Cited in Text" or "Additional
References" or something like that.
2. FOOTNOTES. In scientific research articles,
footnotes are usually reserved for definitions, special asides or explanations,
or equations that would sound cumbersome if they were included in the
regular text. Any direct quotes (of which there should be few if any)
should be footnoted. Usually footnotes are found at the bottom of the
page. Sometimes in longer papers they are collected together in a section
at the back before the bibliography. A footnote section at the back
of a paper is not the same as a bibliography. You still need a bibliography.
3. CITING WEB SITES. There isn't one standardized
approach for citing web sites in your text, but a number of style manuals
have suggestions. It isn't sufficient to put only the URL in the bibliography.
If the site has an author, use the same fomat suggested above in your
text (Author's last name or names, date of publication). Unfortunately
that information isn't always available, but do what you can. You might
have to use Name of Organization instead of author's name and you might
not even find a date. If no date is given for when the site was created
or updated, put the date when YOU read it (accessed November 28, 2000).
University Press on-line style book gives up-to-date guidance about
citing web sources. The idea is to indicate something about the value
of the source. The
University of Maryland University College has a web page that's
a good guide for evaluating the quality of Internet resources. Check
it out. Get in the habit of asking yourself lots of questions and seeing
if you can find answers on the site you're using.
- Is this a web page that a 6th grader put together
for a project?
- Is it a commerical site trying to sell something?
- Is it from a peer review on-line journal?
- Is it, as below, information from the Centers for
E. Kirk, Electronic and Distance Education Librarian at Johns Hopkins
University has a more detailed site about assessing electronic resources.
The inquiring mind needs to know. Your citations should
look something like this if you have all the information.
Candor WebTech, (updated April 14, 2000). Pain on
the inner side of the knee. Drug Base Medical Information. http://www.candor.com/services
CDC (1998). The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the United
States, 1997-1998. The Centers for Disease Control. http://www.cdc.gov/nchstp/hiv_aids/pubs/facts/hivrepfs.htm
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COMMON WORD AND PUNCTUATION
Consult a writing book like "Elements
of Style" Strunk and White for a more complete listing. I'll
just list my favorite here.
- It's always means it is. The possessive form
of "it is" is "its" with no apostrophe.
- Effect is usually a noun: "The effect
of eating canned tuna is to make my cat sleep more."
- Affect is usually a verb: "When my
cat eats canned tuna, it affects how long he sleeps."
- The following two cases are exceptions to this
rule: "Effect" is used as a verb meaning "to cause something
like a change": "The new rule effected a change in the structure
of the committee." "Affect is used as a noun meaning psychological
appearance: "He had a morose affect."
- "Data" is a plural word:
"The data support her hypothesis." If you want to refer
to just one number, you can talk about a single data point. (I know!
Computer people use data as a singular noun, but it isn't.)