___________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION TO THE RESEARCH PAPER ___________________________________________________________________ WHAT A RESEARCH PAPER IS: (1) IT SYNTHESIZES YOUR DISCOVERIES ABOUT A TOPIC AND YOUR EVALUATION OF THESE DISCOVERIES. The discoveries consist in large part of the ideas, knowledge, and actual words of experts in the field you have investigated. But all that would be valueless in a research paper unless you weighed the discoveries you made and drew conclusions from them. Notice that you are very much involved in this definition of what a research paper is, for it is writing that reflects your own ideas as much as those of anyone else who has written on the subject. Selecting information to use is a personal process, deciding how to approach this information, developing a point of view toward it, and, finally, choosing your own words to present it, are all highly personal activities. (2) IT IS A WORK THAT SHOWS YOUR ORIGINALITY. The paper resulting from your studies, evaluation, and synthesis will be a totally new creation, something that has originated with you. True, you will have put many hours of thought and much effort into a research paper that takes only a short time to read. But it is a real art to make the difficult appear easy, not to let an audience be aware of preparation and practice. Those papers that read most easily are often the result of the most work--and the fact that you have created an original paper will show. (3) IT ACKNOWLEDGES ALL SOURCES THAT HAVE BEEN USED. Though your research paper is a new and original work, you will have consulted a number of sources in preparing it, and you will certainly want to acknowledge those sources. There are several ways a writer can provide documentation and acknowledgment in the research paper. WHAT A RESEARCH PAPER IS NOT: (1) A SUMMARY OF AN ARTICLE OR A BOOK IS NOT A RESEARCH PAPER. A single source does not permit you to be selective of materials and does not lead you to exercise judgement. Furthermore, since summaries usually follow the order of the original contents, not even the organization can be your own. Summaries of written (or visual or audible) materials have their own uses, but substituting them for a research paper is not one of the uses. (2) THE IDEAS OF OTHERS, REPEATED UNCRITICALLY, DO NOT MAKE A RESEARCH PAPER. If you are satisfied to repeat the conclusion of other people without weighing them against what you have learned, you will perhaps end up producing a satisfactory "report" of those findings. A biography of someone you do not know falls into this category of "report," unless you have been able to discover new information about the person or otherwise include your own ideas. Furthermore, if you merely repeat the conclusions of other people without even bothering to investigate what they are talking about, you will not have a research paper. For example, no amount of reading about a novel or poem can substitute for reading the work itself, any more than reading about a musical group can substitute for hearing the people play. (3) A SERIES OF QUOTATIONS, NO MATTER HOW SKILLFULLY PUT TOGETHER, DOES NOT MAKE A RESEARCH PAPER. Quotations have an important place in a paper; they are the words of experts in the field and can support your own ideas. But if your paper consists of quotations alone, the "you" of the synthesis is missing; you yourself are not involved in such a paper, and the paper does not evidence any originality. Furthermore, you will find it difficult to organize dozens of quotations into a coherent whole with logical transitions, and the work cannot have consistent style since it is made of the words of many writers. If the quotations come from a variety of sources, it is all but impossible to make them into anything more than a patchwork. If they come from a single source, they will certainly lack the originality required of a research paper. (4) UNSUBSTANTIATED PERSONAL OPINION DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A RESEARCH PAPER. If you have truly done research for an assignment, you will have discovered information on which to base your own ideas. And in order for someone to decide if your conclusions are valid, you will need to present the facts that lead to your conclusions as well as the conclusions themselves. (5) COPYING OR ACCEPTING ANOTHER PERSON'S WORK WITHOUT ACKNOWLEDGING IT, WHETHER THE WORK IS PUBLISHED OR UNPUBLISHED, PROFESSIONAL OR AMATEUR, IS NOT RESEARCH; IT IS PLAGIARISM. It is morally wrong to pass off as your own any writing you did not do, or to present such work without acknowledgment of a source and therefore allow some one to assume it is yours. Accepting and turning in a research paper done by another student or purchased from a supplier of such papers is indefensible. ******************* Remember: IF YOU ACCEPT THE DEFINITION JUST OFFERED--THAT A RESEARCH PAPER IS A SYNTHESIS OF YOUR IDEAS AND THE MATERIAL SUPPLIED TO YOU BY OTHER, THAT IT IS ORIGINAL, AND THAT IT DOCUMENTS SOURCE MATERIAL, YOU WILL NEVER MAKE THE MISTAKE OF ATTEMPTING TO HAND IN WHAT IS CERTAINLY NOT A RESEARCH PAPER. This material was excerpted from Audrey J. Roth's The Research Paper: Form and Content, 3rd ed. (1966, rpt. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 1978), pp. 7-9. THE PAPER AS COLLAGE Think of your paper as an intellectual collage, an integration and arrangement of sources into something new something yours-- a personal act or creative synthesis Writing Research Papers: A Step-by-Step Procedure Checklist** The Preliminaries: ______ 1. Choose a topic ______ 2. Begin preliminary reading ______ 3. Restrict the subject ______ 4. Develop a preliminary thesis sentence Gathering Data: ______ 1. Compile the working bibliography ______ 2. Prepare the bibliography on cards in correct form (4" x 6" cards) ______ 3. Begin extensive work in the library reference room; be sure to check: ______ a. general bibliographies ______ b. trade bibliographies ______ c. indexes (book and collections, literature in periodicals, newspaper indexes, pamphlet indexes) ______ d. card catalogue Taking Notes: ______ 1. Develop a preliminary outline ______ 2. Evaluate your source material; which is primary material and which is secondary material? ______ 3. Begin note-taking on cards (4" x 6" cards) ______ 4. Avoid plagiarism Writing the Paper ______ 1. Develop the final outline; test your outline ______ 2. Prepare to write: ______ a. put your note-taking cards in the order that your outline is in ______ b. decide on the proper tense for your paper ______ 3. Write the rough draft ______ 4. Edit; check your documentation carefully ______ 5. Revise and rewrite _____; _____; _____; ______ ______ 6. Type your paper according to your instructor's format (i.e, title page, outline, text of the paper, note page, and works cited or references page) **Most of this format is based on that process described by James D. Lester in Writing Research Papers: A Complete Guide, 2nd ed. (1971; rpt. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1976). GLOSSARY OF RESEARCH PAPER TERMS ABSTRACT--a brief summary of the entire work. APPENDIX--offers additional materials of a supplementary nature not pertinent to the primary text but perhaps important to your study. ARTICLES--see PERIODICALS BIBLIOGRAPHY--a list of references arranged alphabetically according to the authors' names; WORKING BIBLIOGRAPHY--list of reference sources that you will eventually investigate. Also see WORKS CITED. CALL NUMBER--indicates where the source can be found in the library; be sure to include the call numbers of books and periodicals that you research on your bibliography cards. CARD CATALOG--in the reference; specifies the location of all books in the library and is organized by author and subject; cards are filed under three main heads: author, title, subject. DIRECT QUOTATION--using the exact words of another person; a direct quote is enclosed within quotation marks and is documented. DOCUMENTATION--crediting a source; this may be accomplished by by citing the reference parenthetically in the text of the paper, as in MLA or APA format, or by footnoting. ELLIPSIS--indicate omissions in the quoted material. This mark (ellipsis dots) is three spaced periods, as ( . . . ). When the ellipsis ends a quoted passage, you should add a fourth period (with no space before the first) to indicate the termination of thought. If the omission is significant (one or more lines of verse or one or more paragraphs of prose), indicate the ellipsis by a single typed line of spaced periods. Avoid opening your paper with ellipsis periods. FOOTNOTE--reference footnotes in the old MLA format served to document the original source. In-text citation has replaced most reference noting. Content footnotes offer further information that the average reader might need or profit by. They may appear at the page bottom or at the end of the paper. INDEX--list of specific concepts, events and names mentioned in the text; helps you discover whether the book discusses your subject at all. JOURNAL--see PERIODICALS PARAPHRASE--restating, in your own style, the thought or meaning expressed by someone else. To paraphrase, you rewrite borrowed ideas, opinions, interpretations, or statements of an authority in your language. The note contains about the same number of words as the original. PERIODICALS--journals and magazines and pamphlets, etc., which are published at regular intervals. (NOTE: Articles are to periodicals as chapters are to books.) PLAGIARISM--the offering of the words and ideas of another person as your own. PRECIS--a very brief summary in your own words (i.e., reducing a long paragraph into a few sentences, tightening an article into a paragraph, summarizing a longer work, such as a biography, into a few pages). PRIMARY SOURCE--the original works of an author; includes novels, short stories, poems, letters, diaries, notes, manuscripts, documents, and autobiographies. SECONDARY SOURCE--books and articles; articles may be found in magazines, learned journals, and book-length critical studies. SIC--"thus," placed in brackets to indicate an error has been made in the quoted passage and the writer is quoting accurately. SUMMARY--a brief sketch of a reference; contains significant facts. The summary note serves this purpose: if you need the material for your paper, you will write it in a clearer and more appropriate prose style later. UNION LIST OF SERIALS (UNION CATALOG)--source which lists serials--periodicals and other recurring publications. Entries are arranged by title (alphabetically, of course); identifies the names of campus libraries which have the serial. WORKS CITED--a list of references cited in the research paper arranged alphabetically by authors' names on a separate sheet at the end. With MLA in-text citation now standard, this term has replaced BIBLIOGRAPHY, often used with footnoted papers. (To compile many of the definitions for this glossary, the Writing Lab staff member consulted handbooks by James D. Lester and Audrey J. Roth.) Washburn University Writing Center ----------------------------------------------------------------- This handout modified June 1994 from one originated by the Purdue University Writing Lab. term-paper.intro