Graduate Seminar Paper Tips
20 ENVE 7005

What I watch for - and what you should watch for when reviewing your papers:

1. Well-formulated topic with clear opening paragraph describing the research topic and specific aspects to be investigated. Key concepts to be searched. Typical problem: paper starts right in talking about the subject without any lead-in.
2. Relevance of concepts searched to the stated topic.
3. Well-written summary of findings, synthesizing what was learned, or itemizing and describing the various references used. Discussion should follow logically from the introduction.
4. Relevance of summary to the stated topic.
5. Reference numbers in summary leading to citations in the list of references.
6. Academic, research level material from the web search, with proper formatting.
7. Complete list of references with at least one example from each source assigned. If no citation is provided for a source, description of how search was done and why there were not useful results.
8. Clearly labeled references so reader can tell which came from which source.
9. Name of cited author in the Science Citation Index Cited Author Search as well as the citation itself.
10. Complete citations with all elements present in correct order and style. If they are sloppy, how good is the research??? Calls into question the credibility of the author.
11. All citations should be findable. Check each one.
12. No plagiarism - proper quoting, paraphrasing and citing.
13. Independent work - not copied.
14. Followed directions! Put name on paper.

10/15/12
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