STEM Librarian
Getting Started
There will be four 1‐page writing assignments which are due the day of exams. Submission will be available one day after each previous exam, so you may submit your assignment prior to the due dates. Please submit using the Assignment dropbox on Blackboard. These assignment will serve as extra credit for each exam.
For each assignment select a “research paper” from a recent (last 3 years) issue of designated journals (listed below) and write a 1‐page review. In your assignment, please include a full citation of the paper you are reviewing. Make sure you read the entire paper not just the “abstract”. Papers often have accompaning “online supporting material” which are sometimes needed for a fuller understanding of the papers.
Finding an Article
Clicking on the links below will open up the mainpage to each journal. Browse through a recent issue to find an article that is interesting to you. Make sure that you choose a research article (and not a review or a letter or a report etc.). Research articles tend to be 8-20 pages long and include the parts listed in the box below.
(due 9/10, 8am)
(due 10/3, 8am)
(due 10/24, 8am)
(due 11/9, 8am)
Reading, Summarizing, and Annotating a Scientific Paper
Scientific research articles usually include
- abstract: highlights of the major points of the paper
- introduction/background: context and purpose or the experiment
- methods: what was done
- results: sometimes combined with the methods or analysis
- analysis: how well did the experiment work
- discussion: sometimes combined with the analysis or conclusions
- conclusions/future work
Knowing the different sections of a scientific article will make it easier to understand the article. By comparing the same section across papers, you might be able to discern how the science has evolved or the influences of one group on the other.
Questions and themes to consider as you read.
- Evaluation of the author’s background. Affiliation of authors and (if possible) some evaluation of their level of expertise. Sometimes you can check the bibliography and see that they have published many articles on the topic. In other cases this is harder from a journal article.
- For whom is the article intended? Other researchers in the field? Physicians? General public?
- Brief summary of how study was conducted and key findings.
- This may include the purpose or the hypothesis behind the experiment, the method used to test the hypothesis, whether the data support the hypothesis or not, and why.
- Relevance of this information to your bibliography topic. “This study clarifies the mechanism by which the disease is transmitted…..: etc.
Citing an Article
This tutorial (http://researchguides.baylor.edu/readacitation) will help you understand the purpose of citations and the information that is needed in a citation.
This webpage (http://researchguides.baylor.edu/citingsources) lists quickguides to the major citation formats.
Make sure you use the citation style suggested by your instructor. Even though you are retrieving the article from a website, you still need to include the author, date, article title, journal, volume/issue, and page numbers of the article. When applicable you should also include the DOI and/or website.
