The style of the citations, as they are listed in your
paper, must follow exactly the style given below. Punctuation must follow exactly this style, pay
particular attention to the use of spaces, commas, periods,
colons, underlining, and that the titles of journals must be
spelled out. Note that the first and middle names of authors are not spelled out; only use the initials. Also, even if the original article used the persons titles or degrees in the title of the paper, these are dropped in the literaure cited section of your paper. Below are listed some examples of
citations. You might also examine the literature cited section of several of the primary sources that you are using for your review paper.
article in a journal
Schoener, T. W. 1982. The controversy over interspecific
competition. American Scientist, 70: 586-595.
St. Clair, L. L., B. L. Webb, J. R. Johansen, and G. T.
Nebeker. 1984. Cryptogamic soil crusts: enhancement
of seedling establishment in disturbed and undisturbed
areas. Reclamation and Revegetation Research, 3: 129-
136.
chapter in a book
White, P. S., and S. T. A. Pickett. 1985. Natural
disturbance and patch dynamics: an introduction. In S.
T. A. Pickett and P. S. White (eds.), The Ecology of
Natural Disturbance and Patch Dynamics, p. 3-13.
Academic Press, Orlando.
entire book
Tilman, D. 1982. Resource competition and Community
Structure. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Internet site (if the material does not list an author, do not use it)
Carriveau, K. L., Jr. 1995. Review of the book Environmental
hazards: Marine pollution. Electronic Green Journal
[Online], 2: 3 paragraphs. Available:
gopher://gopher.uidaho.edu/11/UI_gopher/library/egj03/carriv01.html
PRIMARY LITERATURE
For an article to be included in the primary literature of science it must meet two criteria: 1) it must be peer-reviewed and 2) it must present original findings in science. The primary literature is typically found in journals. A typical article from the primary literature will have an abstract, introduction, materials & methods, results, discussion, and literature cited. If a paper does not have these sections, usually clearly labeled as such, then it is probably not part of the primary literature. There is much good information published in what is called the "gray literature" of science, however, these publications do not meet one or both of the criteria for inclusion in the primary literature.
Examples of primary literature would be articles in Journal of Heredity, Genetics, Journal of Wildlife Management, Auk, Journal of Bacteriology, and the reports section of Science. All of these articles have been subjected to a peer-review process to insure that they present original research and that they are scientifically sound. These articles will all contain a materials & methods section that explains how the research was done, though in Science the materials & methods is included at the end of the paper in a section called "references and notes".
Examples of non-primary literature would include articles in Newsweek, Time, Scientific American, Science News, the news section of Science, review articles in books such as the Annual Review of Genetics, review articles in journals, any newspaper article, any government document, any book including textbooks, any Internet site, any anonymous publication, and any thesis or dissertation. All of these non-primary sources may contain very useful information and can be cited in your paper. In addition, a review article can provide you with a very good overview of a topic and can provide you an entry point into the primary literature.
PLAGIARISM AND QUOTES
The purpose of this paper is to help you develop the skills
necessary to summarize and synthesize material from the primary
literature. When you quote directly from a source you are not
synthesizing the material but merely regurgitating the material.
In addition, quotes are usually wasteful of space and thus cost
too much to publish in scientific journals. The general rule is
to avoid quotes. The only time that you see quotes used in the
scientific literature is when the author feels that the
statements of the original author are open to different
interpretations. In this case, the author quotes the previous
author and then explains what she thinks the statement means.
There is almost never a reason for doing this. THUS THE RULE --
NEVER USE QUOTES. However, you can have one quotation in your paper;
EVERY QUOTATION AFTER THAT IS A 10-POINT DEDUCTION. However, if
you must use more than 6 words intact from a source, you must put
it in quotes, otherwise it is plagiarism. Plagiarism, of course,
is unethical and illegal and will cause your paper to be worth
nothing. The way to avoid this pitfall is to take notes as you
read an article, then write your paper from your notes, not from
the article itself. Be sure to cite the original article. If you
write your paper with your source open beside the computer, you
are probably on very thin ice. The rules on plagiarism apply
equally well to your summaries.
Anytime you get an idea or a fact from another person's
work, then that work must be cited in the text and the full
citation listed in the Literature Cited section of your paper.
Failure to do this is considered unethical behavior and a number
of scientists have had their careers ruined by this kind of
behavior. The effect on you will be to receive a zero on your
paper.
You should pay very close attention to the following excerpt
from the "Random House Handbook" (Crews, Frederick, 1984, Random
House Publ., pp. 405-406).
Consider the following source and three ways that a
student might be tempted to make use of it:
Source: The joker in the European pack was Italy. For
a time hopes were entertained of her as a force against
Germany, but these disappeared under Mussolini. In
1935 Italy made a belated attempt to participate in the
scramble for Africa by invading Ethiopia. It was
clearly a breach of the covenant of the League of
Nations for one of its members to attack another.
France and Great Britain, as great powers, were bound
to take the lead against Italy at the League. But they
did so feebly and half-heartedly, because they did not
want to alienate a possible ally against Germany. The
result was the worst possible: the League failed to
check aggression, Ethiopia lost her independence, and
Italy was alienated after all.1
1 J.M. Roberts, History of the World (New York:
Knopf,1976), p. 845.
Version A: Italy, one might say, was the joker in the
European deck. When she invaded Ethiopia, it was
clearly a breach of the covenant of the League of
Nations; yet the efforts of England and France to take
the lead against her were feeble and half-hearted. It
appears that those great powers had no wish to alienate
a possible ally against Hitler's rearmed Germany.
Comment: Clearly plagiarism. Though the facts cited
are public knowledge, the stolen phrases aren't. Note
that the interweaving of the writer's own words with
the source's do not render the writer innocent of
plagiarism.
Version B: Italy was the joker in the European deck.
Under Mussolini in 1935, she made a belated attempt to
participate in the scramble for Africa by invading
Ethiopia. As J.M. Roberts points out, this violated
the covenant of the League of Nations.1 But France and
Britain, not wanting to alienate a possible ally
against Germany, put up only feeble and half-hearted
opposition to the Ethiopian adventure. The outcome, as
Roberts observes, was "the worst possible: the League
failed to check aggression, Ethiopia lost her
independence, and Italy was alienated after all."2
1 J.M. Roberts, History of the World (New York: Knopf,
1976), p. 845.
2 Roberts, p. 845.
Comments: Still plagiarism. The two correct citations
of Roberts serve as a kind of alibi for the
appropriating of other, unacknowledged phrases. But
the alibi has no force: some of Roberts' words are
again being presented as the writer's.
Version C: Much has been written about German
rearmament and militarism in the period 1933-39. But
Germany's dominance in Europe was by no means a
foregone conclusion. The fact is that the balance of
power might have been tipped against Hitler if one or
two things had turned out differently. Take Italy's
gravitation towards an alliance with Germany, for
example. That alliance seemed so very far from
inevitable that Britain and France actually muted their
criticism of the Ethiopian invasion in the hope of
remaining friends with Italy. They opposed the
Italians in the League of Nations, as J.M. Roberts
observes, "feebly and half-heartedly because they did
not want to alienate a possible ally against Germany."1
Suppose Italy, France, and Britain had retained a
certain common interest. Would Hitler have been able
to get away with his remarkable bluffing and bullying
in the later thirties?
1 J.M. Roberts, History of the World (New York: Knopf,
1976), p. 845.
Comment: No plagiarism. The writer has been
influenced by the public facts mentioned by Roberts,
but he hasn't tried to pass off Roberts' conclusions as
his own. The one clear borrowing is properly
acknowledged.
COMMON ERRORS AND THINGS TO WATCH
1) All scientific names must be underlined or put into italics,
for example Homo sapiens. Do not underline the space between the
generic name and the specific epithet.
2) Use metric units of measure and standard abbreviations for
the units. For example, use g for grams, kg for kilograms, cm
for centimeters, and sec for seconds. Leave a space between the
number and the unit and no period after the units unless it is at
the end of a sentence, for example 10 g or 20 cm.
3) Time is always on a 24-hour clock, with midnight 0:00 and
1:00 pm is 13:00. Dates are always day month year without
punctuation, for example 12 February 1809 (Charles Darwin's
birthday).
4) The subject and verb of a sentence must agree in number.
Thus "data" always takes a plural verb, for example, the data
show that ...
5) Do not use "i.e." in place of "that is".
6) Do not use "e.g." in place of "for example".
7) Do not hyphenate in the right margin.
8) Be sure to look up affect and effect in the dictionary and
know when to use one versus the other. Do not use "impact"
because you do not understand the difference between effect and
affect.
9) Do not use "since" in place of "because". Since implies
time, for example since moving to Kansas... To imply causation
use "as" or "because", for example "as the car is black, it gets
very hot ...".
10) Be sure to look up the difference between "it's" and "its".
These are often used incorrectly. One is a possesive pronoun and the other is a contraction for "it is".
11) Do not use contractions such as "don't" for "do not" or "it's" for "it is".
12) Chemical names and diseases/syndromes are common nouns and are not captialized unless part of the name contains a person's name and then only the person's name is capitalized (Down syndrome, adenosine triphosphate).
13) Read this document and the syllabus very carefully.
14) Use a word-processor, rewrite the paper several times, and
run the spell checker.
Last updated on 9 January 2007.
Provide comments to Dwight Moore at mooredwi@emporia.edu.
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