TERM PAPER TIPS

These are some tips for your term paper assignment. Please be sure to consult with the instructor if you have any problems with the research or writing. Before you move to the Research stage, be sure to read Appendix B. Term Paper Assignment in the lab manual. Become thoroughly familiar with the explanation of the assignment. Be sure you know what is expected of you. Remember that you not only have to write a paper but you also have to give a presentation. Knowing that you need to give a presentation may influence your choice of a plant.

RESEARCH

1. The first step is to choose a plant that will be the subject of your study. DO THIS AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE. You might begin by visiting the produce department of your favorite supermarket like Meijer's, Kroger's, etc.

2. Even before choosing a topic you might want to do some preliminary research to see if the plant is really as interesting as you thought and if there seems to be sufficient information in our library.

3. Write the name of your plant on the sign-up sheet in the classroom. DO NOT DO FURTHER RESEARCH UNTIL THE PROFESSOR HAS INITIALED YOUR CHOICE.

4. Begin your research in a general encyclopedia such as Americana, Compton's, Britannica, World Book, etc. This will give you basic information about your plant and sometimes will even give you references to other literature. In this step and the remaining steps, be sure to consult with the Reference Librarians in Bromfield Library as suggested in Appendix B of the Lab Manual. They know about this assignment and are there to help you.

5. Look at the bibliography in Appendix B of the lab manual. This is an annotated bibliography, i.e., there is a brief description of each entry to help you know whether that reference would be a good resource for the plant you've chosen. For example, some of the references are general, some are for food plants, some are for medicinal plants, etc. One of the best sources of information on most of the plants is Simpson and Ogorzaly. 2001. Economic Botany: Plants in Our World. If your plant is not in this book, you probably will have a hard time finding information on it in other sources, too.

6. Look in the top drawer of the black file cabinet for a reprint on your plant. There is a printed, up-to-date list of the articles in the file. You may take reprints from this file but be sure to return all that you take... we don't have additional copies. I recommend copying the reprint for your own use then returning the original to the file drawer as soon as possible. They are arranged in numerical order. When you remove the reprint, replace it with a "Reprint Check-out Sheet" (supply is in the drawer). Follow instructions on the sheet. When you return the reprint, remove the "Reprint Check-out Sheet."

7. There is lots of information on the World Wide Web (the Internet). Use "Botany in Cyberspace" compiled by Dr. Kramer. The entries are annotated with a brief description of what you will find at each web site. The URL is printed on the handout but you must realize that the web site manager might change the file names and the address may no longer be correct. Often you can get to the right place anyway by "cutting off" the address starting at the right end and moving step by step to the left. For example, if the address is
http://www.hcs.ohio-state.edu/hcs/hcs.html

and it doesn't work, try cutting back from the right to the first forward slash (/) then pressing Return:
http://www.hcs.ohio-state.edu/hcs

If that doesn't work, try cutting to the next slash and pressing return, etc.
http://www.hcs.ohio-state.edu

When it finally takes you to a web site, you might have to do some clicking to get to the information you are seeking.

BE CAREFUL WITH WEB INFORMATION. ANYONE CAN PUT ANYTHING ON THE WEB WITHOUT HAVING IT REVIEWED BY EXPERTS. THE INFORMATION MAY BE INCORRECT. TRY TO FIND THE AUTHOR AND THE PLACE WHERE THE AUTHOR WORKS. IF IT IS A PROFESSOR AT A MAJOR UNIVERSITY, IT'S SAFE TO ASSUME THAT THE INFORMATION IS CORRECT BUT IT NEVER HURTS TO CHECK THE INFORMATION WITH OTHER REFERENCES.

SPECIAL TIP: If you are using Netscape as your web browser, go to "Page Setup" under the File menu and then change the settings for the heading (or footer) so that the URL, the date, and the page number are shown on the heading of each page when you print it out. This will be enormously helpful, even essential, when you write your paper and need to prepare citations for your sources.

8. TAKING NOTES. There are many techniques for taking notes as you gather information from books, magazines, WWW, etc. A very good method is to use 3x5 inch index cards. Before you take any notes, fill out one card with the correct bibliographic entry of the source. This is the information that will go into your bibliography at the end of your paper. Give the book a code name that you can put on each card of information from that source. For example, if you use Simpson's book (mentioned above), begin with a clean card and write out the bibliographic entry in correct form as it is written above. Give this the code name "Simpson, 1995." Now, as you read Simpson and find information you want to put in your paper, simply write the sentence or paragraph on the card and put "Simpson, 1995" in the upper right corner. You'll know where you got that info! Instead of writing so much, some students prefer to make xerox copies of the articles and do the writing later. BE SURE YOU WRITE THE SOURCE ON THE XEROX COPY. More than one student has had to go back to the library and try to find the source of the xeroxed page! Not easy! Below is how one card might look if you were writing on "Yams":


IDENTIFICATION Simpson,2001 Sweet potatoes are sometimes called yams in the US but the sweet potato is Ipomoea batatas in the family Convolvulaceae whereas yam is in the genus Dioscorea in the family Dioscoreaceae. "The species traditionally cultivated in the three native areas are D. rotundata and D. cayenensis in Africa, D. alata and D. esculenta in Asia, and D. trifida in the new world. Today, however, D. rotundata is grown throughout the world in the largest quantities." p. 265

a) The name of the section of your paper where you will use this information is in the upper left corner.
b) The name of the source is in the upper right corner.
c) The first paragraph is not copied exactly from the text but is put into your own words. It is not surrounded by quotes. The page number is not noted; it is not needed.
d) The second paragraph is in quotes because it is written exactly as it appears in the text. It is a direct quotation from the source. The page number is noted because it is needed. The reason for noting the page number in this case is because when you write the paper, if you use a direct quote, you will need to also tell the page number where that quote occurs in the original source. However, you do not need to show the page number for information you have paraphrased from the source, i.e., put in your own words.

9. When you have completed your research you should have several cards of information for each of the required sections of the term paper. Now you are ready to sort the information and decide what you will put into your paper and what you will leave out. NOW YOU SEE THE ADVANTAGE OF HAVING THE NOTES ON 3X5 CARDS! They allow you to move the information around, i.e., to rearrange your thoughts and to add or subtract information even before you begin writing. As you lay out the cards in order you may find that some pieces of information are missing and you will need to go back to the library for more research.

10. THE IMPORTANT POINT ON RESEARCH: MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHERE EVERY PIECE OF INFORMATION CAME FROM AND WHETHER THE WORDS ARE YOUR WORDS OR THE EXACT WORDS OF THE AUTHOR.

WRITING

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT THE WRITING CENTER, OVALWOOD 239, IS A WONDERFUL PLACE TO GET HELP WITH WRITING YOUR PAPER. THEY HAVE A COPY OF THIS ASSIGNMENT AND ARE READY TO HELP YOU. THEY WILL HELP WITH THE ACTUAL WRITING, CITATIONS, ETC. BUT WILL NOT DO THE RESEARCH FOR YOU NOR ARE THEY PREPARED TO TELL YOU WHERE TO FIND THE INFORMATION; THAT IS THE JOB OF THE REFERENCE LIBRARIANS!

1. Now that you have your notes arranged in logical order, the writing is a breeze! Your paper will be much more interesting to your audience if it is written in your own words. Try to understand the material and write it so your audience will understand it. If you merely copy exactly what others have written, your term paper will read exactly like what it is... a "cut and paste job!" One paragraph will be in one author's style and another in a second author's style, etc. It will not be a smooth piece of work. It will lead the reader to believe that you are a good cut and paste artist but that you don't really understand what you are writing about. Perhaps the reader shouldn't believe what you say! Simply tell what you have discovered as though you are telling a story.

2. Scientific writing (sometimes called "technical writing") has a very compact style. Each sentence is full of information and there is no attempt to drag the reader's emotions into the essay as you might if you were writing a love scene in a novel. Your job is to tell the facts about yams, for example, not to convince the reader that they should love the smell and taste of yams as much as you do! It's a very valuable exercise to write a rough draft of your paper then go back and see if you can say the same thing in fewer sentences. Science writing is characterized by shorter declarative sentences (subject/verb/object). Do not try to put too much in one sentence, constructing "run-on" sentences that are like a train without a caboose!

3. Instructions for this term paper say to give your paper a title, then put the information into clearly marked sections. There are no specific requirements for the length of this paper so you simply give the information for each section, thoroughly and completely, and move on to the next section. There is no need to "stretch" the prose. Do not be redundant. If you already told how Native Americans used cucumbers in an earlier paragraph, don't repeat that information in a later paragraph. Inserting the information more than once is a clue that you are "writing" your paper by simply cutting and pasting from other sources and not really paying attention to what you are writing. You may lose points.

CITATION OF SOURCES

1. Science is built on knowledge originally discovered by others. They deserve credit for their work. We cannot take credit for information we did not discover originally. This is not a paper of your original research. Your role in this assignment is to gather information, verify it (try to find corroboration by more than one author), sort it, and synthesize it into an interesting, accurate story for the reader. You will need to reveal your sources. You give credit to the source by entering a "citation" in the text after the facts you are borrowing. Not citing sources is a violation of OSU's Academic Misconduct Policy. There is no harm in using information from other people just so long as you reveal your sources.

2. After the sentence you have borrowed, your citation goes in parentheses and has the last name of the author and the year of publication. For example, if I use the first paragraph on the card above, it will look like this in my paragraph:

Sweet potatoes are sometimes called yams in the US but the sweet potato is Ipomoea batatas in the family Convolvulaceae whereas yam is in the genus Dioscorea in the family Dioscoreaceae. (Simpson and Ogorzaly, 2001) This paper will focus on sweet potatoes but with some additional information about yams.

If you use the name of the author(s) in your sentence, then only the year goes in parentheses:

Sweet potatoes are sometimes called yams in the US but the sweet potato is Ipomoea batatas in the family Convolvulaceae whereas yam is in the genus Dioscorea in the family Dioscoreaceae according to Simpson and Ogorzaly (2001). This paper will focus on sweet potatoes but with some additional information about yams.

If you use the direct quote from the above card, not only do you use quotation marks, but the citation is slightly different (the exact page must be shown for direct quotes):

"The species traditionally cultivated in the three native areas are D. rotundata and D. cayenensis in Africa, D. alata and D. esculenta in Asia, and D. trifida in the new world. Today, however, D. rotundata is grown throughout the world in the largest quantities." (Simpson and Ogorzaly, 2001, p. 265)

If you write a paragraph of three sentences and the information all came from the same source, put the citation at the end of the paragraph. You do not need to put it after each sentence of a paragraph unless the source of the information is different for each sentence.

3. Citation of web sources is a special problem. Because of the ephemeral nature of web information, you must cite the author of the page, the name of the page, the URL (address) of the page, and the date you accessed the page. This information isn't always easy to obtain. For example, many pages do not reveal the author's name. Do the best you can to get this information. You can only use web sites for which you can determine the name of the author or web sites from reputable, non-commercial sources like universities, professional societies, and government agencies. If you have questions about using a particular site, consult with the instructor. To learn how to write citations for web pages and other forms of electronic information (such as online data banks, CD-ROMS, etc.) go to the net.TUTOR site maintained by the Ohio State University Library. The address is http://gateway.lib.ohio-state.edu/tutor/

When you get to net.TUTOR, click on "Citing Net Sources." At the end of that page you will find several other sources you can click to get more information about citations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. For this paper it is necessary only to put citations in the Bibliography of those works which you actually used. Do not list all the other books you may have consulted but chose not to use in your paper.

2. The Bibliography appears at the end of your paper, not in footnotes.

3. The sources are listed in alphabetical order, by author. The correct form for bibliography entries is the same as in the Bibliography in Appendix B of the lab manual.

AND AS ALWAYS... IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS ASSIGNMENT OR HAVE TROUBLE FINDING INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT DR. KRAMER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. PLEASE DO NOT EXPECT TO GET MUCH HELP TWO DAYS BEFORE THE PAPER IS DUE. START NOW!