6. PLEASE TYPE YOUR PAPER!! If you just can’t get it typed, write legibly. Above all, DOUBLE SPACE your paper! When you don’t double space, we can’t make corrections and suggestions or ask questions about what you meant. Please double space and type all your drafts submitted. It’s just common courtesy.

Proper Scientific Literature Citation

Okay, guys ... we’re going to get a handle on this literature citation business. As I’ve said before, you must show the reader of any scientific paper exactly how you reached your conclusions.

That means backing up any statements and conclusions with a parenthetical expression citing the author of the literature that gave you that information and the year in which it was published. You don’t have to cite every sentence you write, but anything anybody might question or want to check up on ... this is not to prove you’ve done wrong — it’s just the way it’s done! Nothing in science is considered proven until your results can be duplicated by other researchers.

Remember the cold fusion flap several years ago? A couple of scientists in Utah claimed they had accomplished cold fusion in the laboratory, which would have solved many of the world’s fuel and environmental problems. That claim sparked excitement throughout the world, until their results were questioned and they refused to provide the details of what they had done. Then they just dropped out of sight and were held up to ridicule across the globe ... sort of like a scientific version of Milli Vanilli.

Of course your research — at this point, at least — is nothing on that scale ... we just want you to learn how to do a proper literature search and reference that literature as you write your paper, no matter what paper that is — it applies to any scientific paper. And ANY scientific research begins with a proper literature search to see what has been done before you. What you find in the literature could change what you decide to research.

Say you’re exploring whether or not captive breeding is a solution to keeping endangered species alive. As you research your material, make note cards for each publication you research, noting the publication’s name, author of the article you’re reading, its page numbers, publication date, etc. Anything that would act as a roadmap to someone interested in researching the same topic.

When writing your paper, you will cite the literature you researched at pertinent points in your writing:

“...Where nature calls for the extinction of an animal to make way for a more successful creature, man causes the antithesis of evolutionary progress to occur (Simon and Geroudet, 1972) — rarely is there a more successful form to take over when man has had a hand in an extinction.”

Or:

“Among the big cats, the cheetah has long been a notoriously difficult animal to breed. It was finally determined that the sexes need to be separate until the female begins to act submissive and to ‘utter low stuttering sounds.’ By using this technique, Britain’s Whipsnade Zoo has had five cheetah litters in six years (Stowe, 1973).”

When you’ve completed your paper, you’ll compile a bibliography, or Literature Cited section. Here you will list each publication, web site, journal, book, etc., that you researched and included in your paper (as shown in the previous section in parentheses). The literature is generally listed in alphabetical order, unlike footnotes which are listed in the order in which they appear in the paper and are numbered.