Please read all instructions super carefully if you do not you will fail. Included are the Checklists and proposal sample but the full instructions for the part 1 and full paper are below.
Goal
The goal is for you to produce a term paper that illustrates that you have researched and thought in depth about a topic in fisheries biology. The term paper will tell me that you understand the important issues in a particular field and have identified the current cutting edge in that research.
This paper is NOT an essay. I do not want you to explain a topic to me. I want you to discuss current research on a topic. If you find yourself including extensive background material then you are not doing the paper correctly. The paper is about the current research, not just about the phenomenon.
The key to doing this paper is that for each of your source papers, tell me what the authors were trying to investigate, how they did their investigation, what they found, and what it means.
It is possible that you have never done this kind of paper before. If you are unclear about what you are doing, ask me early on to clarify. If you think that this is like writing a typical term paper on a topic, then you are dead wrong.
Most importantly, think of this as an opportunity to show me what you can do, not as something that you have to do. I want you to discover something and to share that discovery with me.
Potential Topics I suggest you look at the following journals for inspiration:
Science, Nature, Journal of Fish Biology, Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, California Fish and Game
Potential topics might include the biology of particular fisheries species, historical fisheries analysis, current methods in fisheries, aquaculture, genetically-modified fishes, introduced fishes, etc. Be careful with anything historical: I do not want just a condensed version of one of the many analyses of past fisheries collapses
You will complete a total 3 things for this assignment, a 1 page proposal, then part 1, then the final paper with 9 pages and everything in the checklist. samples will be given as well as the checklist. Source Material
You may use online approaches (e.g., Google Scholar) to get copies of journal articles in pdf form, but do NOT cite websites, unless you are absolutely sure that they are primary literature . There is a vast and important difference between a journal article that you view online (i.e., in electronic format) versus the rest of material found on a website. Your task is to find recent research.
Mechanics
You will use the primary literature, not secondary sources like newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias or the websites. I want you to read what the current researchers are writing, not what someone else wrote about what the researcher wrote. Use the past tense when writing about research, e.g., “Jones (2015) studied...” not “Jones (2015) are studying...” Your term paper will make use of a minimum of 4 papers/sources from the primary literature. None of this literature may be older than 1998.
In writing the paper, you may need to cite some secondary literature as background material. So that I know that you know the difference between primary and secondary literature, in the Literature Cited section of your paper, you must put an asterisk in front of each paper you deem to be primary literature. with a typed one page proposal for your paper along with the completed proposal checklist. This proposal must include your name, the current date, the title, the full and proper citation of one paper from the primary literature that you intend to use, and a brief description of your proposed paper (one paragraph) that cites that paper. Examine the sample proposal online to see how this is done. See below for the proper way to format your citation.
Questions
- The introduction begins on page 2 (all pages must be numbered). The introduction provides a briefintroduction to the topic, often citing some literature, and then briefly tells me how you are going toapproach this topic, i.e., provide a roadmap to the rest of the paper. You must introduce and cite all four ofyour primary sources in the introduction. It should be one paragraph in length.Do not use subheadings like “Introduction”.Note that you cannot turn in the final term paper (see below) until you have received a check mark on yourproposal and on your Part
- For the final due date, you must email to me the completed paper, which includesanalyses of all of your primary literature, along with the checklist. You will attach all previous marked and checked versions of your proposal and of your Part I in this sameemail.Types of Literature
The primary literature consists of the material published in journals (which are very distinct from magazines), written by the scientist doing the work and reviewed by scientific referees. Reviews or books (with rare exceptions) do NOT constitute the primary literature. Textbooks are NEVER primary literature. These are considered secondary literature. Magazines like Scientific American, Biosciences, American Scientist, Discovery or National Geographic are NOT primary literature. Gray literature is particularly common in fisheries and wildlife work; beware of it. The California Department of Fish and Game produces tons of it each year. Gray literature consists of circulars, bulletins, reports, technical reports, in-house documents and the like which are printed but do not undergo the typical scientific review process. These are used for internal purposes but because they have not undergone any external review, they are not considered scientifically valid as primary literature. Nonetheless some gray iterature is useful, but it must always be evaluated with a strong sense of caution.
The title of the publication does not always tell you whether something is primary, secondary or gray literature. For example, the Bulletin of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada (now Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences) is the most highly regarded journal in fisheries research and is not a "bulletin" in the typical sense (which is why they changed the name a number of years ago). Similarly Transactions of the American Fisheries Society sounds like a list of Meeting minutes or some such thing but is in fact a respectable journal of basic fisheries research. By contrast, Fisheries Bulletin is exactly what it says it is: a bulletin of what is going on in fisheries and not a part of the primary literature. If a journal is titled Reviews in Evolution or something similar to that with the word “Review” in the title, you can be pretty sure that nothing in it is primary literature. For example, the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution is NOT primary literature. That does not mean that you should not look at that journal for inspiration, but the papers in it are not primary literature (with rare exceptions). Sometimes the same issue of a journal will contain items that are primary literature and others that are secondary literature. Many journals have a review article in the front of each issue. The word “Review” at the top should be a strong hint that this is NOT primary literature. The journal Science, one of the most respected journals in science, often includes many news reports, etc. that are not primary literature, as well as substantial primary literature, in the same issue. As a very simple litmus test: if a paper is really easy to understand, like it was written for non-scientists, the odds are high that it is NOT primary literature. Primary literature is densely written, often full of unexplained highly technical jargon. It is that stuff that you need to use for this term paper. As another test, if the paper does not have a Methods section, it is not likely primary literature; however, be aware that a paper may have a Methods section that might not be explicitly name “Methods” and it may appear at the end of the paper in some journals.
Format
The paper MUST BE TYPED -- The paper must be double-spaced with pages numbered, starting with the cover page as page 1. This paper should be no more than, and not less than, 9 pages (all inclusive) and must include a title page with the title, your name and current date (not the date it is due). The Literature Cited goes on the last page, but not on a separate page, i.e., it starts right after the last bit of text, preceded by the word “Literature Cited”. Write clearly and precisely. I am very unimpressed with spelling mistakes or grammatical mistakes. These kinds of mistakes will DRAMATICALLY affect the grading of your paper. Use a spelling checker program to check your writing and have a friend read it as well before turning it in. I expect a very high quality product.
How to cite sources
The purpose of citing material in a scientific document is to properly credit the work of others. A citation shows that the thought or information just presented is not that of the author of the current document, but rather comes from someone else and that person deserves the credit (or the blame).
You do NOT cite what is regarded as general knowledge. But, and here is an important point to ponder, you should not be writing much general knowledge in your paper anyway. For example if you are writing a paper on the swimming biodynamics of tuna and you find yourself writing that tuna are fast moving fish that live in the ocean, then there is no need to cite anyone for that, but equally, there is no need to write the original sentence in the first place. We all know that tuna are fast moving fish that live in the ocean. Now if you want to tell me something specific, like tuna are the fastest swimming fish, clocked at over 50 miles per hour, you need a citation because I want to know who said that and then I can check it out myself if I do not believe it.
The Literature Cited section
The Literature Cited should contain ONLY citations to published work and must be set out consistently and professionally, paying attention to having complete information, the order of the information and the format of how that information is presented, e.g.:
journal article:
Galen, C., J.A. Shykoff and RC Plowright (1986) Consequences of stigma receptivity schedules for sexual selection in flowering plants. American Naturalist 127: 462-476.
book chapter: Plowright, RC and C.M.S. Plowright (1987) Elitism in Social Insects: A Positive Feedback Model. Pp 413-436 in: Interindividual Behavioral Variability in Social Insects (Ed. R.L. Jeanne), Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado.
book: Moyle, P.B., and J.J. Cech Jr. (1988) Fishes: An Introduction to Ichthyology (Second Edition). Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
The Literature Cited should be listed in alphabetical order of the last name of the first author. In other words, a paper by Connor, S. (2006) would appear higher in the list than a paper by Jones, A.B. and C.D. Dunnit (2001).
You NEVER change the order of the authors within a particular reference.
Notice the placement of the various pieces of information, such as the year. Notice that the issue number is not included, only the volume and the page numbers. Write out journal names in full. Notice the use of hanging indentation. This is NOT done by hitting the space or tab key.
Some of the papers you may encounter will be published in electronic journals, such as PloS ONE. This is NOT the same as a website. Such papers often do not have page numbers. Instead they might have a document number.
Important: Do NOT simply cut and past information from a source into the Literature Cited section. Doing so will cost you at least a grade. Carefully examine the information and assemble this section as described above.
How Citations Appear in the text
The three citations listed above would appear in your text as, respectively, Galen et al. (1986), Plowright and Plowright (1987), and Moyle and Cech (1988). Note that citations to papers with more than two authors -- such as the first one above -- appear in your text as the first author followed by the words ‘et al.’ (Latin for "and others") but the full list of authors is given in your Literature Cited section. Notice that in the words ‘et al.’ there is no little dot after the word ‘et’ but there is a dot after the word ‘al.’. This is because ‘al.’ is an abbreviation, whereas ‘et’ is not.
Unpublished work is referred to in the text either as "(A.J. Smith, unpublished data)" or "(J.G. Bloggs, personal communication)", depending on the context, but is not listed in the Literature Cited.
DO NOT USE footnotes as a means to cite references. In fact, do not use footnotes at all. Most scientific journals do not allow them. Some journals use a numbering system when referring to references. DO NOT do that in this paper.
Do not ask me whether you should use APA style or MLA style. There is no “standard” style for biological sciences journals no matter what someone else might tell you, so please follow the instructions given above.
Quotations
It is almost never correct to use quotations in scientific writing. This is because in science we are interested in the ideas we get from others, not their exact words. If Jones said something interesting in 1992, then paraphrase (but do not copy) what Jones wrote and give her credit. For example, the following might appear in your paper,
The bluegill sunfish exhibits a diversity of reproductive styles (Jones 1992).
You do not need to put the words in quotation marks because you are telling us that Jones wrote a paper on this topic. We now know that it was not you that first found out this exciting fact, but rather it was Jones and we know where to look to find more details. But, do NOT simply copy the text from Jones. You must paraphrase it. To simply copy it, whether you cite ir or not, is plagiarism, a serious academic offense.
The only time you need to use quotations in science is when the actual exact words are very important. For example, Robert Trivers wrote a very famous definition of parental investment in 1972 and this one line is quoted extensively in the literature because each and every word is very precise and important.
Long chunks of text
Imagine you are writing a term paper on sea snakes and you want to make extensive use of Roberts (1999) paper on sea snakes.
You do NOT do the following: Roberts (1999) wrote extensively on the ecology and reproduction of sea snakes. He found that most sea snakes are livebearers (Roberts 1999). Fourteen of 26 species are striped (Roberts 1999). They are found in all tropical oceans (Roberts 1999).
You would do the following: Roberts (1999) wrote extensively on the ecology and reproduction of sea snakes. He found that most sea snakes are livebearers. Fourteen of 26 species are striped. They are found in all tropical oceans.
There is no need to put "Roberts (1999)" everywhere because it is clear that all of this material is coming from Roberts' paper. By the same token, you do not just put “Roberts (1999)” at the end of the paragraph, like you might do in an English essay.
The bottom line when citing material is as follows: you are trying to make sure that the reader knows who said what and where the reader can go to find more information. DO NOT QUOTE when writing in science.
Plagiarism
Do not copy material form a source, and that includes copying references. With few exceptions, any time 4 or 5 words appear exactly the same in your paper as in a source, that constitutes plagiarism and you will receive an automatic F. I may check this with the software Turnitin. I am very good at catching plagiarism.
Check Lists
At the end of this document are three checklists that must be turned in, the first with your Proposal, the second with your Part I, and the third with your final term paper.. A paper submitted without the proper checklist is worth zero. The checklists are there to help you – use them!
What's Due
1. Proposal due 2. Part I due 3. Final paper due