Writing a Good Research Paper

In a research paper you must locate and examine information from relevant authorities on a specific topic question. I might sometimes indicate specific sources to be used in the wording of the assignment. More commonly, though, I will not do this; you will be expected to identify and find relevant resources on your own. Librarians can be critical aids in this process.

An important part of the Socratic approach is not only to argue for one's own view, but to actively seek out and understand the views of others. So, unlike an essay, a research paper does not involve defending your own point of view, rather, it is an opportunity to survey the views of others making contemporary arguments about the issue (i.e. authorities). The main purpose of the paper, therefore, is to convince a reader that you have found significant viewpoints that someone wishing to develop a position should consider. Finding and explaining the main arguments of (at least) two major authorities holding contending viewpoints is the simplest way to do this. The quality of your paper, therefore, will rest on your description of the issue (ISSUE component), and explanation of the arguments of your authorities and why those arguments are significant (the ARG component). Finally, you must be meticulous about presenting the details regarding any sources that you draw on to accomplish the prior two tasks (the REF component). I use the following mark scheme to grade research papers:

How many citations should you provide? There is no simple answer to that question.

However, a basic minimum might be 3. In brief, one of the citations might provide some help in understanding the issue, such as providing information about key concepts, or an overview of major viewpoints, and the other two should provide details about those viewpoints.

A research paper normally sandwiches the body of the paper between an introduction and a closing paragraph, as most papers do. However, there is an additional mandatory part of a research paper. You must have a final page or set of pages that is titled "Works Cited" or "Bibliography." A bibliography displays citation information for each source to which you refer in your paper. One may use any widely recognized standard (APA, MLA, etc.) that one likes, but be consistent. One widely used method for recording such information for different kinds of documents is explained in my citations examples page. Never include references from materials for which you cannot at least supply an author (or organization as "author"), title, and date of publication. For electronic sources the date of publication is not equivalent to the date that you accessed the information, but must refer to a date included within the accessed material itself that indicates when it was posted or last updated. Similarly, electronic documents must have titles internal to the document itself. A web address (URL) is not acceptable as a title.