| CHAPTER 1 WRITING PAPER FOR KINDERGARTEN AND PRE-SCHOOL Alphabet Printable Activities Worksheets, Coloring Pages and Games  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alphabet printable materials is an extension of Preschool Alphabet Activities and Crafts. You will find free coloring pages, color posters, flash cards, mini books and activity worksheets to present the alphabet, reinforce letter recognition and writing skills. These are suitable for older toddlers, preschool, kindergarten and first grade. Many of the printable materials feature school compatible Standard Block Print or D'Nealian Modern Block Print handwriting guidelines, links to related lesson plans, crafts and related resources.
This is a labor of love in progress. I would love to hear your kind comments and ideas to make this a better site.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Alphabet
Preschool Activities and Crafts
Come and have fun with the alphabet for older toddlers, preschool, kindergarten and adaptable for first grade (ages 18+ months to 6). Visit a letter in the Alphabet Activity Index below to find activities that include easy instructions and a list of materials needed. The lesson plans and activities may feature crafts, printable activities, worksheets, suggested children's literature and related early childhood resources for each letter.
For specific alphabet printable materials: color posters, educational coloring pages, flashcards, and activity pages (worksheets) visit the Alphabet Printable Activities.
This is a labor of love in progress. I would love to hear your kind comments and ideas to make this a better site.
| Alphabet Printable Activities Includes color posters, coloring pages, dominoes, flash cards, mini-books, activity worksheets, handwriting worksheets, online jigsaw puzzles, and word search. | |
Animal Babies and Animal Family
Coloring Pages
Coloring Pages
| These coloring pages are suitable for toddlers, preschool and kindergarten. Make sure to visit other animal coloring page categories and themes on the left navigation column. >
The first column will showcase coloring page(s) of adult with baby animal(s). The male column links to coloring pages for that animal. |
| Adult and Baby | Male | Female | Baby | Group |
| female | baby | shrewdness | ||
| hen | hatchling, chick | dissimulation (small birds only), fleet, flight, flock, parcel, pod, volery | ||
| sow | cub | sleuth, sloth | ||
| queen | kitten | clutter, clowder, litter (young born to one female), kindle (kittens) | ||
| cow | calf | drift, drove, herd, mob | ||
| hen | chick, pullet (young hen), cockerel (young rooster) | flock, brood (of hens), clutch (of chicks), peep (of chicks) | ||
| doe cow | fawn calf | herd herd, gang | ||
| bitch | pup, puppy | litter (pups from one mother), kennel | ||
| duck | duckling | badelynge, brace, bunch, flock, paddling, raft, team | ||
| cow | calf | herd, parade | ||
| doe, nanny | kid | herd, tribe, trip | ||
| cow | calf | herd, bloat | ||
| mare, dam | stable, herd, team (working horses), string or field (race horses) | |||
| doe, flyer, jill | joey | troop, herd, mob | ||
| lioness | cub | pride | ||
| sow | piglet, shoat, farrow | drove, herd, litter (of pups), sounder | ||
| ewe, dam | lamb, lambkin, cosset | drift, drove, flock, herd, mob, trip |
CHAPTER 2
Basics of Research Paper Writing and
Publishing
By: Michael Derntl
Faculty of Computer Science
University of Vienna
michael.derntl@univie.ac.at
Abstract: Publishing research results is an integral part of a researcher’s professional life. However, writing is not every researcher’s favorite activity, and the obstacles of getting a paper published can be nerve-wracking.
This paper gives an introductory report on basic issues of writing and organizing scientific papers, and getting them published. The paper also outlines the process of publishing research papers in journals and conference proceedings, aiming to provide interested novices with a handy introductory guide.
1 Introduction
The dissemination of research results and findings is an integral part of the research process. Researchers write to keep records of their work for themselves, but more importantly also for the readers and peer researchers who are expecting a standard form, language, and style when reading research papers. Writing in a scientific style may be hard in the beginning for novices, but clear communication and concise writing have no magic involved [1]. In [2, p.1], Robert Day defines a scientific paper as “a written and published report describing original research results,” while acknowledging that scientific papers also have to meet requirements regarding how the paper is written and the way it is published. The process leading to publication is equally important as the content, style, and organization of the published paper. A scientific paper must be a valid publication, i.e. it must be published in the right place, for instance in a peer reviewed journal in the respective field. When published in the wrong place (e.g., in a newspaper), even an excellent research report is not validly published. The Council of Biology Editors (CBE), a professional organization frequently cited on this topic, has come to the definition that an “acceptable primary scientific publication must be the first disclosure containing sufficient information to enable peers
1. to assess observations,
2. to repeat experiments, and
3. to evaluate intellectual processes;
moreover, it must be susceptible to sensory perception, essentially permanent,
available to the scientific community without restriction, and
available for recognized secondary services ...” ([3, p.1-2], as cited in [2,
p.2])
Unpublished manuscript—Revision 2.1—September 2009
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
These requirements imply that newsletters, conference reports, internal reports, newspapers, and most other text sources do not qualify as scientific papers. To show the process of composing scientific papers, one major part of this paper focuses on issues of organizing and writing them. Once a paper is drafted, written, rewritten, and finished it deserves to be published validly. However, dealing with publishers, their editors, peer reviewer’s comments, deadlines, submission guidelines, and other obstacles on the way to the paper appearing in a printed volume can be one of the most time-consuming and exhaustive tasks in a researcher’s life. Therefore, the second major part of this paper outlines motivations and ways to publish research papers, primarily to serve novices with a handy introduction to this process.
2 Research Paper Writing
This section deals with issues of writing scientific research papers, from the intent
to write a paper to planning the writing for professional publication. The major part of this section outlines principles of paper organization.
2.1 Intentions for Writing
One may ask why researchers have to write down what they have been doing, or what they are currently working on. Booth et al. [4, p.8-9] deliver three obvious reasons:
1. to remember, because once something is forgotten, it cannot be reproduced correctly without having written notice;
2. to understand, as writing about a subject can only be accomplished by approaching the subject in a structured way, which itself leads to better understanding thereof;
3. to gain perspective, as writing includes looking at something from different
4. points of view. Still, it may be asked why researchers have to turn their writing into formal papers. Writing for others is more demanding than writing for oneself but it can help to get a better understanding of the own ideas [4]. As publications have system-maintaining roles in their respective sciences, additional motivations for researchers to write and publish their research work are [5, p.243-6]:
5. Scientific communication. O’Connor [6, p.1] points out that this is essential if science is to progress.
6. Ideal protection of intellectual property.
7. Legal protection of intellectual property.
8. Gain of reputation is certainly desirable.
9. Thinking in economic measures, “sale to achieve high prices” may be transformed to “publish to achieve many citations” (economic theory of science).
Peat et al. [7, p.2] provide a list of rather pragmatic reasons for writing down
and publishing research results. Among them are:
1. You have some results that are worth reporting.
2. You want to progress scientific thought.
3. You want your work to reach a broad audience.
4. You will improve your chance of promotion.
5. It is unethical to conduct a study and not report the findings.
2.2 Paper Organization
The general structure of a paper comprises three major sections: introduction, body, and discussion. The progression of the thematic scope of a paper within these sections typically follows a general pattern, namely the “hourglass model” (Figure 1, left-hand side; cf. [8]): The introduction leads the reader from general motivations and a broad subject to a particular research question to be dealt with in the paper. The body of the paper stays within a tight thematic scope, describes the research methods and results in detail. Finally, the discussion section aims to draw general conclusions from the particular results. This is in line with Berry’s
claim [9, p.99] that a research paper should be circular in argument, i.e., the conclusion should return to the opening, and examine the original purpose in the light of the research presented.
However, there are additional parts of a paper with equal importance: title, abstract, and the references. The extended hourglass model, which I chose to call the “King model” for its visual resemblance of the chess piece, is shown in the right-hand side of 1.
The following subsections describe all parts of a published paper. Title. The title is without doubt the part of a paper that is read most, and usually it is read first. Additionally, electronic indexing services rely heavily on the accuracy of the title to allow users to find papers relevant to their queries. Day defines a goodtitle, “as the fewest possible words that adequately describe the contents of the paper” [2, p.9]. If the title is too long it usually contains to many waste words, e.g., “Investigations on ...” at the beginning of the title. On the other hand, titles which are too short often use words which are too general, e.g., the title “Writing Reports” does not provide any information on which kind of reports the paper focuses on. Thus, according to [7, p.94], effective titles
– identify the main issue of the paper,
Section Scope Title | |||
 | |||
Introduction General Abstrak |
Particular Introduction
Body Body
Particular
Discussion
Discussion General References
Fig. 1. The hourglass model [8] (left) and the King model (right) of paper structure
1. begin with the subject of the paper,
2. are accurate, unambiguous, specific, and complete,
3. do not contain abbreviations (unless they are well known by the target audience, such as WWW or CPU), and
4. attract readers.
Abstract. Basically, an abstract comprises a one-paragraph summary of the whole paper. Abstracts have become increasingly important, as electronic publication databases are the primary means of finding research reports in a certain subject area today [10]. So everything relevant to potential readers should be in the abstract, everything else not.
According to [2, p.23], there are two basic types of abstract:
1. An informative abstract extracts everything relevant from the paper, such as primary research objectives addressed, methods employed in solving the problems, results obtained, and conclusions drawn. Such abstracts may serve as a highly aggregated substitute for the full paper.
2. On the other hand, an indicative or descriptive abstract rather describes the content of the paper and may thus serve as an outline of what is presented in the paper. This kind of abstract cannot serve as a substitute for the full text.
A checklist defining relevant parts of an abstract is proposed in [10], whereas the author suggests each part to be packed into one sentence:
1. Motivation: Why do we care about the problem and the results?
2. Problem statement: What problem is the paper trying to solve and what is the scope of the work?
3. Approach: What was done to solve the problem?
4. Results: What is the answer to the problem?
5. Conclusions: What implications does the answer imply?
Also, there are some things that should not be included in an abstract, i.e. information and conclusions not stated in the paper, references to other literature, the exact title phrase, and illustrative elements such as tables and figures [2]. Useful hints and comments on preparing and writing abstracts are given on various educational and professional web sites, such as in [10,11,12,13,14], to mention a few.
Introduction. The introduction serves the purpose of leading the reader from
a general subject area to a particular field of research. Three phases of an introduction
can be identified [8, p.141]:
1. Establish a territory:
a. bring out the importance of the subject and/or
b. make general statements about the subject and/or
c. present an overview on current research on the subject.
2. Establish a niche:
a. oppose an existing assumption or
b. reveal a research gap or
c. formulate a research question or problem or
d. continue a tradition.
3. Occupy the niche:
a. sketch the intent of the own work and/or
b. outline important characteristics of the own work;
c. outline important results;
d. give a brief outlook on the structure of the paper.
In brief, the introduction should guide the reader to current state-of-the-art in the field and should allow the reader to understand the rest of the paper without referring to previous publications on the topic [2]. Even though the introduction is the first main section in a paper, many researchers write – or at least finish – it very late in the paper writing process, as at this point the paper structure is complete, the reporting has been done and conclusions have been
drawn.
Body. The body of a paper reports on the actual research done to answer the research question or problem identified in the introduction. It should be written as if it were an unfolding discussion, each idea at a time [15, p.187]. Normally, the body comprises several subsections, whereas actual structure, organization, and content depends heavily on the type of paper, for example (adapted from [16]):
1. In empirical papers, the paper body describes the material and data used for the study, the methodologies applied to answer the research questions, and the results obtained. It is very important that the study is described in a way that makes it possible for peers to repeat or to reproduce it [2, p.29].
2. Case study papers describe the application of existing methods, theory or tools. Crucial is the value of the reflections abstracted from the experience and their relevance to other designers or to researchers working on related methods, theories or tools.
3. Methodology papers describe a novel method which may be intended for use in research or practical settings (or both), but the paper should be clear about the intended audience.
4. Theory papers describe principles, concepts or models on which work in the field (empirical, experience, methodology) is based; authors of theoretical papers are expected to position their ideas within a broad context of related frameworks and theories. Important criteria are the originality or soundness of the analysis provided as well as the relevance of the theoretical content to practice and/or research in the field.
Generally, the body of a paper answers two questions, namely how was the research question addressed (materials, methods) and what was found (results) [1,2,7].
Discussion. Thinking in terms of the hourglass model (cf. Figure 1) the discussion and conclusion section is somehow the counterpart to the introduction since this section should lead the reader from narrow and/or very specific results to more general conclusions. Generally, this section includes (cf. [2,8]):
1. Presentation of background information as well as recapitulation of the research aims of the present study.
2. Brief summary of the results, whereas the focus lies on discussing and not recapitulating the results.
3. Comparison of results with previously published studies.
4. Conclusions or hypotheses drawn from the results, with summary of evidence for each conclusion.
5. Proposed follow-up research questions. According to [2, p.38-9], something that is often not adequately dealt with is a discussion about the significance of the results; a good place for doing so is the end of the discussion section.
References. Embedding the own work in related literature is one of the essential parts of research writing. There are citations of references in the text, as well as a list of cited references at the end of the paper. Different publishers require Basics of Research Paper Writing and Publishing 7 different formats or styles of (a) citing in the paper text and (b) for listing references. The most commonly used referencing systems are (cf. [2]):
1. Name and Year System. References are cited by their respective authors and the year of publication, e.g., “Chuck and Norris (2003) define .....” This system is very convenient for authors, as the citation does not have to be changed when adding or removing references from the list. The fact that sentences become hard to read when subsequently citing many references in
one single parenthesis this way is one negative aspect for readers.
2. Alphabet-Number System. This system lists the references in alphabetical order and cites them by their respective number in parentheses or (square) brackets, e.g., “As reported in [4], ....” This system is relatively convenient for readers, as it does not break the flow of words while reading a
3. sentence with many citations. On the other hand, the author has to keep an eye on the references cited in the text as their numbers may change when the reference list is updated.
4. Citation Order System. This system is similar to the alphabet-number system with one major difference: the reference list is not sorted alphabetically, but in the order of appearance (citation by number) in the text.
Variations of the referencing systems mentioned above are used in most of the common style guides. The overall most widely used styles include: American Psychological Association (APA) Style [17], Chicago Style [18], Council of Biology Editors (CBE) Style [19], Modern Language Association (MLA) Style [20,21], and others.
In Computer Science, the most widely used styles are variations of the number system, e.g. the style used by Springer Verlag in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series including its subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics (LNBI); the style used by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Press; and the style guides issued by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Springer, ACM and IEEE are among the most prestigious publishers in Computer Science, since they tend to have the highest quality requirements for published papers.
In general, the citation system used depends on the scientific discipline (e.g., psychologists mainly use APA style) as well as on the publisher (different publishers may require to use different referencing styles even in the same field). Authors have no other choice than adhering to the style required by publishers.
2.3 Writing for Publication
Papers must be written for a specific audience. This is particularly important for doctoral students trying to publish parts of their dissertations. The doctoral thesis has been written to “please” the supervisor; a scientific paper should be written for the editor and audience of the intended journal (cf. Section 3.2). Thus the place of publication has to be selected prior to writing the paper [1, p.74], and chapters extracted from theses have to be reconsidered accordingly. Berry [9, p.105-8] notes that,
1. “theses are written for supervisors who have to be convinced that one has really done work. No corners are cut. Space is no object [. . . ] Nothing of this applies to learned journals.”
2. The professional public does not need to have everything spelled out, instead it “would like to learn something it did not already know, expressed in succinct prose, the points made in an agile and alert manner.”
3. Two of the most important rules are: “target the journal” (i.e., its editor and audience) and “research the market” to get to know available and appropriate journals in the field.
4. After having chosen the preferred journal for publication, all efforts should be directed to place the paper in that specific journal. It is helpful to study papers previously published in that journal with respect to paper organization, presentation, and writing style.
According to [6], several steps have to be taken to prepare a research paper for professional publication: First, the researchers have to ask themselves some preliminary questions to make sure that the studies are designed to answer precisely the research question under examination, that the experiments meet accepted standards, and that the process of keeping records of the research work is agreed-upon in the target community. Subsequently, the research work has to be assessed constantly in order to be able to decide whether the work is suitable for submission (speaking to colleagues and writing while work is in progress may turn out to be very helpful in this respect). A paper that “records significant experimental, theoretical or observational extensions of knowledge, or advances in the practical application of known principles” is worth publishing [6, p.3]. If it seems feasible to write such a paper it is time to select a place of publication.
Even if the work reported on is considered worth publishing, a major prerequisite for a paper to pass a rigorous peer review process (cf. Section 3.1) prior to publication is a clean, concise, and coherent writing style (cf. Section 2.4), as well as thorough organization and elaboration of the statement unfolding in the paper. To achieve this, many revisions may be necessary, as Davis’ [1] proposed plan for paper writing shows (Figure 2).
2.4 Writing Tips
There are many sets of writing tips available from different authors. Two sets of
frequently stated tips or rules may be presented here. Davis [1, p.20] gives the
following set of rules for technical and scientific writing:
1. If it can be interpreted in more than one way, it’s wrong.
2. Know your audience, know your subject, know your purpose.
3. If you can’t find a reason to put a comma in, leave it out.
4. Keep your writing clear, concise, and correct.
 | |||||
 | |||||
 | |||||
Outline structure,
construct tables & figures
 | |||
 | |||
Use journal checklists
and instructions to authors
Circulate to coauthors |
Circulate to peers and coauthors | |||||
 | |||||
 | |||||
Polish up presentation, revisits
checklists
Fig. 2. Plan for preparing and writing a paper for publication
– If it works, do it.
O’Connor [6, p.97] states the following principles for solving problems of writing style:
1. Be simple and concise.
2. Make sure the meaning of every word.
3. Use verbs instead of abstract nouns.
4. Break up noun clusters and ’stacked modifiers’ (that is, strings of adjectives and nouns, with no clue about which modifies which).
Additionally, it should be mentioned that plagiarism (i.e., using the ideas of someone else without acknowledging the source of information [22]) is considered a serious offence in the scientific community and must therefore be avoided. Credit must be given when using one of the following in the own work [22]:
1. another person’s idea, opinion, or theory;
2. any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings - any pieces of information - that are not common knowledge;
3. quotations of another person’s actual spoken or written words; or
4. paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words.
3 Publishing Scientific Papers
When the paper is written and the author and co-authors consider the paper to be worth publishing, the next step is to submit it for publication (e.g. to a conference, a journal, or a book editor). Particularly when the paper is submitted to a major journal it can be a very exhausting and sometimes dead-end way to the paper finally appearing in a printed or online issue of the journal. Essentially there are two obstacles: the editors and the reviewers. The following sections
cover the scientific community’s way of assuring scientific quality of published papers and the central stages of the editing, reviewing and publishing process.
3.1 Scientific Quality Management
Before going into detail with the process of publishing research papers, we will first introduce the central mechanism of scientific quality management, namely the peer review process. Since submitted papers are reviewed by peers of the authors in the respective field’s scientific community prior to publication, this process is referred to as peer review.
Peer review ensures publishable quality of research papers [2]; some argue that it should continue to do so in the future [23], while others are more skeptical. For most publication media the review process is quite similar, with some distinguishing differences. These concern mainly the roles of people involved and the outcome of the process. In this paper we focus on the review and publishing process in journals and conference proceedings. Common to serious peer reviewing practices is the fact that authors do not know the identity of their reviewers (blind review); depending on the editorial policy it is also common practice that reviewers should not know the name(s) of the author(s) of the paper (double blind review).
3.2 Journal Publications
A journal paper reports on a finished piece of research or some significant achievement
or discovery in a certain scientific field. Unlike at conferences it is uncommon that international journals accept reports on research in progress at an early stage.
Roles Involved. The main roles (except authors) involved in the journal editing and publishing process and their responsibilities (cf. [1,2,7,24,25]) are:
Referee. Each journal has an editorial board that includes a number of referees (also known as reviewers) who are responsible for reviewing and evaluating submitted papers. Having reviewed a paper, each referee independently advises the editor whether to accept or to reject the paper. This is usually done using a peer review form provided by the editor. However, final decisions are made by the editor. It is common practice that editors assign external referees to review submissions, for example when the referees of the editorial board do not have appropriate expertise to make constructive comments on a particular paper.
Editor. Also called Associate Editor. The most important function of an editor (can also be a group of persons) is to make the final decision whether to accept or to reject a submitted paper. Indeed, the comments of the referees just serve as suggestions. Nevertheless, as the editor alone would not be able to review and comment on all submissions in detail, he usually relies on the advice of his editorial board, where he can choose from a pool of experts in diverse fields of the journal’s main topics. If there is consensus on acceptance or rejection, the editor’s life is fairly easy. It becomes difficult only when there is significant disagreement in the reviewer’s suggestions. In such a case the editor may make a final decision based on the own opinion or after consulting additional referees.
Managing Editor. Also called Editor-in-Chief. Many important journals with a large number of submissions and published papers have managing editors who are full-time employed. Their job is to relieve the editor from administrative and other day-to-day tasks in producing a journal [25], e.g., coping with publishers. Generally, the difference between editors and managing editors is that the review process (dealing with the author and referees) is mostly within the realm of the editor, whereas post-acceptance issues are taken care of by managing editors [2].
Publisher. Publishers print accepted papers in (periodical) journal issues. Most journals appear quarterly, but there are also journals which appear monthly or bi-monthly. After the publisher receives the final version of an accepted paper, it is prepared for printing. A preview of the typeset paper to be published is then sent to authors, who check the so-called “page proofs” for any errors that survived the editing and typesetting stages. This process is called proof reading; after the author is finished with proof reading the paper is finally ready to go to print.
Note that most journals offer the scientific community the possibility of publishing special issues. A special issue is typically proposed by senior experts who have extensive knowledge in the field and access to a broad network of expert peers in a specialized field of relevance to the journal’s theme. In such a case, the person who proposes the special issue takes over the role of the editor and may provide his/her own special issue editorial board. Often, special issues are edited by conference program chairs, who invite authors of conference papers with the highest peer review scores to submit extended versions to a special issue of a journal related to the conference theme.
The Process. Important activities in the publishing process of journal papers are depicted in the UML activity diagram in Figure 3. The vertical swimlanes separate the areas of responsibility of the main actors in the process. The first step is to be taken by the author. After choosing an appropriate journal for submission, the author has to submit the paper according to the instructions issued by the journal editor. Most journals today offer the opportunity to submit the paper via the journal’s web site (in computer science, most
| Author | Editor | Reviewer | ||||||
             |
                 Reject Ok
[Accept] [Reject]          [Revision required] No review required review required |    |
Fig. 3. The process of publishing a paper in a journal.
journals rely on electronic submission and reviewing systems). At this stage, it is very important that the author follows the instructions at the utmost accuracy, because papers submitted not compliant with (parts of) the instructions will most likely be rejected without taking into account the paper’s actual content. Some common authors’ mistakes at this stage include:
1. Not adhering to the journal’s paper formatting and layout guidelines (e.g., using the wrong font size, line spacing, page numbering, referencing style, figure and table placement and visual guidelines, etc.).
2. Exceeding maximum paper length (word count, page count).
3. The paper’s thematic focus is not within the scope of the journal’s subject areas.
If any of the above is evident when the editor does the preliminary review, the paper will be directly rejected regardless of its scientific contribution and quality. On the other hand, if these conditions are met (“proper paper on a proper subject” [2, p.83]) the paper will be considered for publication. The submitting author is notified of either one of these decisions.
The next step the editor takes is to select referees for peer reviewing the paper. The number of referees involved in the review process may vary from journal to journal, but usually the editor forwards the paper to at least three referees who are experts in the topic that is covered by the paper. Besides making comments and suggestions for improvements to the authors, referees generally support the editor in making a decision by providing information on the following general issues, which may vary in importance among different journals (the following items have been compiled from [1,2,7,15,24,26,27]):
1. Thematic relevance to the journal’s scope of subjects.
2. Significance of contribution (does the paper contribute new findings to the body of knowledge in the field?)
3. Originality of the work (is similar research already published elsewhere?)
4. Coverage of relevant literature (did the authors report related work?)
More focusing on the writing style of the paper, the following aspects are relevant to reviewers and influence their recommended decision:
1. Clarity of writing: readability, organization, conciseness, and technical quality of the paper.
2. Appropriate title and abstract.
3. Appropriate use of well-designed (cf. [2, p.48-67]) figures and tables.
4. Sound conclusion and discussion.
5. Length of the paper relative to its usefulness.
Also increasing the likelihood of acceptance are the following characteristics of submitted papers [24]:
1. Strong reputation of the author.
2. Successful test of the proposed theory.
3. Different content than usually published in the journal.
When the assigned referees have finished reviewing and commenting the paper, the editor collects their recommendations and makes a decision which is sent to the corresponding author of the paper (usually the first author). Generally, the notification by the editor will carry one of the following messages [6,2,7]:
“Accept as is” The editor accepts the paper without modifications. The paper will be published in one of the journal’s forthcoming issues (for details on the printing process and on how tho deal with printers refer to [6,2,7]). This outcome is very unlikely upon initial submission. Only in very rare cases the paper will be accepted right away. It is more likely that the paper has to be revised.
“Accept conditionally” The editor requests revision of certain parts of the paper. The author has to modify the paper according to the suggestions and comments of the reviewers and the editor (i.e., conditions for acceptance) in order to be further considered for publication. After revising the paper accordingly, the author may resubmit the paper to the journal. Resubmission typically requires authors to enclose a letter to the editor where they must present and discuss in detail how they addressed the reviewer and editorial comments in their revised version. After receiving the revised version the editor typically forwards the paper to the same referees who conditionally accepted the initial submission.
“Reject” The editor does not see any chance for the paper to be published in the journal. Unfortunately, this is by far the most frequent outcome of the the review process of a journal. The editor usually encloses detailed reasons for rejection provided by the referees, which should be read carefully by the author. Most likely, one or more referees
1. had serious objections to one of the preconditions relevant to reviewers mentioned above;
2. found the paper out of the journal’s scope;
3. found fundamental flaws in the paper’s argument, data, etc.;
4. did not see any improvement with regard to previous submissions of the same paper.
If modification is required and the author feels unable to comply with the editors recommendations, the author may either (politely) tell the editor about the disagreement, or alternatively the paper may be sent to another appropriate journal in the field. The same applies to rejected papers.
3.3 Conference Publications
The review system at conferences is quite similar to the journal paper review system. Nevertheless, there are some differences in the publishing process, which will be explained in this section. Generally, papers published in conference proceedings do not have a reputation as high as journal papers. This is particularly true for the natural and social sciences. However, in computer science there are numerous conferences with at least journal-equivalent status [28]. While the vast majority of conferences are part of a series taking place annually, some are held bi-annualy. Several months before the conference date, the conference chair (who can be considered the counterpart to the editor of a journal) issues a Call for Papers (simply referred to as “CFP” in both written and oral communications) to invite authors to submit papers to be published in the conference proceedings and to be presented at the conference venue. The CFP,
which can normally be downloaded from the conference web site, comprises the following information:
Title and Venue: For example: 33rd International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB 2007). Vienna, Austria.
General information: This section can be found on most CFPs describing the scope of the conference, i.e., putting the main topic of the conference in the
light of current developments.
Topics of interest: Encloses a list of topics of particular interest for the respective conference’s subject area.
Submission guidelines: Most CFPs comprise a section where general guidelines
for submissions are communicated to the authors. Additionally, if the conference proceedings are published by a well-established publisher, the publisher is also mentioned on the CFP.
Deadlines: This section is very important, as there are a number of deadlines to be necessarily met by authors:
1. Submission deadline: This is the deadline for submitting the paper proposal, which might either require submission of a full paper or an (extended) abstract thereof. There are also some conferences that initially require an extended abstract for preselection and then a full paper submission. Most submission deadlines are firm, whereas failure to meet the deadline results irreversibly in not being considered for presentation and/or publication. For conferences taking place overseas the time change has to be taken into account when submitting papers close to the submission deadline.
2. Notification date: This specifies the date when the author is notified of acceptance or rejection. The notification date given is often not very accurate, as the program committee cannot anticipate the number of submissions, to mention one reason; also the peer reviewers often fail to submit their reviews on time. Thus the review process may take longer than expected. Conferences that use peer review to decide whether a submission should be accepted or not, emit one of two possible messages to each submitting author at the notification date:
• Accept: The paper has been accepted and will be published in the conference proceedings. However, reviewers may have suggested minor modifications to be incorporated in the published paper. Usually, acceptance letters (or mails) sent by organizers include the invitation (typically the obligation) to orally present the paper at the conference. This is a very good opportunity to receive immediate feedback in discussions with peers after the presentation.
• Reject: The paper was rejected and will not be published in the conference proceedings. Most reviewers supply valuable comments to authors on how to improve the rejected paper. Unlike journals, most conferences do not consider the option of asking authors for revision. Papers are normally either accepted or rejected right away. Depending on the importance of the conference and the response to the call for papers, the acceptance rate varies significantly among different conferences. The top conferences in Computer Science have a typical acceptance rate of less than 20%. Most other conferences with a good, selective reputation accept roughly one quarter to one third of the submissions (cf. also [29,30]).
3. Camera-ready paper deadline: In case of acceptance, this is the submission deadline for “camera-ready” papers, i.e., final versions to be included in the conference proceedings. At some conferences, failure to meet this deadline may result in not being included in the conference proceedings. Anyway, program committees announce their policy of dealing with deadline exceeding.
As with journals, it is vital to meet all deadlines and to comply with all guidelines (such as paper formatting instructions). See Figure 4 for an example of the “important dates” section in the website of the International Conference on Very Large Data Bases 2007.
Important Dates February 16, 2007
Workshop proposal submission deadline
March 14, 2007 (05.00pm PST)
Abstract submission deadline
March 21,2007 (05.00pm PST)
Paper and demonstration submission deadline
April 4, 2007 (05.00pm PST) (extended!)
Panel and tutorial submission deadline
June 7, 2007
Author notification
July 5, 2007 (extended!)
Camera-ready papers due
September 25-27 2007
Main conference
Other information: Other information of interest, e.g., call for workshops to be co-located with the conference, tutorials, panel discussion proposals, demonstrations, and information on sponsors, publisher, invited speakers, etc.
4 Concluding Remarks
The objective of this paper was to give an introductory report on basic issues of writing and organizing scientific papers as well as on the process of getting a research paper published in a journal or in conference proceedings. It should be useful for beginners (e.g., PhD students) seeking to join the publishing scientific community. As the whole of this subject area is too complex and extensive to be discussed in detail within the scope of this brief paper, not all aspects ofwriting and publishing scientific papers have been considered with appropriate attention. However, this paper includes a list of useful references to printed and online sources for readers interested in details, whereas I highly recommend two works of remarkable quality: Robert Day’s “How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper” [2], and Meave O’Connor’s “Writing Successfully in Science” [6] should answer most of the questions arising on the topic.
References
Booth, W.C., Colomb, G.G., Williams, J.M.: The Craft of Research. Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago (1995)
Council of Biology Editors: Proposed definition of a primary publication. Newsletter, Council of Biology Editors (1968)
Davis, M.: Scientific Papers and Presentations. Academic Press, San Diego (1997)
Day, R.A.: How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper. Second edn. ISI Press, Philadelphia (1983)
O’Connor, M.: Writing Successfully in Science. Chapman & Hall, London (1995)
Peat, J., Elliott, E., Baur, L., Keena, V.: Scientific Writing - Easy when you know how. BMJ Books, London (2002)
Stock, W.G.: Was ist eine Publikation? Zum Problem der Einheitenbildung in der Wissenschaftsforschung. In Fuchs-Kittowski, K., Laitko, H., Parthey, H., Umst¨atter, W., eds.: Wissenschaftsforschung Jahrbuch 1998. Verlag f¨ur Wissenschaftsforschung, Berlin (2000) 239–282
Swales, J.M.: Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge (1993)
Berry, R.: How to Write a Research Paper. Second edn. Pergamon Press, Oxford (1986)
Hammermeister, S.: How to write an abstract/prospectus. http://www.unlv.edu/Colleges/LiberalArts/English/WritingCenter/AbstractProspectus.htm(2002)
Procter, M.: The abstract. http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/abstract.html
(2002)
Klariti.com: Technial writing - how to write an abstract. (http://www.klariti.com/twHowToWriteAnAbstract.html)
Small, K.A.: How to write an abstract. http://www.galaxygoo.org/resources/abstractwriting.html(2002)
Dees, R.: Writing the Modern Research Paper. Second edn. Allyn & Bacon, Boston (1997)
CHI’98 Conference Webpage: Types of papers. http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi98/call/papers.html#types(1998)
American Psychological Association: Apa style. http://www.apastyle.org/
pubmanual.html (2003)
Michael Derntl
University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center: Cbe documentation. http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocCBE6.html(2003)
Purdue University Online Writing Lab: Using modern language association (mla) format. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r mla.html (2002)
Gibaldi, J.: MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Fourth edn. The
Modern Language Association of America, New York (1995)
Indiana University: Plagiarism: What it is and how to recognize and avoid it.
Pullinger, D.J.: Economics and organisation of primary scientific publication. In:
Joint ICSU Press/UNESCO Expert Conference on Electronic Publishing in Science,
Paris, France (1996) 139–148
Yuksel, A.: Writing publishable papers. Tourism Management (In Press)
National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis: Questions editors are often
Association for Computing Machinery: Transactions on database systems referee
Bundy, A., du Boulay, B., Howe, J., Plotkin, G.: The researcher’s bible. http://www.informatics.ed.ac.uk/teaching/modules/irm/resbible.html (1995)
Apers, P.: Acceptance rates major database conferences. http://wwwhome.cs.utwente.nl/_apers/rates.html (2000)
Steindl, C.: Rating of conferences and workshops. http://www.ssw.uni-linz.ac.at/General/Staff/CS/Research/Conferences/Rating/ (no date)
CHAPTER 3
Running head: SAMPLE FOR STUDENTS 1
Sample APA Paper for Students Interested in Learning APA Style 6th Edition
Jeffrey H. Kahn
Illinois State University
Author Note
Jeffrey H. Kahn, Department of Psychology, Illinois State University.
Correspondence concerning this sample paper should be addressed to Jeffrey H. Kahn,
Department of Psychology, Illinois State University, Campus Box 4620, Normal, Illinois
61790-4620. E-mail: jhkahn@ilstu.edu.
SAMPLE FOR STUDENTS
Abstract
The abstract should be a single paragraph in block format (without paragraph indentation), and the appropriate length depends on the journal to which you are submitting, but they are typically between 150 and 200 words. (Students should consult their instructor for the recommended length of the abstract.) Section 2.04 of the APA manual (American Psychological Association [APA], 2010) has additional information about the abstract. The abstract is important becausemany journal readers first read the abstract to determine if the entire article is worth reading. The abstract should describe all four parts of an empirical paper (i.e., Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion). Consider writing one or two sentences summarizing each part of a paper, and you’ll have a nice abstract.
Sample APA Paper for Students Interested in Learning APA Style Before getting started you will notice some things about this paper. First, everything is double-spaced. Second, margins are 1-inch wide on all sides. Third, there are several headings used throughout to separate different parts of the paper; some of the headings are in bold. Fourth, there is exactly one space after each punctuation mark (except for periods at the end of a sentence, after which there are two spaces). Fifth, the upper left of each page has a running head in all capital letters, and the upper right has the page number. Try to pay attention to all of these details as you look through this paper.
Now that those details are out of the way, you should know that this first part of the paper is called the “Introduction” section, yet it does not have a heading that actually says “Introduction.” Instead, the title of the paper is typed at the top of the first page (be sure to center
the title, but do not put it in bold). In this section you would often start with a topic paragraph that introduces the problem under study. The importance of the topic should be pretty clear from
the first paragraph or two of the Introduction. Section 2.05 of the APA manual (APA, 2010) will help give you some ideas about how to write this.
The bulk of the Introduction section is background literature on the topic. Here a literature review is often very helpful to provide a theoretical or empirical basis for the research. Try to provide the reader with enough information on the topic to be able to conclude that the research is important and that the hypotheses are reasonable. Any prior work on the topic would be useful to include here, although prior work that is most directly related to the hypotheses would be of greatest value.
Remember to cite your sources often in the Introduction and throughout the manuscript. Articles and books are cited the same way in the text, yet they appear different on the References page. For example, an article by Cronbach and Meehl (1955) and a book by Bandura (1986) are written with the authors’ names and the year of the publication in parentheses. However, if you look on the References page they look a little different. Remember that APA style does not use footnotes or anything like that for citations. Two other things about citations are important. When a citation is written inside parentheses (e.g., Cronbach & Meehl, 1959), an ampersand is used between authors’ names instead of the word “and.” Second, when citing an author’s work using quotations, be sure to include a page number. For example, Rogers (1961) once wrote that two important elements of a helping relationship are “genuineness and transparency” (p. 37). Notice that the page number is included here. Unless a direct quote is taken from a source, the page number is not included.
The last section of the Introduction states the purpose of the research. The purpose can usually be summarized in a few sentences. Hypotheses are also included here at the end of this section. State your hypotheses as predictions (e.g., “I predicted that...”), and try to avoid using passive tense (e.g., “It was predicted that...”). You will notice that hypotheses are written in past tense because you are describing a study you have finished.
Method
The Method section is the second of four main parts of an empirical paper (see Section 2.06 of the APA [2010] manual). (Be aware that some papers are reviews of the literature and therefore would not have a separate Method section.) There are typically three or four major subsections in the Method although there can be more. These subsections are separated by headings which are described in sections 3.02 and 3.03 of the APA manual (APA, 2010).
Participants
This brief section describes the people who participated in your study. (They should be called “participants,” not “subjects,” by the way.) Mention the number of participants, the percentage of female and male participants, the mean age (where “mean” is abbreviated M), and their ethnicity or cultural background. Any other demographic information would be appropriate here.
Research Design
Experimental studies often have a section in the Method describing the design of the study. Typically the independent variables in the study would be described here. For example, the study might involve a 2-by-2 design with one independent variable being treatment/control conditions and the other independent variable being biological sex. It would be helpful to describe dependent variables in this subsection as well.
Measures
This section describes the tests or instruments used to collect data. It would be appropriate to describe any questionnaires that you used. For example, if you used the Marlowe- Crowne Social Desirability Scale in your research, you may say that the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MCSD; Crowne & Marlowe, 1960) comprises 33 true-false items that measure social desirability. You would also provide the reader with information regarding the MCSD scores’ reliability and validity. Do this for each and every measure used in the study. In the event that the purpose of your paper is to develop a new questinnaire, you may wish to describe reliability and validity in the Results section (see below). However, you would only do this for a scale-development project.
Procedure
This section describes in great detail the data-collection procedures. Describe how participants were recruited, whether they participated alone or in groups, how informed consent or assent was obtained, what they were asked to do, how they were compensated for their participation, etc. It is hard to make this section too detailed. You should describe the procedure in a way that another researcher could conduct the same study (i.e., replicate it) just by reading about the procedure.
Results
The Results section may be the most difficult to write, at least until you get a little practice with reporting statistical analyses. This is the section where the results of the data analyses are presented. Section 2.07 in the APA manual (APA, 2010) will help a little bit. It’s often helpful to use tables (see Table 1) to help describe your results, especially when you have a lot of data to report, such as means and standard deviations. Table 2 provides another example of
a table, this one describing correlations. You may find it helpful to remind the reader of the hypothesis before presenting each result. It is also a good idea to tell the reader what type of data analysis was done (e.g., correlation, ANOVA) before it is presented. State what alpha level you adopted; an alpha level of .05 is the standard. Although you should be sure not to try to interpret or explain your results here, it is appropriate to state whether or not your hypotheses were supported. Just don’t try to explain why the hypotheses were or were not supported; that’s why you have the Discussion section.
Discussion
The Discussion is the fourth and final section of the paper. This is the part where you interpret and explain your results. Try to explain why you found what you did in your study. Is it
what you predicted? If not, why? You may have to think about your results in a theoretically meaningful way. Also, how do your findings fit in with previous theory and literature? Are your results consistent or inconsistent with what has been found in the past? If they are inconsistent, how can you explain this? The explanation and interpretation of results will probably be the biggest part of the Discussion. There are at least two additional parts of the discussion. First, include limitations of the study. Describe the ways in which the internal or external validity of the study may have been compromised. Was the sample biased? Were the measures problematic? Think about what you would do different next time if you conducted a similar study. Future research ideas are often discussed when limitations are discussed. Second, describe the implications of your findings to theory and practice. Answer the question, “How does my study add to psychological theory?” Also, think about practical applications of your findings. Perhaps give some additional directions for future research. When you’ve done that, you have written a paper in APA style!
References
American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological
Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Cronbach, L. J., & Meehl, P. E. (1955). Construct validity in psychological tests. Psychological
Bulletin, 52, 281-302. doi:10.1037/h0040957
Crowne, C. P., & Marlowe, D. (1960). A new scale of social desirability independent of
psychopathology. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 24, 349-354. doi:10.1037/h0047358
Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Table 1
Sample Table Describing Fake DataVariable A Variable B
M SD M SD
Men (n = 100) 32.61 8.95 17.08 5.25
Women (n = 80) 33.02 9.17 16.91 5.13
 |
Note. These data were totally made up. They are just presented to give you an idea about how to
present information in a table.
Table 2
Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Depression Scale
Variable Correlation
Convergent Validity
Self-Esteem . 44*
Hopelessness . 51**
Discriminant Validity
Social Desirability . 11
Anxiety . 22
*p < .05; **p < .01.CHAPTER 4
WRITING CENTER BRIEF GUIDE SERIES
A Brief Guide to Writing the Philosophy Paper
HARVARD COLLEGE
Writing Center
The Challenges of Philosophical Writing
The aim of the assignments in your philosophy classes is to get you doing philosophy. But what is philosophy, and how is it to be done? The answer is complicated. Philosophers are often motivated by one or more of what we might call the “Big Questions,” such as: How should we live? Is there free will? How do we know anything? or, What is truth? While philosophers do not agree among themselves on either the range of proper philosophical questions or the proper methods of answering them, they do agree that merely expressing one’s personal opinions on controversial topics like these is not doing philosophy.
Rather, philosophers insist on the method of first attaining clarity about the exact question being asked, and then providing answers supported by clear, logically structured arguments. An ideal philosophical argument should lead the reader in undeniable logical steps from obviously true premises to an unobvious conclusion.
A negative argument is an objection that tries to show that a claim, theory, or argument is mistaken; if it does so successfully, we say that it refutes it. A positive argument tries to support a claim or theory, for example, the view that there is genuine free will, or the view that we should never eat animals. Positive philosophical arguments about the Big Questions that are ideal are extremely hard to construct, and philosophers interested in formulating or criticizing such arguments usually end up discussing other questions that may at first seem pedantic or contrived. These questions motivate philosophers because they seem, after investigation, to be logically related to the Big Questions and to shed light on them.
So, for example, while trying to answer Big Questions like those above, philosophers might find themselves discussing questions like (respectively): When would it be morally permissible to push someone into the path of a speeding trolley? What is a cause? Do I know that I have hands? Is there an external world? While arguing about these questions may appear silly or pointless, the satisfactions of philosophy are often derived from, first, discovering and explicating how they are logically
connected to the Big Questions, and second, constructing and defending philosophical arguments to answer them in turn. Good philosophy proceeds with modest, careful and clear steps.
Structuring a Philosophy Paper
Philosophy assignments generally ask you to consider some thesis or argument, often a thesis or argument that has been presented by another philosopher (a thesis is a claim that may be true or false). Given this thesis or argument, you may be asked to do one or more of the following: explain it, offer an argument in support of it, offer an objection to it, defend against an objection to it, evaluate the arguments for and against it, discuss what consequences it might have, determine whether some other thesis or argument commits one to it (i.e., if I accepted the other thesis or argument, would I be rationally required to accept this one because I accept
the other one?), or determine whether some other view can be held consistently with it. No matter which of these tasks you are asked to complete, your paper should normally meet the following structural requirements:
2
Begin by formulating your precise thesis.
State your thesis clearly and concisely in your introduction so that your reader understands what your paper sets out to achieve. Get to the point quickly and without digression. Don’t try to introduce your argument within a grand historical narrative, for example. Your thesis does not have to be the same as any thesis mentioned in the assignment, although in some cases it
may be.
GOOD WRITING EXAMPLE
Jen was an excellent philosophy writer who received the following assignment:
Evaluate Smith’s argument for the claim
that people lack free will.
Jen decided before she began writing her paper
that Smith’s argument ultimately fails because it trades on an ambiguity. Accordingly, she began her paper with the following sentence: In this paper, I will refute Smith’s argument against the existence of free will by showing that it trades on an ambiguity. Jen’s thesis, then, was that Smith’s argument is invalid because it trades on an ambiguity – and she stated it clearly right at the beginning of her paper. Note that Jen need not say anything at all about the truth or falsity of the thesis that people lack free will; even if Smith’s argument for it is invalid, it might still be true that people lack free will.
Define technical or ambiguous terms used in
your thesis or your argument.
You will need to define for your reader any special or unclear terms that appear in your thesis, or in the discussion at hand. Write so that you could be clearly understood by a student who has taken some classes in philosophy but not this particular class. (Think of this imaginary reader whenever you need to decide how much you need to say to set up a discussion, or to judge the overall clarity of your work.)
If necessary, motivate your thesis (i.e. explain
to your reader why they should care about it).
You’ll need to do this, especially in longer assignments, when it isn’t clear why a reader would care about the truth of the claim you are arguing for.
Explain briefly how you will argue in favor of
your thesis.
In the example above, Jen’s thesis itselfnis stated in such a way as to indicate how the argument for it will proceed. Jen might reasonably have chosen to enlarge a little on this explanation, for example by indicating in her introduction which term in Smith’s argument is ambiguous, or by indicating why she thinks others may have overlooked the ambiguity.
If necessary, explain the argument you will
be critiquing.
If your assignment asks you to critique someone else’s argument (as in the example above), you will need to explain that argument before presenting your critique of it. Sometimes, the entire task of an assignment will be simply to explain an argument originated by somebody else, rather than to provide an argument for your own thesis.
While you will not always be expected to provide your own completely original arguments or theories in philosophy papers, you must always practice philosophy. This means that you should explain the argument in your own words and according to your own understanding of the steps involved in it. You will need to be very clear on the precise logical structure of an author’s argument (N.B. this may not be clearly represented by the order in which the argument is written down in the readings). Don’t try to impress your reader with your wide knowledge by summarizing everything in a particular article, or everything you have learned about the topic: stick to explaining only the details that are essential to the author’s argument for the particular thesis and to your own argument for your thesis. Also take care to clearly indicate when you are speaking in your own voice, and when you are explicating someone else’s argument or point of view but not yourself advocating it.
Take care to clearly indicate when you are speaking in your own voice, and when you are explicating someone else’s argument or point of view but not yourself advocating it.
3
POOR WRITING EXAMPLE
In answer to the previously mentioned assignment, George wrote a paper arguing that there was free will, on the grounds that George was himself aware of making all kinds of free choices every day. His conclusion was that Smith’s argument (which he had not explained, and mentioned only at the end of the paper) must be false, since there is free will. George’s professor asked him to rewrite, telling him that he had failed to engage with Smith’s argument in the first draft. Here is an excerpt from George’s less-than-successful rewrite… … Smith says on p.9, “The truth of causal determinism having been established by this argument from elimination, we shall move on to prove incompatibilism.” Smith then says that the source of an agent’s actions is some event that occurred before he was even born. If an event occurred before someone was born, it cannot be a product of his choices.
Therefore incompatibilism is true. On p.10, Smith addresses the objection that… George does not properly explain and analyze the logic of Smith’s argument (a philosophy paper), but rather reports what Smith says and the way in which it appears in the text (a book report). In the first sentence George quotes Smith directly where there is no need to do so, and he provides no explanation of Smith’s sentence or the technical terms in it that shows that George actually understands it. In his second sentence, George just follows Smith’s text while
paraphrasing it. In his third, George may be attempting to:
1. simply paraphrase Smith, or
2. paraphrase and endorse Smith’s claim, or
3. make his own personal point – but to the reader it is left ambiguous what George thinks Smith’s view is and what George’s own view is.
If you use a claim that your reader might find doubtful, then you must try to give the reader convincing reasons for accepting it.
Make an argument to support your thesis.
This is the main focus of your paper. To make the strongest possible argument, do not skip any steps, and try not to rest your argument on any premises that your reader might not be willing to accept. If you use a claim that your reader might find doubtful, then you must try to give the reader convincing reasons for accepting it. It will almost always be more effective to use a single argument and make it as compelling as you can than to use more than one argument supported less comprehensively, so avoid taking a “shotgun” approach by using multiple weaker arguments. In presenting your argument, be straightforward in your language, and say precisely what you mean. At times you will need to use examples or otherwise elaborate, yet you must still be as concise as possible – unnecessary words or information will distract and confuse your reader.
In order to strengthen your argument,
anticipate and answer objections to it.
In most philosophy assignments, this will be an essential part of your paper; it helps support your main argument and makes it more compelling. When you present an objection, you must always present a reason or reasons for thinking it true; the simple negation of a thesis is not an objection to it.
GOOD WRITING EXAMPLE:
After offering her argument, Jen summarized her conclusion and introduced an objection as follows:
As I have shown clearly in my reconstruction of Smith’s argument, the word “free” as it appears in Smith’s first premise (meaning uncaused) must be interpreted differently from the word “free” as it appears in Smith’s third premise (meaning unforced) – otherwise at least one of those premises would be highly implausible. But in that case, Smith’s argument is logically invalid. It might be objected that I have interpreted Smith’s argument unfavorably. I can think of only one other reasonable interpretation of Smith’s argument. It uses the same first two premises but has a different third premise…
Jen might reply to the objection she has imagined by showing that Smith’s argument would suffer some other defect if it were reconstructed in the way the objection suggests, such as resting on a logical fallacy or an implausible premise.
Don’t try to write a philosophy paper from scratch, from beginning to end: you must leave plenty of time to plan things out first. Think about the assigned topic for a while, and figure out a possible thesis and a rough argument for it in your head. If you’re finding this hard, start writing rough
sketches of relevant ideas. You’ll throw a lot of this material away later, but the act of writing can help you to think things through.
When you’re ready, begin to develop a master outline on paper. Your outline should show your thesis and your argument in abbreviated form but with maximal logical
clarity; try to use one line for each logical step of your argument. Make sure it includes potential objections and replies, using just a couple of lines for each. You’ll almost certainly find, as you produce your outline, that you need to revise pieces of your argument or even your entire answer. Keep writing sketches of pieces of your paper throughout the outlining process if it helps.
Continue revising the outline until the argument in it is completely clear and satisfactory to you. (Try explaining your argument to someone else; if you can’t explain it, your outline needs more work!) At this point, write a first complete draft of your paper from your outline, focusing on clarity of the overall structure of your argument. Once you have a first draft in hand, continue to revise it, with both the argument’s structure and your particular word choices in mind. Save your drafts as you go along, so that you can go back if you
change your mind. Read your paper out loud or have a friend read it to work out which parts of your argument might confuse or fail to persuade the reader and need more work. Be open to changing your mind and your arguments at all stages of the process, and keep your outline up to date as you do. Your final draft should offer the clearest expression you can manage of your final, properly outlined argument.
You should always raise and reply to the strongest objections you can think of rather than making up unconvincing objections that you find it easier to reply to. If you cannot think of a decisive reply to an objection, you should admit this, and then give your reader some reason to think the objection might not succeed anyway. If you cannot offer such a reason, you might have to go back and revise the thesis that you want to argue for.
In some cases, the correct response to an objection, if you cannot answer it, will be to start your paper over and argue for a point of view opposite to that which you started with. If this happens to you, congratulations on making a philosophical discovery!
Sometimes, an assignment will contain instructions to think of one or more objections to your thesis and defend against them. Generally, except for the very shortest assignments, of three double-spaced pages or less, you should take such a requirement to be implicit even if it isn’t mentioned outright. Also except in these very brief papers:
Briefly conclude by explaining what you
think your argument has established.
HOW TO GET IT DONE
In presenting your argument, be Straight forward in your language, and say precisely what you mean. At times you will need to use examples or otherwise elaborate, yet you must still be as concise as possible – unnecessary words or information will distract and confuse your reader.
5
Evidence
From your philosophy instructor, a request for evidence for a claim is generally a request for an argument, or for a better argument. While philosophers may from time to time make use of scientific generalizations or results, they generally avoid the messy and specialized business of collecting and arguing about empirical data, and confine their investigations to their armchairs. This is a broad generalization; sometimes empirical evidence from psychology, physics or other fields of inquiry can be put to good use in philosophical arguments. But if you do use such evidence from elsewhere, never just assume that it solves your philosophical question: be careful to explain exactly why it is relevant and exactly what we can conclude from it, and do make sure that you accurately report what the scientists have to tell us. Philosophers still find a lot to argue about even when they put empirical questions aside. For one thing, the question of what sort of empirical evidence would be needed to decide the answer to a question might itself be a non-empirical question that philosophers discuss. For another, philosophers spend a lot of time discussing how different claims (which may be empirical) relate logically to each other. For example, a common philosophical project is to show how two or more views cannot be held consistently with each other, or to show that although two views are consistent with one another, they together entail an implausible third claim. If successful, this type of argument, known as a reductio ad absurdum or reductio for short, shows that we have reason to reject at least one ofits premises.
EXAMPLE OF A REDUCTIO
Premise 1: People sometimes ought morally to do what they are not in fact going to do.
Premise 2: If a person morally ought to do something, then they could do what they ought to do (Principle that “Ought implies can”).
Premise 3: If a person is in fact going to do one thing, then it is not the case that they could do something else (Determinism).
Conclusion (from 2 and 3): People never ought morally to do what they are not in fact going to do Here, the conclusion contradicts the first premise. If the argument is logically valid, it shows that the three premises of the argument cannot all be true. A further argument would be needed to show which of the three premises ought to be rejected. Philosophical arguments are not always in the form of a
reductio; we often need to start from some basic premises that our ultimate conclusions will depend on. Unless they are scientific results as mentioned above, they should generally be claims that any reasonable reader can be expected to agree with, and they might be drawn from common experience, or from our stronger intuitions. So, for example, one might begin an argument with the intuition that murder is wrong if anything at all is wrong, or with the common experience that things look smaller when they are further away. When you introduce a set of basic premises, you should be careful to avoid the fallacy of begging the question – which is to say, using any premises that one would reasonably doubt if not for one’s prior acceptance of the conclusion the argument attempts to establish. (This is the correct logical use of the phrase “begs the question”, by the way. Avoid using the phrase “begs the question” to mean raises the question, at least in philosophy papers.)
EXAMPLE OF A QUESTIONBEGGING
ARGUMENT
Premise (1): I have religious experiences.
Premise (2): If anyone has religious experiences, then God exists.
Conclusion: God exists. Note that in this argument, the term “religious experiences” is ambiguous between two readings. On one reading, it means genuine experiences of something supernatural. On this reading, premise (2) is plausible, but premise (1) is question-begging, since one would have to assume that God exists to think that one has had a religious experience. On a second reading, “religious experiences” means experiences as if of something supernatural. But on this reading, premise (2) is implausible. Finally, the argument is not logically valid (it equivocates) if the term “religious experiences” means a different thing in each of the two premises. If the writer of this argument had defined his terms more carefully, its weakness would be clear. Ambiguous terms in philosophical arguments are a common problem, and can mask other weaknesses. Since a lot of the things philosophers talk about are very abstract, it may be difficult to bring our common experiences and intuitions to bear on them. This is one place where examples may be a useful source of evidence. Examples can also help clarify the intended meaning of terms. Philosophers make great use of hypothetical examples in particular, and you should feel free to use them yourself.
6
A GOOD USE OF EXAMPLES
Jen is arguing for the thesis that it is permissible for me to perform some actions that have fore known side effects which it wouldn’t be permissible to aim at directly. She uses examples successfully both to elucidate the notion of a
“foreknown side-effect,” and to help bring our intuitions to bear on her thesis:
A foreknown side-effect of an action is an event or state of affairs that one does not aim at when one acts, but
that one knows will (likely) result from one’s action. For example, I decide to drive to class in order to save time. I know that my driving will leave the parking space in front of my house empty. The empty parking space is a foreknown side-effect of my action: I don’t aim at it, because my aim is only to get myself to school faster. …
To help prove my point about the difference in permissibility between aims and foreknown side-effects, I will use the following hypothetical example: Bill the bomber pilot has decided to bomb an important munitions factory. Bill knows that the factory is next to a hospital, and that about 1,000 civilian casualties are likely. But bombing the factory will bring an early defeat to the enemy by cutting their arms flow. This will demoralize them and help end the war. Bill’s action, I contend, may be permissible. Now I’ll just alter the case slightly: Bob the bomber pilot has decided to bomb a munitions factory. Bob knows that the factory is next to a hospital, and that about 1,000 civilian casualties are likely. In fact, bombing the factory is the best way to bring about such a high number of casualties, and this is why Bob has decided to bomb there. Bringing about this many civilian casualties will help weaken the enemy’s resolve and thereby bring an early end to the war. (It will also have a side-effect of cutting their arms flow). I contend that Bob’s action is clearly impermissible.
Examples like these might bring clear moral intuitions, and if Jen can construct an example in which she can convince us that it is indeed clear that something would be permitted as a foreknown side-effect but not as an aim, she will
have a good argument for her thesis. There are a couple of types of “evidence” that you should not use in philosophy papers: Do not argue that a claim is true, or is likely to be true, just because someone of great authority believed it. Authorities can be wrong, and philosophers want to see the arguments for a view. And do not argue from what the dictionary says about something.If the dictionary defines truth as “correspondence with reality”, you cannot use this as an argument that truth is correspondence with reality because either you are treating the dictionary as an authority, or you are citing it as a reporter of common usage. But philosophers don’t want to know what most people think or assume about what truth is, they want to know what is actually the case! (N.B.: you may also be misled when you consult the dictionary because some words have technical, philosophical meanings within the subject that differ fromtheir ordinary usage.)
Sources
You may freely use the arguments of other philosophers in your papers as long as you credit them appropriately,
and also do your own philosophical thinking. Again, if you need to explain someone else’s argument, you must do so in your own words and according to your own clear understanding of the logical steps involved in it. It is also extremely important that when you explain the arguments of other philosophers, you interpret them charitably. This does not mean that you are barred from criticizing them, but rather that you must interpret each author as holding the strongest possible argument consistent with what they have written. If a philosopher’s argument seems obviously wrong, then you probably do not understand it properly.
Even if a philosopher’s argument seems right, you musttake great care to avoid confusing their argument with any other argument that sounds similar to it. You can help yourself to avoid these difficulties by training yourself to read philosophy articles extremely slowly and carefully in order to understand the precise steps of the author’s argument. It is not unusual to have to read a philosophy article several times in order to grasp its details. Philosophy is difficult by nature: to avoid making things even harder, make sure that the argument in your paper is absolutely as clear and easy to understand as possible! If you are asked to offer an argument or an objection and the assignment does not require that it be your own, then you may generally use one that you have learned in class or from the readings, with proper credit. In this case, you should not only put the argument in your own words and in the logical form that seems clearest to you, but also see whether there is any way in which you can improve on the argument you have heard. Perhaps you can offer reason to modify it, or offer extra considerations in defense of it that help explain why you yourself find it plausible. Look for ways to show that you are doing your own philosophical reasoning.
7
Conventions
Certain conventions are helpful and generally expected in philosophical writing:
Avoid direct quotes. If you need to quote, quote sparingly, and follow your quotes by explaining what the author means in your own words. (There are times when brief direct quotes can be helpful, for example when you want to present and interpret a potential ambiguity in the text of an author’s argument.) When you paraphrase, you must do philosophical work in doing so: explain any ambiguous terms or technical terms in the source, and remember that your task is not to explain the author’s sentences in the text but his or her argument: aim to show that you’ve understood it and aren’t merely repeating it in different words.
Use first person personal pronouns and possessive pronouns freely; signpost. Phrases such as “I will use the term ‘realist’ to mean…” are useful in clarifying your use of concepts and terminology. Phrases such as, “I will argue that…”, “I will now show that…”, “I will give three examples…”, “My second objection is…” or “My argument has shown that…” are an extremely useful aid to communicating the structure of your arguments and your paper overall. Use “sign-posting” phrases like these frequently in your papers in order to give your reader a clear sense of where your argument is going at all times (note that such sign-posting phrases are not always formulated first-personally, e.g. “Smith offers three main objections … Smith’s first objection is … but it might be replied that … Smith’s second objection is ….”).
A Guide to Philosophical Writing by Elijah Chudnoff.
has some other introductory resources you will find useful, including his “Guidelines on Reading Philosophy” (because you need to learn to read in philosophy before you can write!) and some notes on “Philosophical Terms and Methods.”
Special thanks to Dina Bogecho, Warren Goldfarb, Ned Hall, Christine Korsgaard, and Brian Wood for their helpful comments.
Copyright 2008, Simon Rippon, for the Harvard College Writing Center.
No comments:
Post a Comment