Guidelines for Bibliographic Essay:
One of the assignments in this class is the bibliographic essay. You might
look on this as the preparation of a
mini-course in
directed readings, in which you fashion a short reading list and then teach
yourself about some aspect of Mars of interest to you.
The bibliographic essay will cover at least five sources (though more
are certainly welcome). Of these, at least four must come from
"refereed journals," that is, from research journals that practice "peer
review" in the
selection of the articles they publish. The other source may include
textbooks, chapters in anthologies, newspaper articles, articles in
non-refereed (usually popular) sources (e.g., National Geographic, Time,
Smithsonian) web pages, government sources, monographs, theses and
dissertations, and talks at professional meetings.
A list of the refereed journals that most commonly publish original research
work on Mars science can be found at https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/geog441541/journals.html.
Other refereed journals sometimes publish the occasional article on Mars, so
feel free to use any you find (the list will give you a sense of what refereed
journals are like, so you'll recognize them when you see them).
Now that you have read various popular or background pieces and have found
at least four articles in the research literature, you need to prepare the
reference list. Please use the following format:
Arrange the list alphabetically by author's (or lead author's) family name.
If it's a journal article, you'd use this format:
Jones, C. 2002. Article about an interesting rock in Meridiani Planum.
Journal of Some Pretty Interesting Mars Rocks 14, 2: 235-239.
That is, author family name first. Comma. Initial(s). Period. Year. Period.
Article name in sentence format (capitalize first word and proper names/place
names). Period. Name of Journal (with all major words capitalized and
the whole journal's name italicized) no period and no comma volume. Comma.
Number (if more than one issues appears each year). Colon. Page numbers.
Period. And use hanging indentation (where the first line begins at the far
left margin and the reference wraps into an indented block.
If it's an article in an anthology (and I'll use three authors this time):
Smith, J.D.; Gonzalez-Sanchez, M.T.; and Jones, C. 2010. Marvin the Martian:
Toward a policy governing martian lifeforms. In Title of Book about
Things to Know about Space Policy, ed. O.L. Ling and M.N.
Ndebele, pp. 45-62. New York and Los Angeles: Arcane Publishing House.
That would be last name comma initial(s) of first author. Semi-colon (so you
don't get confused with the commas within each author's name). Last
name comma initial(s) of second author. Semi-colon. And Last name comma
initial(s) of last author. Period. Year. Name of chapter in sentence case
(only first word, proper names, and place names start with capitals). In
italicized name of book with all major words capitalized. Comma, pp. page
numbers. Period. Name of city or cities in which book was published. Colon.
Name of publishing house.
If it's a book, it comes out:
Sandhu, C.M. 2001. A Book about Anthropomorphic Cloud Formations on
Mars. Columbus, OH: Vanity Press International.
That is: last name. Comma. Initial(s). Period. Year. Period. Book title with
all important words capitalized. City (and state or country if you suspect
your readers don't know where Columbus is). Colon. Publishing House.
Now that you have your five sources (including your refereed journal
articles) neatly arranged in your word processor or citation manager, you need to compare
and contrast the information in them about the subject in which you're
interested. Compose an essay, about three or four pages long (not
counting your actual reference list), in which you discuss the trends in your
topic as conveyed by your readings and then show where each of your articles
agrees or disagrees with another or others. Very importantly, your essay
needs to make a specific connection between each entry and one or more of the
others or else to the class itself.
For example,
let's say you were reviewing an article about massive outflows on Mars, which
argued that these were water outpourings back when Mars had enough atmospheric
pressure to allow liquid water. Let's say, further, that you had just read
some other
article that said that other liquids, with different pressure and phase
characteristics, could have accounted for the outflow features even on a dry
planet. Your
discussion of each article would refer to the other and note that they seem
directly to contradict one another, perhaps based on the different data they
use to approach the problem. What I'm trying to get you to do is read these
articles critically in light of other articles you've read on the subject.
Having done all that, which of the four research articles strikes you as
having made the best case for its argument in terms of data collected, methods
applied, and how logically the evidence relates to the hypothesis or research
question?
Which one seems to be the most interesting to you personally and why?
Developing your proficiency in professional writing is one of the goals of
this assignment, and writing mechanics comprise about a third of your total
points. Here are two resources to help you work on your writing:
-
Guidelines to writing
standards
-
-
NASA's Handbook for
Technical Writers and Editors
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