My experience with research is extremely limited. I have written 2 research papers in my college career; one revolving around a patient case study and one involving a medication. I have been out of high school so long I can't even remember if I wrote one there. I am sure I did as I took the college prep course of study as it was called then.
The first paper I wrote involved following a patient through her illness. There was not a lot of technical research involved in this. Most of my information came directly from the patients' hospital records. There was not a lot of hunting for materials, as the instructor wanted it mostly patient specific. My patient had a lower GI bleed and I did research the pathophysiology of this illness in two reference books.
The second research paper was on a medication. We had to choose a medication from a predetermined list and write about it. This was also fairly uncomplicated. We had to write about things such as indications, contraindications, mechanisms of actions, etc.. This paper was a little more involved as there was a requirement to see if it was viable to be used prehospitally. I used journal articles in addition to standard text for this paper.
I have tried to self teach myself on how to write a research paper without much luck. For the last couple of years I have wanted to write an article for an EMS journal, but have been afraid to venture there. I am not afraid of doing the research or writing the paper, it is the footnoting and bibliography that terrify me. Yes, terrify is the right word as I can't imagine doing it incorrectly and being accuse of plagiarizing. Joe Biden was a reminder of how long something like that can be remembered.
I have never done a research paper with online referencing, so this will certainly be a challenge for me. I am sure I will see more than one comment on how to properly notate references and the like. I am looking forward to it though, as it will be a start to hopefully having an EMS artivcle published someday.
Plagiarism is one thing. Lousy footnoting is something else altogether. Joe Biden lifted a whole speech and slotted himself into someone else's life. In our corrupt public culture, an apology and some crap about poor notetaking were enough to get everyone but English teachers to forgive him.
ReplyDeleteBut it was cheating all the way.
That's not going to be an issue with your isearch or with your EMS article. It's simple: if you quote, footnote. If you summarize or paraphrase or put it in your own words, footnote. If in doubt, footnote.
If you screw up, I'm here to help you back on track, not to take you to the woodshed.
All that stuff is only important so that your readers can see where your ideas and information are coming from, but there is no chance of you getting sent to the asst principal's office for missing some quotation marks, so don't worry about it.
We're using MLA notations for footnotes--parenthetical or intext footnotes--but I'd guess the EMS thing will use a different format. Minor detail. Anyone who can do what an EMS can do can navigate this picky stuff.