The Ohio State University Hypothyroidism in Pregnancy Scientific Paper
BIO-131 Writing Your Literature Review
A. Know what the assignment is. A literature review is a review of recent peer-reviewed journal articles on a selected topic in anatomy and/or physiology that is part of one of the systems studied this semester in your anatomy and physiology course.
1. Minimum number of peer-reviewed sources: Three or more. Textbooks, web sites, or other non-journal articles are not peer-reviewed sources. Peer-reviewed articles from scientific journals are the only type of acceptable source for information used in this assignment.
2. How current must the sources be? Publications from one of the following years are acceptable for this assignment: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2120. Older sources are “out-of-date” for scientific purposes and your assignment is to review the “current” state of scientific knowledge on your topic.
3. Type of writing: integrative and synthetic. This means you need to relate what different scientists have found out about your topic so that you can compare, contrast, and relate the content of your articles to each other. It is not enough to summarize the three articles (but that may be a helpful first step as you begin the writing process). You need to note patterns, assumptions, gaps in present knowledge, different approaches to a question, or ideas for future research.
4. Audience: college students like yourself. Define any terms that a typical college student would find unfamiliar in a concise statement.
5. Page requirement: Approximately five pages, not including the title page and the literature cited page. Doing a good job of handling the content is more important than a specific word or page length. Papers shorter than 4 full pages are not acceptable for this assignment. Do not submit short papers for review or for a grade.
6. Font and spacing: Use Times New Roman 12 font with double spacing.
B. Narrow your topic. Term paper topic and three peer reviewed articles you are considering using as sources for your paper are due to the instructor no later than beginning of class on Tuesday February 18, 2020 (note this is a later date than is found in the syllabus). This needs to be typed and printed. The following items need to be included: a. name of student b. the course name, number, and section letter c. date assignment is due (February 18) d. a minimum of 3 peer-reviewed journal articles listed in APA format APA format in this course must include: 1. Names of all authors (if you cannot find the author, it is not a peer-reviewed journal article and is unsuitable to use as a scientific reference in this course). 2. Year of publication (if you cannot find the year of publication, the article is unsuitable to use as a scientific reference in this course). 3. Title of journal article (check APA style on use of upper and lower case letters in the title). Do not use italics or quotation marks. 4. Name of scientific journal in italics 5. Volume of journal in italics. If the source has the issue number of the journal, please include that but remember it is NOT italicized. 6. Page numbers on which the article can be found in the published journal. 7. The first 6 items immediately above are REQUIRED. If you cannot find this information, move on to a different reference for your paper. The DOI (digital object I.D.) is optional for references in this class and would be in addition to the format items required above. It does not substitute for any of the 6 required items above. Before you submit your chosen topic for approval by the instructor, it is important that you check the peer-reviewed sources of information on your subject. The tendency is to pick a broad topic like “diseases of the cardiovascular system.” One cannot scratch the surface of such topics in approximately 5 pages. See the reference librarians (Stacey McKenna, Janell Verdream, Katie Blocksidge, or John Crissinger) in the Warner Library for assistance in locating peer-reviewed sources. We have available hundreds of thousands of articles through our CINAHL database (see logging into the CINAHL database under the Writing Assignment tab on Moodle).
C. Plan your paper. The paper may begin with a quick review of why the topic is important to you and the reason you chose to research it. This should take only 1-2 sentences. As stated earlier, the body of the paper should not be a simple summary of three separate publications. You need to show that you studied and understood the content of the papers by integrating them through discussion of areas of similarities and differences or through the investigated details of the subject. Your goal is to bring the articles together to better understand the current status of your chosen topic and to convey this knowledge to your readers. The body of the paper is the longest part. The paper should end with a brief conclusion that may include not only a summary of the ideas in your chosen references, but also a mention of where gaps in research exist or what future research is suggested by the status of science at the present time.
