Of course, creating this type of document mostly requires paraphrasing words and phrases from various sources, but sometimes you have to include direct citations. Your teacher may ask you to create a list of references for your work or a bibliography, where you must include the sources you used for making your own document.
The one variant requires mentioning the author’s name/page number. The second is the most popular, it includes the author’s name/date/page number:
You may be asked to include references in research paper in a certain format. Usually, they require using the APA or MLA style. It is an important moment because citing sources in various formats has its own different rules. We recommend checking out what style you have to use beforehand. Never mix different styles because it is inappropriate!
If a book has multiple writers, at the start you must mention them all, but you may use ‘et al.’ afterward:
Referencing and Citing a Research Paper: General Rules
Make sure you have a lot of time for planning and writing. If you’re going to create a document throughout the night, this is a very bad idea. If you don’t have enough time, we suggest looking for reliable research paper writing services and ask them for help. And now, go ahead and follow our tips on citing in a research paper!
Writers use the MLA (Modern Language Association) style for a project report to cite sources. Needless to say, citing and referencing is very important – it helps to indicate certain phrases used by other authors to avoid plagiarism. When you want to make an in-text citation, MLA style has two variants.
During writing this work, you must use various facts from other sources. According to the main requirements, you have to use in-text citations. In fact, referencing is an important part of writing any kind of work, and you have to remember when to use in text citations to create a proper document.
If two books have multiple authors, and the first author is the same but the others are different, alphabetize by the second author’s last name (or the third or fourth, if necessary).
List the editor or editors’ names in place of the author’s name, followed by Ed. or Eds. in parentheses.
Include the translator’s name after the title, and at the end of the citation, list the date the original work was published. Note that for the translator’s name, you list the initials before the last name.
Carroll, D., & Zuckerman, N. (2008). Gestational diabetes. Chicago, IL: Southwick Press.
An Article in a Reference Book
The ways you cite different nonperiodical web documents may vary slightly from source to source, depending on the information that is available. In your citation, include as much of the following information as you can:
After the title, indicate in brackets that the work is a review and state the name of the work being reviewed. (Note that even if the title of the review is the same as the title of the book being reviewed, as in the following example, you should treat it as an article title. Do not italicize it.)
Bernanke, J., & Wade, C. (2010, January 10). Hummingbirds: Magic in the air [Television series episode]. In F. Kaufman (Executive producer), Nature. New York, NY: WNET.
Don’t feel that you have to write the introduction first. The introduction is often one of the last parts of the research paper you’ll write, along with the conclusion.
The research question is the question you want to answer in an empirical research paper.
The introduction to a research paper is where you set up your topic and approach for the reader. It has several key goals:
The rise of social media has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the prevalence of body image issues among women and girls. This correlation has received significant academic attention: Various empirical studies have been conducted into Facebook usage among adolescent girls (Tiggermann & Slater, 2013
Research paper introduction examples
The thesis statement expresses the position that the rest of the paper will present evidence and arguments for. It can be presented in one or two sentences, and should state your position clearly and directly, without providing specific arguments for it at this point.
- This study set out to answer the following question: What effects does daily use of Instagram have on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls?
- We investigated the effects of daily Instagram use on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls.
If included, the overview should be concise, direct, and written in the present tense.
- Present your topic and get the reader interested
- Provide background or summarize existing research
- Position your own approach
- Detail your specific research problem
- Give an overview of the paper’s structure
If your research question, for example, pertains to how individual voters view women candidates for president, perhaps the best method is by doing field interviews or by conducting a phone survey of these voters using a random sampling method. There are many ways that may help you derive answers to your questions. It is crucial, however, to be aware that each method has an inherent set of strengths and weaknesses.
- Survey. Those conducted using a large sample with participants chosen randomly tend to be viewed highly in the realm of peer-reviewed research. However, it is essential to remember that surveys also have weaknesses because participants might not necessarily give their honest opinion (i.e., giving ‘prestige’ or politically correct answers), and they are influenced by many factors in the way that they answer survey questions.
- Field experiments. Giving a specific group certain things while others experience a different situation these experiments are also employed to find answers to the impact of a treatment or a program on a community. Methods such as content analysis, experiments, direct observation, or participant observations are also conventional methods being used by researchers to find answers to research questions. Every student researcher should be familiar with standard research methods available for use and understand strengths and weaknesses that these methods bring to the study.
- Keyword Internet search. An excellent place to start with a review of related literature is by going online and doing some preliminary search using specific keywords related to topic or your outline. Perhaps a student can begin by looking at general information published on well-known sites and general publications before delving into specific journal articles and academic papers. Although these two receive the highest trust as sources because they are referred to as independent peer-reviewed work. Nevertheless, goal at this stage of the process is really to get that preliminary information.
- Check previous researches. The next step of search process is to look at the work done by credible and respectable organizations about subject matter. What have they found, and what are they sharing and publishing online? Are the research works privately or publicly funded? Are the researchers affiliated with a company or foundation, or do they belong to university research institutions? It is essential to look at sources of funding or potential conflict of interest because the inherent bias in the findings needs to be considered in weighing credibility of research work.
- Visit university library. Now that you have quite a bit of background information to work with, the time has come for you to spend the right amount of effort doing some searching and sleuthing at university libraries. Use research databases to look for journal articles or other primary and first-hand sources about your research topic. This type of library research is the stage where you’ll probably get a lot of information as to the institutions and scholars researching the specific theme (from specialties to sub-specialties) that you are interested in exploring.
- Use academic sources. Remember that peer-reviewed academic journals tend to receive the highest credibility in academic research papers primarily because of the critical and often blind peer-review process, which is gold standard in judging the quality of research work. Furthermore, you’ll be well served if you use some books published by well-known researchers and academics on the topic that you are researching and writing about. If your work gets published or accepted at a conference, you have a good chance of being quoted or cited in subsequent work by other researchers in the area that you are pursuing.
Choose a research paper topic that interests and challenges you the most. Your attitude towards the topic may well determine amount of effort, enthusiasm you put into your research. Focus on a limited aspect, narrow it down from “Religion” to “World Religion” to “Buddhism.” Obtain teacher approval for your theme idea and thesis before making full-scale research. It will also help save time and effort.
Knowing what is out there – the literature review
Researcher recommends that this study be expanded by using other method to measure perception of presidential tweets such as a random survey of undecided voters
Purpose of an outline is to help you think through your topic carefully and organize it logically before you start writing. A good outline is the most important step in writing an excellent paper. Check your outline to ensure that points covered flow logically from one to the other. Include in your outline an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. You may create the first outline as a draft and edit it while writing a research paper.
Check out public and university libraries, businesses, government agencies, as well as contact knowledgeable people in your community. Read and evaluate, outline them. Bookmark your favorite Internet sites. Printout, photocopy or take notes of relevant information.
After going through the necessary amount of information, data and literature available on your desired topic, it is time to narrow the research down. It’s not appropriate if chosen issue is very broad as there may be several important aspects within this very theme. It won’t be a good solution to cover them all in one research paper as it’ll turn out vague or generic.
- Focus group. It is a great method to use if the goal is to obtain a lot of information from a small group of people without much investment in time and money. Just gathering them in one place (typically up to a dozen people) and asking them to provide insights into your research questions is often enough.
Like, when you reference a book, include the following information: Author, the year of publication, book title, location, and publisher.
The title should present the main idea of an essay and be no longer than 12 words. Type it in the upper half of the page. Keep in mind that the running head on the title page includes words Running head in capital letters.
Argue your key points in the main body and support them with appropriate evidence and relevant quotes from authoritative sources (use quotes sparingly).
If you have a good example, creating your own piece of writing is not hard.
How to write in APA format?
It’s essential to use proper headings and subheadings when organizing ideas in research papers and essays. Also, you have to divide them into sections.
You need to write a concise Summary of your paper (not more than 250 words) in an informative style. Introduce research topic, state research questions, tell about methods and key findings or conclusions.
Smith’s (1996) study revealed the following:
College students often experience difficulties with using APA style, especially when they have to cite sources in their academic works for the first time. This typically happens because many young people fail to get adequate help from their teachers. (p.30)
Smith (1996) found “college students often experience problems with using APA style” (p.30).
The referencing is being done in a variety of ways. However, the traditional formats were few in numbers to add research paper references or academic papers. Apart from paying attention to the format, the order of adding elements matters as well. Therefore, most of the expert researchers suggest to keep calm and be patient as this is going to take plenty of time. Secondly, the breaks are also important to let your mind relax. Start adding annotation after a few days of finishing writing references for research paper. In the end, everything would become quite simple in the case of following the useful tricks of reference writing.
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Lots of work and critical results about previously approved work is the major prerequisite to start the writing references in research paper. However, relative referencing with authenticated sources is also mandatory to complete ше excellently. Many researchers perform outstanding work, but it could not take the place in some famous journals. There could be many reasons behind this, but one of the most occurring reasons is paying less attention to the style and formatting of the reference page. Chronologically added elements of sources, the right style of formatting either APA or MLA and proper use of punctuation are mandatory to place on the approval list.
The reference page has higher importance for any type. Although it sounds a bit strange you can’t deny it. There are various features of reference page many of us avoid to add. Therefore, always give your focus to make this page free from all types of errors. Learn how to write references format for research paper:
All to Know About Referencing
In academic writing, these are some special features of a reference page that cannot be neglected at all. Every newbie or even professional academic references for research paper should be aware of these features. These traits also help in finding where does the annotated bibliography goes.
- The classic literature free e-books are available to download with the figure of over one million options that can be found in Open Library. This is the best online library to conduct effective studies.
- You can get plenty of links to download the e-books from the University of Pennsylvania Books Page. More than one million books are available in this library.
- The top search engine in the world also offers the source to download innumerable best e-books. Get the links of downloading the desired e-book from Google Books library.
- You can read and download 33k free e-books from Project Guten’s Online Library. This is another best source for collecting academic data.
- Now, you can download free ebooks from the largest digital library available online. It is known to be an internet archive.
The shared tips for making references for research paper would help you a lot in getting the best output. You can make the last few pages more impressive through it. More useful tips to make a reference page can guide you to avoid all possible mistakes in the bibliography.