Writing a Research Paper
Getting started
Acquaint yourself with the ethics of writing using Penn State's Academic Integrity Training modules. Learn how to avoid plagiarism, cheating, and other academic integrity violations.
The Research Process
Focus on pee
r-reviewed sources for an academic research paper. With peer-reviewed publications, articles are evaluated by scholarly reviewers with the objective of upholding high editorial and quality standards. With sources such as Wikipedia, anyone can write or edit the information that is published.
Need instructive videos on the individual components of the research process (i.e., researching, selecting, and synthesizing information)? Check these out primarily from your Penn State University Library.
Getting Started with Research: - choosing a topic, narrowing a topic, and more.
Sources of Information - types of sources, how to read scholarly materials, etc.
Searching for Information - choosing keywords, selecting appropriate databases, etc.
- Get Lit: The Literature Review(Texas A&M University Writing Center, video)
Evaluating Information - authority, bias, fake news, etc.
- Ten questions for fake news detection(The News Literacy Project)
- Evaluating Information RubricA matrix for understanding and evaluating the information you locate.
- Evaluating internet resources(Georgetown University Library)
Synthesizing Information - Quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing
Quoting, paraphrasing and summarizing
Citations and Academic Integrity - plagiarism, citation styles, etc.
Missing pieces: How to write an APA Style Reference Even Without All the Information
Need a quick citation style guide?
Beyond Google - Finding research information
Need help locating scholarly and respected information? Get started with these.
- Web of Science This link opens in a new windowIndexes articles from thousands of journals and also indexes the citations used in those articles, thus allowing the user to see which papers have cited a core paper, and how many times a paper was cited in a given time period. Covers published content is almost every discipline. (Sometimes called Web of Knowledge)
- Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) This link opens in a new windowA collection of over 1000 encyclopedia and reference resources
See the following topical guides for more suggestions on places to search for information within your discipline:
See also this list of all Penn State's topical guides for more suggested places to search within your discipline or the master list of special databases at Penn State.
Managing Citations
When working on extensive research projects, you will need to collect, organize and format all the various materials (articles, books etc.) that will be used in the final project.
Citation Managers are free tools that help you keep track of, and organize, this personal research library. Learning a specific citation manager is an investment of time, but it will pay off in the long run!
Below are basic how-to guides for the citation managers we support at Penn State.
Penn State also has access to a "lite" version of Refworks, but it is not recommended because of a lack of the advanced functionality needed by graduate students and researchers.