Abstract & Referencing Assignment Abstract & Referencing Assignment Semester 1, 2017 Due Date: Tuesday 2nd May Submission Via: Blackboard ONLY Abstracts and Referencing Due end of week 8 of Semester, exact time & date notified on Blackboard. This assignment requires considerable preliminary work, so should be started early. James Macnae AIMS: The aim of this task is for you to 1) consider and understand what constitutes a “good” scientific reference, in particular the difference between refereed and unrefereed publications 2) establish good and efficient reference management practices for this thesis and subsequent publications 3) briefly look at the structure of scientific publications, and 4) to grasp the difference between a “scientific abstract” and an “overall summary” so that you can write good abstracts in the future. Marking scheme /40: Preliminary tasks: Only penalties apply, -1 mark for every error e.g. spelling, inconsistent formatting of references. Max 0, Min -10. Questions a) to h) 5 marks each Total /40. Submission This must be through Blackboard. Include your Name and Student Number at the start of your assignment. Preliminary tasks (content not assessed here due to overlap with project planning and Project 1 tasks, but must be submitted to inform the analysis tasks. There are penalties for not taking care in these preliminary tasks): 1) With assistance from your project supervisor, decide on a working project title. 2) With assistance from your project supervisor, assemble a reference list of about 10 or 20 publications pertinent to your proposed research/project topic. These may include theses/books/book chapters but MUST include references from the recent scientific literature. Avoid ‘transient’ internet references where content subject to change unless absolutely necessary (OK to use internet to locate and reference formal publications stored in ‘online’ databases). Endnote is very useful software for compiling references and for which RMIT has a license. 3) Systematically read the publications, paying careful attention to their relevance to your proposed research topic. 4) Prepare a document containing a. Provisional Project Title b. Student and Supervisor names c. Two Reference Lists (same references but in each of TWO of the approved scientific formats, specifically Harvard and Numeric). As a suggestion use Endnote or equivalent to change formats. ** SUGGGESTION: keeping and maintaining your thesis references in Endnote or similar will simplify your life both when completing the writing of a thesis, in subsequently writing any papers for publication and ultimately as a database for you entire research career. d. Copy of the abstracts from your 10 papers. e. Use the highlighter tool in e.g. Word to classify each component in the abstract as being Essential Background, Irrelevant Background, Aim, Method, Results/Conclusions, Other / Reference citations. See the examples at the end of this paper. f. Underneath each annotated abstract include a sentence or paragraph that details what in the paper is important for your research, particularly if this in not obvious from the abstract itself. 5) SPELL CHECK the document, along with a grammar check, but be aware of the deficiencies of both spell and grammar checkers. ** SUGGGESTION: get in the habit of carefully spell and grammar checking all future documents you prepare. 6) Keep this material to assist in writing the background / theory chapters of your thesis, and for use in ONPS2317 Project Planning Scientific Publication Analysis Look at the headings and sub-headings of 10 of the papers (NOT REVIEW PAPERS) you have selected. They should have a similar form. a) Summarise the overall structure of these 10 scientific papers in your discipline. Is this structure consistent between published papers? b) A scientific abstract is NOT a summary of the whole paper, but rather an extract of crucial information from a complete scientific paper. It is advertising to an expert audience, hence little or no background should be needed There is a “golden rule” that an abstract should answer 3 and only 3 questions: 1: What is/was the aim? ___ 2: How did the authors attack the problem? _____ 3: What’s new? This should be about half the abstract __________ The abstract should contain an absolute minimum of background __ it should not contain setting, justification, motivation, references and the like that is required in the body of the text. It must focus on the novelty of the paper. Use the internet to locate suggestions on scientific abstract writing and discuss whether the “golden rule” I quote above is generally accepted c) How closely does the abstract in each of the 10 papers you are analyzing meet the “golden rule”? How well does each abstract convey the essential information and would it motivate you to read it? If you like, tabulate your results in a table such as that below Paper Authors Meets Golden Rule? Abstract made me want to read paper Abstract conveyed all essential info from paper 1 Zhou and Joe (2011) Nearly Yes Yes 2 Joe (2007) No Yes No 10 Zhou (1993) Partly No No ** SUGGGESTION: When you write your thesis abstract or any paper for publication, keep this golden rule in mind. Remember that an abstract is NOT a summary of everything in the paper d) What formal peer review process did one of your chosen papers go through? You may need to ‘hunt’ through different issues of the journal to discover this, or do some online research. Sometimes this information is contained in a document called “Instructions to authors” or similar. If unable to find out for your first few journals, locate details of the peer review process for a ‘similar’ journal in your field. Ensure you describe the roles of editors and reviewers, as well as the process for revision and resubmission. e) How does the peer review process contribute to scientific integrity? f) Both theses and books from reputable publishers will have been through a review process, and so are also “good” scientific references. Discuss whether unrefereed conference presentations and online material (eg Wikipedia, self-published books) are good as scientific references. In particular, consider the transient nature of much internet content. g) What percentage of “unreliable” references are included in the reference lists inside the 10 papers summarised in the preliminary component of this assignment?. If there are internet references made inside these 10 papers, how are they handled in the paper? **SUGGGESTION: When compiling references in your thesis, avoid unrefereed and unverifiable papers. Remember too, that every paper in a reference list should be referred to in the text. Endnote facilitates the extraction of relevant entries from a larger “Bibliography”. To shorten reference lists to keep within journal page limits, the use of recent review papers of your research field, if available, is often a better choice than referring to multiple papers. Review papers are structured quite differently from research papers, in that there may be nothing “new” in the whole paper h) Recent online and print papers often have a unique “doi”. What is it and what are the criteria for documents to get doi’s? How does it differ from an ISBN? Note: At times, authors need to strike a balance between the need to attribute / acknowledge contributions and ideas from others that do not meet the criteria of a scientific reference. Such attributions and acknowledgements are usually included in the text rather than in the references. A historical opinion piece concerning abstracts Annotated abstract examples: Essential Background, Irrelevant Background, Aim, Method, Results/Conclusions, Other/Reference citations Meets Golden Rule (half green, no red or magenta highlights) The precise control of the size, morphology, surface chemistry, and assembly process of each component is important to construction of integrated functional nanocomposites. We report here the fabrication of multifunctional microspheres which possess a core of nonporous silica-protected magnetite particles, transition layer of active gold nanoparticles, and an outer shell of ordered mesoporous silica with perpendicularly aligned pore channels. The well-designed microspheres have high magnetization (18.6 emu/g), large surface area (236 m2/g), highly open mesopores (∼2.2 nm), and stably confined but accessible Au nanoparticles and, as a result, show high performance in catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol (with conversion of 95% in 12 min), styrene epoxidation with high conversion (72%) and selectivity (80%), especial convenient magnetic separability, long life and good reusability. The unique nanostructure makes the microsphere to be a novel stable and approachable catalyst system for various catalytic industry processes. Nearly Meets Golden Rule The purpose of this study is to identify relationships between the physical and genetic characteristics of bones in mice. The physical characteristics include size, density, and the force required to break the bone, while the genetic ones are the genes of the marker loci associated with the genes that affect these qualities. This study uses strains of mice with reduced genetic variation. The two strains of mice that are the most phenotypically extreme, meaning those with the strongest and weakest bones, are crossed. The F2 generation from that cross is then analyzed. The results of this analysis can be used to find which genotypes correlate with specific bone properties like size, density, and failure load. The anticipated outcome of this lab is the identification of the genotypes that affect bone strength in mice. The findings may be useful in treating medical conditions that are related to bone strength. A new silicon clathrate compound with a composition of Ba8Si46 was prepared under high-pressure and high-temperature conditions. The compound was isomorphous with Na8Si46 and became a superconductor with a transition temperature of 8.0 K. Barium atoms occupy all of the Si20 and Si24 cages of the clathrate structure. This is the first clathrate superconductor obtained as a bulk phase. Poor abstract This assignment is the last in ONPS2412. Its aim is to make students analyse scientific papers through answering questions. These answers result in a mark that measures compliance and understanding of the instructions. The assignment ends with a historic scrutiny by Landes (1966).