Geology (GEL) 36:
Instructions for the Term Paper

Finding references

There is no limit to the number of references that you may use for your paper, but a good target number is about 5 or 6.  You may use websites as references, but you should maintain a balance between websites and reviewed journal articles.   Whatever number of references that you choose to use, you must use more journal articles/books than websites.  For example, 4 articles and 3 websites is fine - 4 websites and 2 articles is not. 

At the library:

Yes, some people still actually use those angular, blocky things with hard covers - you know, books.  Learn to use the electronic on-line catalog (Harvest: UCD Catalog & Melvyl) to find books and articles for your paper. Because discoveries about the Solar System are being made very rapidly, the most up-to-date information will be found in journals and periodicals rather than books.  You can use your textbook as one of your references.

Do not use the lecture notes from class, newspapers, or articles from popular magazines like Time or Newsweek.  The lecture notes, newspapers and Time articles have not been rigorously reviewed by other scientists and are thus not as reliable as books or scientific journals. Sources from the internet also have similar weaknesses in that they are usually unreviewed - thus their content needs to be viewed with discretion. More on this later.

Also do not use encyclopedias like Wikipedia, Britannica or Encarta. Using them is not "research", and much of the information in these sources is superficial and often wrong.  Wikipedia is a fine place to begin your research, but should not be a primary source. 

Articles:

Some of the journal articles that you will find will be dense and difficult to read.  Skip these to avoid getting bogged down.  Try to find articles that you can actually understand.  Popular science magazines like Astronomy, Sky and Telescope, Discover and Scientific American are fine to use and you might actually find some very readable and useful information in those magazines even though they are not considered part of the 'hard literature'.

<>If you find an article that you can download from the 'net as a pdf file, then it counts as a reviewed article (even though you are reading its digital form).

 

After almost every major scientific mission, an entire issue of one of the journals Science or Nature is devoted to results from that mission. These journals can be very complex and difficult to read, but usually there is a summary news article in the issue containing an overview of the most interesting results.

Once you have one source of information, you can use it to find others. Nearly every scientific book and research paper contains a reference list. When you find one interesting paper, scan the reference list for other relevant papers.

Finding WWW pages with good information.

There are a variety of WWW pages with useful information on planetary exploration. Unfortunately, there is no quality control on the Web, so you should be careful that your sources are reliable ones. NASA, JPL, the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and several other institutions have excellent web pages with accurate, up-to-date information on the Solar System and Solar System exploration.  You can certainly use Google to find good resources.

Excellent links can be found at the end of the GEL 36 Homepage; that list is by no means complete! Be sure to cite the web page if you use any information from it. 

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