Guide to Scientific WritingIntroduction
I Have a List of Articles…Now What?
Finding fewer articles can sometimes produce better results, but not always. Make sure you take the time to evaluate whether the results match the kind of information you need. Then you can go about choosing and obtaining your articles.
It is easy to feel overwhelmed when you are presented with a list of 100+ articles. Many databases automatically sort those articles by date (with the first most recent). You may find it more helpful to sort the articles in order of relevance, so that the most “relevant” articles (based on the frequency of your keywords in your article) appear first in the list. You can do this by finding the box labeled “sort by”, click on the drop-down arrow, and choose relevance if it is an available option.
Make sure you don’t just copy sentences and phrases from your articles. You will need to practice paraphrasing so that you don’t accidently plagiarize. You will also need to make sure you use the appropriate format(provided by your instructor)for citing your articles in your lab report and writing your literature cited section at the end.