Research Guide for 355:302 - Scientific and Technical Writing

Your assignments for this course will require research using library resources and other resources. See the boxes below for some guidance for each of the assignments.

If you have questions about your research, you can:
- Email Tom Glynn at glynn@rutgers.edu or call him at 848-932-6105.
- Make an appointment to meet with Tom Glynn, in person or online.
- Chat with a librarian 24/7.

If you have suggestions for making this a more useful research guide or want to point out parts of the guide that are unclear to you, email Tom Glynn: glynn@rutgers.edu.

Your first step is to identify a need or opportunity. Identify something that will sustain your interest over the course of a semester. You are much more likely to write a successful proposal if you enjoy researching your topic.

For this, see the Identifying a need or opportunity page.

In your white paper, you will "identify a need or opportunity that you might like to spend the semester working on, describe the need or opportunity and potential approaches, ... the kind of funder that would be appropriate [and] ... stakeholders, ... people impacted by the need or opportunity.". For your white paper, see the: 
- Finding a funder page
- Finding data and statistics page
- The Searching in QuickSearch page, the Searching for Articles in a Database page, and the Requesting Articles and Other Sources page.
- The Citing your sources, creating a bibliography page and the Is it scholarly? page.

See the Searching in QuickSearch page, the Searching for Articles in a Database page, and the Requesting Articles and Other Sources page.

To cite in proper APA style, see the Citing your sources, creating a bibliography page.

To learn about scholarly articles and the peer-review process, see Is it scholarly?

From your class Canvas site, some tips for writing your annotations:
- Rather than copy abstracts or blurbs from your sources, write each notation in your own words, using your own understanding of the source, and discuss it in light of your overall research project. Use quotation to support your interpretation, and make sure you are emphasizing your own understanding of the text and how you mean to use it for your project. 

- Be exhaustive: this assignment is about writing as much as possible now to generate ideas and to get you started on the writing of your next assignment. Each of the three sections in each notation will need to be at least 100 to 150 words. Avoid the temptation to skimp on the last section: that one is the most important. 

- Vary the type and purpose of your sources. Annotated Bibliographies that locate useful and credible information from a variety of publication contexts are typically more successful than those that identify three sources from a similar context or provide similar information. Try to give a representative view of your project by giving sources that each illuminate a different component: need or opportunity, stakeholders, methodology, etc., for example. 

Your Letter of Inquiry is a business letter addressed to a potential funder that describes a need or opportunity, the research you've undertaken thus far, provisional information on your plan, and a reasonable budget estimate. For your Letter of Inquiry, see the:
- Identifying a Need or Opportunity page
- Creating a Plan page
- Creating a Budget page

You'll also need to cite sources from your research. See the:
- The Searching in QuickSearch page, the Searching for Articles in a Database page, and the Requesting Articles and Other Sources page.
- To cite in proper APA style, see the Citing your sources, creating a bibliography page.
- To learn about scholarly articles and the peer-review process, see Is it scholarly?

Among other elements, your final proposal must include:
-  A plan: see Creating a Plan
-  A budget: see Creating a budget
-  Additional figures: see Finding data and statistics
-  Visual representations of data: see Visual content for your proposal

Citations from your research:
- See the Searching in QuickSearch page, the Searching for Articles in a Database page, and the Requesting Articles and Other Sources page. 
- To cite in proper APA style, see the Citing your sources, creating a bibliography page.
- To learn about scholarly articles and the peer-review process, see Is it scholarly?