1. WRITING THE RESEARCH PAPER
MR. JAIME S. DE VERA, JR.
Valenzuela City Science High School
Department Head

2. How to Organize Your Research Paper
The best way to speed your writing is
to do a little planning.
A typical organization might look like this:
Your science fair project question or topic
Definitions of all important words, concepts, and equations that describe your experiment
The history of similar experiments
Answers to your background research questions

3. When and How to Footnote or Reference Sources
When you write your research paper you might want to copy words, pictures, diagrams, or ideas from one of your sources. It is OKAY to copy such information as long as you reference it with a citation.
If the information is a phrase, sentence, or paragraph, then you should also put it in quotation marks. A citation and quotation marks tell the reader who actually wrote the information.

4. When and How to Footnote or Reference Sources
For a science fair project, a reference citation (also known as author-date citation) is an accepted way to reference information you copy.
Simply put the author's last name, the year of publication, and page number (if needed) in parentheses after the information you copy.
Place the reference citation at the end of the sentence but before the final period.
Make sure that the source for every citation item copied appears in your bibliography.

5. Why Cite Information? Three Important Reasons
So the reader can locate and read the exact same sources
To give credit to the original author
To give you credibility as a writer and protect you from being accused of plagiarism
Doesn’t matter if it’s a school paper, or a book or journal articles. Students should cite properly and so should professional writers and academicians.
Give credit where credit is due. It is unethical to claim ownership for something that is not yours…including words.
Protecting yourself from being accused of plagiarism is critical…and as students, you can’t be expected to know everything. Citing credible sources gives your work more credibility.
APA documentation style is commonly utilized for research in science-related fields, as opposed to MLA style, which is used for research in the liberal arts. APA format provides writers with a format for cross-referencing their sources--from their parenthetical references to their reference page. This cross-referencing system allows readers to locate the publication information of source material. This is of great value for researchers who may want to locate your sources for their own research projects. The proper use of APA style also shows the credibility of writers; such writers show accountability to their source material. Most importantly, use of APA style can protect writers from plagiarism--the purposeful or accidental use of source material by other writers without giving appropriate credit. The next slide provides additional information on plagiarism.

6. APA stands for American Psychological Association
APA FORMAT
APA stands for American Psychological Association

7. Parenthetical Citations
APA Style: Two Parts
Reference Page
at the end of the paper
Parenthetical Citations
in the body of the paper

8. Examples of APA format
"If you copy a sentence from a book or magazine article by a single author, the reference will look like this. A comma separates the page number (or numbers) from the year" (De Vera, 2002, p. 37).
"If you copy a sentence from a book or magazine article by more than one author, the reference will look like this" (De Vera & Areved, 2002, p. 37).
"Sometimes the author will have two publications in your bibliography for just one year. In that case, the first publication would have an 'a' after the publication year, the second a 'b', and so on. The reference will look like this" (Nguyen, 2000b).

9. Examples of APA format
"When the author is unknown, the text reference for such an entry may substitute the title, or a shortened version of the title for the author" (The APA Manual, 2003). "For reference citations, only direct quotes need page numbers" (Han, 1995). "Some sources will not have dates" (De Vera, n.d.).

10. Writing a Bibliography: APA Format
Your list of works cited should begin at the end of the paper on a new page with the centered title, References.
Alphabetize the entries in your list by the author's last name, using the letter-by-letter system (ignore spaces and other punctuation.)
Only the initials of the first and middle names are given. If the author's name is unknown, alphabetize by the title, ignoring any A, An, or The.

11. Writing a Bibliography: APA Format
For dates, spell out the names of months in the text of your paper, but abbreviate them in the list of works cited, except for May, June, and July.
Use either the day-month-year style (22 July 1999) or the month-day-year style (July 22, 1999) and be consistent. With the month-day-year style, be sure to add a comma after the year unless another punctuation mark goes there.

12. Hanging Indention
All APA citations should use hanging indents, that is, the first line of an entry should be flush left, and the second and subsequent lines should be indented 1/2".

13. Format Examples Books Format:
Author's last name, first initial. (Publication date). Book title. Additional information. City of publication: Publishing company.
Examples:
Allen, T. (1974). Vanishing wildlife of North America. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society.
Boorstin, D. (1992). The creators: A history of the heroes of the imagination. New York: Random House.

14. Format Examples Encyclopedia & Dictionary
Format: Author's last name, first initial. (Date). Title of Article. Title of Encyclopedia (Volume, pages). City of publication: Publishing company.
Examples:
Bergmann, P. G. (1993). Relativity. The new encyclopedia britannica (Vol. 26, pp ). Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.
Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary (10th ed.). (1993). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.

15. Format Examples Magazine & Newspaper Articles
Format: Author's last name, first initial. (Publication date). Article title. Periodical title, volume number(issue number if available), inclusive pages.
Examples:
Harlow, H. F. (1983). Fundamentals for preparing psychology journal articles. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 55,
Henry, W. A., III. (1990, April 9). Making the grade in today's schools. Time, 135,

16. Format Examples Website or Webpage Format: Online periodical:
Author's name. (Date of publication). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number, Retrieved month day, year, from full URL
Online document:
Author's name. (Date of publication). Title of work. Retrieved month day, year, from full URL
Devitt, T. (2001, August 2). Lightning injures four at music festival. The Why? Files. Retrieved January 23, 2002, from

17. Parenthetical Citations
APA Style: Two Parts
Reference Page
at the end of the paper
Parenthetical Citations
in the body of the paper