Welcome to our tutorial. Today’s topic is writing a scientific research paper for your biology class. We will be using the topic of “disease” as an example. You may have written research papers for your English or history classes. but there are some major differences when writing a research paper on a scientific topic. You cannot present scientific Information in the same way that you would in your everyday life. For example, in normal conversation, a mother may describe her child with an ear infection as up all night, cranky, crying, rubbing her ear. She might say, “she was burning up hot and I had to hold her all night. And although she wasn’t interested in playing she didn’t seem to be able to sleep either.” Now, compare this to how a medical text presents similar information. Take a look at this example from Harrison’s Infectious Diseases. It presents facts and uses tables to showcase the information. Notice the differences in how the medical textbook describes the symptoms versus the mother in our example. Medical and scientific writing sticks to the facts and uses objective terms that mean the same to everyone. “Burning up hot with a fever” will mean different things to different people. In a scientific text, the author will state the temperature or a range of temperatures. Also notice that the information in the table includes the source of the cited information. Scientific papers rely on facts and state where the author got his/her information. The information may be from journal articles, books, research studies conducted by the authors, etc. When you are writing your paper, remember to cite your sources And make sure they are from reliable health information agencies. You can find these kinds of sources in the library’s online database. Your first step is to visit the Lone Star College System website at www.lonestar.edu Click ‘Libraries’ and then ‘Research Databases.’ These databases are included in your tuition and are the most reliable place to find sources for college level research papers.

The library has divided the databases by subject which makes it easier for you to find the databases relevant to your topic. For sources on diseases: Choose “Health & Medicine”. If you are just starting your research, you may need some basic information on your chosen disease before you get to the more technical articles. So the first database we are going to focus on is STAT!Ref. STAT!Ref includes 80 full text medical books that you can browse & search. The STAT!Ref title we’re going to look at today is AAFP Conditions A-Z. It contains easy-to-read overviews of the diseases. Click on the title in the alphabetical list of the titles on the left side of the page. On the left frame there is an A-Z topics table of contents which lets you browse the book. Let’s say you’re looking for information about Hepatitis B. Click on H Conditions to open up the list of topics. Now click on Hepatitis B. This will bring up an overview of the disease and includes symptoms, causes and risk factors, diagnosis and tests, treatment, complications, prevention and questions to ask your doctor. Since this book is written for patients, it’s easier to read and isn’t as detailed as a book written for medical personnel. Please note, and this is very important, you should only use one source, article, or book from the STAT!Ref database. Your instructor will expect the majority of your sources to be technical papers from scientific journals. Now that we have some basic information about our disease, we’re going to locate some of those more technical scientific journal articles to help flesh out the rest of your paper. Return to the “Health & Medicine” database page. This time, we will click on CINAHL Plus with Full Text. Type the name of your disease in the search box. Before clicking search, notice the search options that will let you limit your search The field of medicine changes rapidly and you need to use recent information for most scientific research papers.

Try to limit your resources to the last 3 – 5 years. You can enter those dates into the publication date box to only retrieve recent articles You will also want to limit your search to full text articles, which will only bring back full articles. After making your choices, click search. Do you have too many results? Or not enough results? You can limit further, remove limits, and/or change your limits using the choices under refine results. For example, for a paper like this, you will only want articles from scientific journals. Once you are ready to begin looking at articles, Click on the icon of a page with a magnifying glass on it To view the abstract For that article. The abstract will give you a concise summary of the article and allow you to quickly assess whether or not that article will work for your paper. Once you find an abstract that looks relevant, click on “PDF Full Text” to open the article. Always choose “PDF Full Text” when available as the article will maintain its original formatting, charts, and page numbers. If only “HTML Full Text” is available, this is an acceptable substitute but try to steer clear of clicking on “Check LinkSource for more information.” Please note that if you click on the article title instead of “PDF Full Text”, the database will show you the article’s detailed record And you will end up having to click “PDF Full Text” on the left anyway in order to access the article. Once you find an article you think you might use, you should always e-mail or download a copy so you don’t have to search back through the databases to find it again. To download a copy, click on the “disk” icon on the PDF to save a copy to your desktop or flash drive. Depending on the browser you use and the software on your PC, you might have the download symbol instead of the “disk” icon. You can also e-mail a copy of the article to yourself by choosing the “mail” icon on the right hand sidebar. You can send the PDF as a separate attachment, plus you can include the article citations in the citation format that you need for your paper.

For our paper we’re using APA format. These citations are computer generated and are a great start to citing the articles. Remember that you need to double-check that the formatting and source information are correct if you are copying and pasting them into your paper. The citations are often incorrectly formatted or missing information. Verify using the Lone Star College Libraries APA Formatting guide or consult with a reference librarian. If you haven’t written a scientific research paper before you should visit our biology research guide. The research guide provides links to a variety of useful resources for your biology research projects. You can access the research guides on the main library website. Click LSC-Kingwood, then click Health, Medicine and Sciences. Click BIOL 2401: Anatomy and Physiology for the research guide. An excellent resource for your paper is the Writing scientific research papers page, Located on the citation and writing help tab. You can also access STAT!Ref on the Find Reference Sources tab And Cinhal Plus on the Find Articles tab along with other databases. If you need further assistance with your research paper, please visit your campus library.