A research paper (RP) is an extended essay in which the writer builds upon what he/she already knows about a subject and attempts to find out what experts know about it, to analyze a topic breaking it down into its parts and to restructure them in a way that makes sense to him/her. RPs have evolved from the scientific periodicals and treatises from Boyle´s days . However, according to Swales (1990), “[the] description of a typical RP offers (…) a striking vindication of Boyle´s attempt 100 years earlier to establish a rhetoric for experimental description” (pp. 113-114). RPs generally follow certain rules regardless of the field they belong to, but there may be some deviations related to the style of publication they adhere to or to the subject matter.
On the surface, no direct correlation appears to exist between education RPs and medical RPs, given the fact that these two disciplines stand far apart in content from each other. Nonetheless, there exists an area of convergence in the two fields. This paper aims at analyzing two RPs, one in the field of medicine and the other on education, in order to illustrate the similarities in the written presentation that both disciplines share and to shed light on the differences inherent to each one of them. Both papers will be analyzed following the guidelines offered by the tutors of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in Units 2,3 and 4 (Pintos & Crimi, 2010) and the American Psychological Association (APA) manual (2009).
A general skimming of both articles ( Collins and Kelly, 2008) (Jennings, Powell, Amstrong, Sturt and Dale, 2009) shows layouts different from the one proposed by the APA manual. Some of the APA rules state that articles should contain a title page, titles should not differ in font and size from the rest of the paper, abstracts should be written on a separate page and there should not be colour headings. None of the papers under analysis present a title page. The paper on education (Collins and Kelly, 2008) has its title in a different font- Century gothic- and size -18- from the rest of the RP. Likewise, in the article on medicine, the title is written in a bigger font than the rest of the text, but the title and headings are written in different colours according to the level of headings they represent.
Regarding the analysis of the Abstract section in both RPs, it may be stated that they ( Collins and Kelly, 2008) (Jennings, Powell, Amstrong, Sturt and Dale, 2009) start with an abstract. Abstracts are always the first part in a RP and they can be of two different types: structured or unstructured (Pintos and Crimi, Unit 4, 2010). The abstract in the article on education (Collins and Kelly, 2008) is unstructured. It consists of one long , unbroken paragraph of 100 words. Conversely, the article on medicine (Jennings, Powell, Amstrong, Sturt and Dale, 2009) is structured, containing five bolded headings inside the section.
The RPs follow the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion ( IMRD) model ( Swales, 1990, cited in Pintos and Crimi, Unit 2, 2010). In the education paper (Collins and Kelly, 2008) this pattern can be found after reading it through because the headings do not coincide with the words the acronym IMRD stands for. The sections are headed as follows: Introduction, Project and Methodology, Findings, Two Case Studies, Reflections, and References. Conversely, the paper on medicine is clearly structured along the lines of the IMRD model, being divided in the four sections already mentioned, in coincidence with the acronym.
According to Pintos and Crimi ( Unit 3, Ibid.) ‘Discussions’ and ‘Conclusions’ may be blended into one piece or they may be written separately in two different sections. In the article by Collins and Kelly (2008), the discussion section would be correspond to the section ‘Two Case studies’, and the conclusion section would have its equivalent in the section called ‘Reflections’. On the other hand, in the article by Jennings et al. (2009), the ‘Conclusions’ appear within the ‘Discussion’ but with a level 3 subheading structuring the section internally.
Both papers make use of a graphic arrangement of data such as tables, figures and pictures. Pintos and Crimi ( Unit 3,Ibid.) noted that graphics were used for the description of results of statistics and quantitative information. They may prove beneficial in order to compact a great amount of information within a limited space. The paper in the education field ( Collins and Kelly, 2008) has only pictures which are displayed in the ‘Findings’ section. In the medicine paper ( Jennings, Powell, Amstrong, Sturt and Dale, 2009) tables and figures are distributed all along ‘Methods’ and ‘Results’.
Before delving into the analysis of references in the papers, it should be pointed out that the APA manual establishes the requirements for publication in the Social Sciences (SS). Writers in the fields of humanities may or may not adhere to this style of publication. They may choose to use the Modern Language Association (MLA) instead. “Basically, Delaney (2007) states that this system is followed when authors work with manuscripts in various humanities disciplines such as : English Studies, Language and Literature, Foreign Language and Literatures (…)” (Pintos and Crimi, 2010, p. 47). The reference entries in the article on education ( Collins and Kelly, 2008) combine some features of the APA and MLA. They meet APA requirements in the heading ‘References’ and not ‘Works cited’ as in the MLA style, but the indentation on the second line of each entry, the abbreviation ‘pp.’ before page numbers and the absence of interlining among the entries illustrate some of the requirements of the MLA style.
The medical paper follows the Vancouver referencing system , which, according to Monash University (2010, cited in Pintos and Crimi, Unit 3, Ibid.), “ (…) follows rules established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. (…) [It can be assumed] that this system establishes the standards required for the field of medicine” (p. 48). Some outstanding features of this style are the numbered references, the absence of italics in book titles, the square brackets with information in colour font to indicate the type of texts and the colour font for retrieval sites.
All in all, it may be concluded that both papers start with an abstract , they adhere to the IMRD model and they meet the requirements regarding the existence of a References list. However, there exist differences in the way the abstracts are structured as well as in the style of publication in the ‘References’ section. The paper by Collins and Kelly (2008) does not follow the highly technical standard format for the presentation of information that the article in medicine ( Jennings, Powell, Amstrong, Sturt and Dale, 2009) does. This may be illustrated in the use of blog and journal entries as italicized block quotations thoughout the whole paper. The papers seem to reflect the qualities of each field : the medical paper, precision; the article on education, flexibility.
References
American Psychological Association (2009). Publication Manual (6th ed.), (2nd prin.). Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.
Collins, F., and Kelly, A. (2008). Exploring the field: Empowering voice and identity. English in Education. 42(3), 283-298. Retrieved June 28,2010, from http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/ doi:10.1111/j.1754-8845.2008.00023.x
Jennings,A., Powell,J., Amstrong,N.,Sturt,J., Dale,J. (2009). A virtual clinic for diabetes self-management : Pilot study. Journal of Medical Internet Reasearch. 11(1) 1-8. Retrieved July 2, 2010, from http://www.jmir.org/
Pintos, V., & Crimi, Y. (2010) . LENGUA INGLESA ESPECIALIZADA II. Unit 2 . The Research Article: Introductions, Literature Review and Method Sections. UNIVERSIDAD CAECE .
Pintos, V., & Crimi, Y. (2010). LENGUA INGLESA ESPECIALIZADA II. Unit 3. The Research Article: Results, Discussions, and Conclusions. UNIVERSIDAD CAECE.
Pintos, V., & Crimi, Y. (2010). LENGUA INGLESA ESPECIALIZADA II. Unit 4. Research Articles: Abstracts. UNIVERSIDAD CAECE.
Swales, J. (1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge Applied Linguistics Series. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment