Guidelines for Writing Research Papers

As part of the assignments for Econ 350, you are required to write three short research papers which are due on June 4, 18, and 25. The purposes of these projects are two-fold. First, you research and learn about a particular topic or company. Second, you can share your research with others in your group through the group discussion board, and learn from the research of others in your group. Hopefully, by reading through the papers you will begin to notice patterns and trends and similarities to your own paper.

The style of the paper is up to you but remember that others in your group will be reading and learning from your paper. A high level of collegiate research and writing is expected from students. DO NOT CUT AND PASTE from other sources, and beware of problems with plagiarism. Basically, any time you use another’s words, statistics, or ideas, you should give them credit for it through citations. If not, you are pretending the work is your own and committing plagiarism. For citations, you can use either footnotes or parentheses as long as the citation style is consistent throughout the paper.

The grading rubric will be as follows:

1. Name and title 10 points

Does your paper include your name and a title?

2. Research 20 points

Is the research adequate to answer the questions? You should list at least three references besides Wiki, and list these in a bibliography. You may include Wiki, but don’t rely on it and include at least three other sources for verification.

3. Style 10 points

Is the paper well-written with an introduction, body and conclusion? Do the parts of the paper flow together to make a coherent whole?

4. Content 30 points

How well does the paper answer the questions posed? Are all questions, and every part of each question, addressed? Does the paper show significant effort in researching and writing about the topic?

5. Editing and proofreading 10 points

Is the paper free of grammatical and spelling mistakes?

6. Documentation 10 points

Are citations (either footnotes or parentheses) provided for quotes, statistics, and others’ ideas throughout the paper? Serious cases of plagiarism (cutting and pasting without citations) will result in a 0 for the paper.

7. Promptness 10 points

Was the paper submitted on time?

Total score 100 points

After reading the papers, the teaching assistant will post your score in the grade book and provide comments to your group discussion board.