What a Research Paper Is
A research paper is an original, unified essay that presents an arguable thesis and supported by evidence and documentation from authoritative sources.
• A synthesis of your findings about a topic weighed by your judgment, interpretation, and evaluation them. Your research paper includes the information needed to present your argument. It is organized accordingly.
It is NOT merely a collection of findings. It is not a summary of an article or book or other authors’ ideas.
• The research paper is your original work. It is focused on your thesis and presents your argument. You support this argument by borrowing (and documenting) others’ work.
It is NOT the ideas of others repeated uncritically. You must lead in and out of borrowed material with your judgment, interpretation, and evaluation. You explicate how the borrowed information is relevant to your argument, your thesis.
It is NOT unsupported personal opinion–yours or others. The research paper should contain authoritative ideas based in tradition, scholarship, and empiricism (factual proof). Your sources must be credible experts in their fields.
• The research paper gives credit to all the sources you have used. Documentation and citation of resources is so much a part of the research paper that customs have been developed to do accomplish them clearly. You know this as MLA style.
It is NOT a series of quotations and paraphrases put together with your creative muse. Quotations are important to research papers, however, they must be prudently selected. You should not have quotations for the sake of showing you researched. You should only use quotes when they illuminate a subordinate point of your thesis.
It is NOT copying, purchasing, or accepting another person’s work without acknowledging it, whether the work is published, unpublished, professional, or amateur. All of these describe plagiarism–the theft of intellectual property.
Source: Audrey J. Roth. The Research Paper: Process, Form & Content. New York: Wadsworth, 1991.
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