Summarizing article

ARTICLE SUMMARY :

Students are to find, read and summarize one article worth 15 point about human biological science. These articles are to come from popular science periodicals such as Scientific American, Science or other such periodicals. Student may also use reports released by the Centers For Disease Control or the National Institutes of Health. Use reliable sites on-line with URL's ending in ".edu, or .gov or .org" for your sources.

The original articles need to be at LEAST TWO FULL PAGES of TEXT. Pictures, graphs, tables, charts, do not count and articles must be no older than 2010.

The student summary will include:

SSelection of Sources

Article: Article contains two full pages of text.

Your Article Summary: one full page

Proper Citations with proper format: use your own words.

Respond to Questions

1. What is the author’s name, title of the article, the journal and publication date?

2 . Defend the reliability of the article.

3. Arguments: What are all the points the article present?

4. Supporting Data: What data does the author present to support his/her argument? Not an opinion but refers to some type of data.

Mechanics

E-mail a copy of the article (URL) with your summary.

Present your information according to instructions given on this Assignment Handout

YOU MUST ANSWER QUESTIONS IN A NUMBERED FORMAT (as shown above). This summary is to be submitted BY E-MAIL along with a copy of the original article, on the schedule due date for the assignment. Assignments submitted late will be penalized. Students need to be careful in the preparation of summaries not to "cut and paste" sections from the original paper. This is plagiarism.

Article Summary Helpful Hints

A. Proper citations with proper format.

Follow these rules to avoid plagiarism.

1. Correctly cite all direct quotations, summaries, paraphrases, or other borrowings from a source. This would include use of graphics, research data, statistics, and anything that is not considered common knowledge.

2. Enclose all direct quotation within quotation marks.

3. For summaries and paraphrases, put the author's ideas into your own words and do this by using your own sentence structure.

Also, trading papers, buying papers, cutting and pasting portions of other writers' papers into your own paper, or asking someone else to write your paper all constitute plagiarism. Teresa Sweeney, Writing Specialist

B. What makes this article a reliable source?

1. Reputation of Publication - is the source well known and trusted?

2. If you cannot find an author's name and publishing information, your source is probably not legitimate or reliable. 

3. Date - is the information current?

4. Is the author an expert in the field? Does the author have a degree?

5. Bias – is the author one-sided in his viewpoint?

6. Is there a Works Cited section that contains useful references?

C. A summary of the article

What are they talking about? What are the points made in the article?

If the article makes multiple points, you need to include all of them.

D. Supporting Data: What data does the author present to support the information given in the article?

You must choose an article that has a point of view and then supports it with some type of data.

Also, you cannot just say “In this article, the authors have included flow charts, graphs, and pictures to support for their argument”.