NOTES ON REPORT WRITING

The purpose of the reports is to get you to read widely and critically on each topic, to analyse your data and observations in the light of this reading, and to present your report in a concise, well-structured and neat manner.

1.            Read as widely as you can on the topic – the textbooks are not specific enough, and the reference list is only a start!  Conduct a proper literature search using all the library resources available – ask for help at the Information Desk if you don’t know how to go about it: it’s time you did!  At this level you should be reading scientific papers, not relying on secondary sources (such as textbooks, dictionaries or encyclopaedia).  We have provided many scientific papers for you in the ‘readings’ list, but you should also become competent in locating these independently, on-line or on the shelf.

2.            Read critically!  Don’t just accept what each author says – think about what they are saying and whether or not their conclusions are justified on the basis of the evidence presented in the article.  Because this field is often interpretive, similar observations or measurements often are interpreted differently by different researchers – it’s up to you to decide whether the arguments are valid or not.  The significance of the work you are reporting is defined by its relationship to previous work.  No piece of work should be viewed in isolation.  Use literature that is relevant; do not include everything that you have read irrespective of its usefulness in elucidating the subject i.e. be discerning in your choice of what to include and what to leave out.  Make sure you begin reading before the fieldtrips.  You will need plenty of time to absorb and understand what you have read and the fieldtrips are valuable for giving the ideas substance.  You will need to read and re-read the important papers to really understand them.

3.            The environmental context of the study must be established – always assume that your reader knows nothing about the location or the subject matter so tell them about those aspects which are RELEVANT

4.            Allow time for revision and, if possible, get someone to read and critically appraise the report for you.

5.            Use the simple Harvard or author/date referencing technique common to most scientific journals (e.g. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms).  The main purpose of references is so that someone else can find the papers you have read.  You need to give them the appropriate information:

• Use a citation such as (Smith and Jones, 1989) (i.e. Author, date) in the text which refers the reader to an alphabetically listed reference in the bibliography.
• Do not use footnotes, numbered references, ibid, op cit or any other method of citation or referencing.
• You should use a citation in every case where you have borrowed a quote, fact, idea or figure from elsewhere.  That may mean more than one citation per sentence.  Don’t save them up for the end of the paragraph.
• It is your job to remove any ambiguity about the origin of any statement and you will need to modify your sentences to make your job easier and avoid multiple identical citations.
• Citations vary according to the number of authors, i.e. (Smith,1989) for a single author, (Smith and Jones, 1989) for two authors and (Smith et al., 1989) for three or more authors (et al. is an abbreviation of the latin ‘et alia‘, ‘and others’, so is written in italics and with a full stop after al.). [The citations may also be written Smith (1989), Smith and Jones (1989) Smith et al. (1989) depending on the sentence structure.]
• List all references actually used in the essay (not necessarily everything you have read!) in ALPHABETICAL ORDER BY AUTHOR’S SURNAME (i.e. Aarons to Zambolt) in a bibliography at the end of the essay, using the reference list in this unit outline as a guide to the appropriate style.
• In the bibliography it is important to list all the authors, do not use ‘et al.’.
• Avoid using direct quotes, but if their use is unavoidable, they should be accompanied by the author’s surname, year of publication, and the page number from which the quote is taken.  Quotations longer than 3 lines should be indented on both sides in a separate paragraph.
• In the case of Web sites and materials, you must observe the same requirements as for hardcopy materials; you need to give enough information to allow the reader to locate the material and you must give the author’s (including organisation) details, year of publication, publisher/ organisation, and a title.  You should also add ‘Consulted 5/6/06’, for example, in case the site has been updated.  If this information is not available the information in it is unlikely to be suitable for inclusion in your learned report!

Failure to provide adequate referencing is possibly one form of plagiarism.  Read the section on plagiarism above and make sure that you understand your responsibilities.