BIO 395: Instructions for Preparing Final Proposal
Science fundamentally involves achieving an understanding of natural processes through empirical experimentation. One makes observations, develops a hypothesis that proposes an explanation for a problem of interest, designs an experiment to test the hypothesis, collects data for the experiment, and analyzes the data to draw a conclusion. You will go through the process of creating a proposal to conduct an original scientific experiment on a topic of your choosing. The proposal should involve an original scientific problem. That is, you should develop a proposal to work on a biological problem for which the answer is not known. The proposal should be detailed enough that you specify exactly how the question you are addressing will be answered. It should include information on the species on which the experiment was conducted, why this species was selected, what the sample sizes will be and why, what factors will be tested, and what methods will be used to analyze the data. The experimental design should probably be modeled after that in a published paper on a topic closely related to yours. You should also provide a broad context for the issue that you will research and carefully justify your study.
Format: Papers should be approximately 10 -15 pages long (bibliography not included) double-spaced except where noted otherwise. Your papers must (1) be printed from a computer file, (2) be double spaced using a standard 12 point font throughout, and (3) each page must be numbered. Use italics for scientific names of species (not higher taxa). Retain a copy of your paper and the file for your records.
Content: The proposal will consist of five main sections: I) Title Page, II) CV, III) Summary, IV) Project Description, and V) Bibliography.
I. Title Page: Name. Date. Title of proposed project. Beginning and end dates for project if it were conducted.
II. CV: Include your CV as section I of the proposal. The CV should be 1-2 pages single spaced. Includes your name, GPA, previous work experience, published papers, conference presentations, etc.
III. Summary: Up to one page double spaced. An abstract summarizing the major components of your proposal.
IV. Project Description: The core of your proposal. Should be double-spaced. Describes the project proposal in detail and is divided into the following sections:
Introduction: Provides the necessary background information so that you have a broad context for the issues being studied. You should cite heavily in this section and carefully explain the conceptual basis for your experiment. What is known about the problem of interest? What gap in knowledge will your proposal fill?
Justification: Why is this study worth conducting? Why is it important? One can study almost any natural phenomena. What is special about your proposal? Why would it be worth doing this research project over others?
Hypotheses: Your proposal should have at least one biological hypothesis and one null and alternate hypothesis for each experiment proposed.
Methods: This is the most important section of the proposal. I recommend dividing this section into subsections as necessary to improve its organization. You should provide great detail on the experiment that you are proposing. What data will be collected? How will it be collected? On what species? How many individuals? What is the treatment that will be applied? When? What levels? How will the data be analyzed? What statistical tests will be employed? You should provide enough detail that someone with basic scientific knowledge and the infrastructure to conduct the experiment could do so based on your description. Procedures should be described thoroughly.
Expected results/Future plans: Outline the types of results that you expect to achieve and the types of experiments or procedures that could be implemented once your results are in. How can you publicize your findings among your colleagues and the general public? What would you like to see happen after your project is concluded?
Broader impacts: What are the broader impacts of the study beyond the immediate scientific discovery? Who will benefit from this study? What other fields will be impacted and how?
V. Bibliography: This section can be single-spaced. You must list at least ten works in your bibliography that you cited in the text. You will lose points if you do not cite at least ten sources. A good paper will have more citations than the minimum number. You must cite your sources in the text of your paper (i.e., “Text Citations,” see below for style). This is crucially important, it should be very clear where you obtained the information that you are including in your paper. List in alphabetical order of the authors’ last names the major works you consulted and any shorter works (usually journal or magazine articles) you used for text citations. A good place to search for additional journal articles on a species is the Web of Knowledge (or Web of Science) which is available through the library web page. The bibliography is not counted in the length of your paper.
Text citations – Use the “author and date” citation method in the text. You may structure a text citation in either of the following ways: “Jones (1996) stated . . ..” or “. . . they feed in these habitats (Jones and Smith 1994, 1996; Williams et al. 1996). Note my use of punctuation; “et al.” is used in text citations only and only when there are three or more authors for a single work. (The quotation marks above set off words in examples and are not to be used in your paper.) Avoid use of direct quotations as much as possible (more on this below).
Bibliography citation of a journal article – Give author(s), year, full title, journal title (choose either full titles or formal abbreviations, but don’t mix the two styles), volume and pages. For example:
Charlesworth, B. 1984. Some quantative methods for studying evolutionary patterns in single characters. Paleobiology 10:308-318.
Bibliography citation of a book – Give author(s), year, full title of the book, the publisher and city of publication (first city in a series if more than one).
Harvey, P. H. and M. D. Pagel. 1991. The comparative method in evolutionary biology. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Bibliography citation of a single chapter in a multi-authored edited volume: Citations of chapters written by separate authors in edited works combine elements of journal and book citations. The title of the chapter is followed by the range of pages (“Pp.”) and “in,” then the name of the editor(s) (initials first), followed by “ed.” or “eds.” Finally, give the title, publisher, and city of publication, as for a regular book.
Liley, N. R. 1969. Hormones and reproductive behavior in fishes. Pp. 73-116 in W. S. Hoar and D. J. Randall, eds. Fish Physiology. Vol. III. Academic Press, New York.
Webpages – Internet information is ephemeral and often unedited, and it should be used with caution. If you are citing a journal article that you have accessed on line, just cite it as instructed above. If online information does not exist as a separate publication, it should be cited with the following elements: author (first author’s last name first), date posted (if available), title of article, website name, web address (URL), and the date you accessed it. If you cannot find all of the information listed, cite what is available.
Johnson, M. 2004. Marine, Oceanographic & Freshwater Resources. National Information Services Corporation (NISC). http://www.nisc.com/default.htm. Accessed August 4, 2004.
Note on the use of quotation marks in scientific works: It is rarely necessary to use quotation marks in a biology paper. Quote only if the authors’ words, as opposed to his or her content, matter. You may be in the habit of incorporating long quoted passages or just a sentence here and there quoted from sources. Avoid this practice. You are expected to read your sources, understand what you have read, and write a paper in your own words.
Grading: The papers will be graded for style and content, including adherence to the length limits and style instructions. Do not turn in your papers late, you will be heavily penalized! No final drafts will be accepted over a week late. Plagiarism is the misrepresentation of another person’s writing as one’s own. You are responsible for understanding what plagiarism is. Plagiarism includes submission of another person’s paper as one’s own. It also includes incorporating from published or unpublished sources one or more sentences, whether they are intact or slightly modified, whether the sentences are consecutive or scattered among sentences you have written yourself.
