PHYS 280 :: Physics Illinois :: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Research Paper Versions 1 and 2 (RPv1 and RPv2)

n.b. Spring 2020 update: Students are no longer required to submit paper copies following Spring Break. All submissions will be online only.

RPv1

Main Task: Write the Initial Draft of Your Research Paper, Incorporating Your Colleague’s Response (Includes a Writer's Memo)

RPv2

Main Task: Write the Revised Draft of Your Research Paper, Incorporating Instructional Feedback (Revised: Includes a Writer's Memo)

Produce two successive drafts of a 5–6 page research paper in which you analyze and explain at length a problem in global security from both political science and engineering perspectives and conclude briefly with suggestions for solutions to that problem. You may emphasize the perspective of the political scientist or engineer that you’ve adopted for the project, but you must integrate both perspectives in your discussion. Your research paper should emulate the concerns, style, and substance of articles published in the Illini Journal of International Security. 

In the brief writer's memo that accompanies RPv1, explain (1) what you believe the strengths of your draft are and what remains to be developed or improved and (2) how you have attempted (so far) to integrate the political science and technical perspectives in your draft's treatment of your topic.

In the brief writer's memo that accompanies RPv2, explain your self-revision plan (for each of the stages of the writing process: revising, copyediting, and proofreading) and explain how you have prioritized the feedback you've received from most to least important. Append your colleague's suggested revision plan for your project to the end of your writer's memo (s/he will email it to you). Your writer's memo will be assessed based on your self-revision plan and the suggested revision plan you have provided to your colleague.

Your RPv1 and RPv2 will be graded by these rubrics: RPv1 rubric and RPv2 rubric. Your research paper will be graded by a TA, who may or may not be your writing lab TA.

RPv1 and RPv2 must

RPv1 must

RPv2 must

Length & Page Order

5–6 pages of body text (length min/max excludes cover page, references cited, and any pages for tables/figures). If the RP body is less than 5 pages or more than 6 pages long when printed, your score will be substantially reduced from what it would have been had your body been the specified length. The only exception to this guideline is if you have sought prior approval from the instructional staff to write a longer version to meet IJOIS’s publication requirements.

Order & Item

Total Pages

1 Cover Page

1

2 Body

5–6

3 References

1

4 Figures/Tables

0 –2

Complete Submission

7–10

 

Organization

Your article should address a research question that involves both technical and policy issues in an important way. The balance need not be 50%-50%, but both types of issues must be important and discussed. When addressing some questions, it may be natural to discuss the technical and policy issues separately, with one or more sections devoted to each. For other questions, it may be more natural to interweave the discussion of technology and policy. Follow whichever approach works best for your research question.

Research

Independent Research: Your research paper must, as its name implies, be based on your own library research on the research question you have developed. It must go much deeper into this question than we have gone or will go in the course lecture-discussions (for guidance on what we will cover during the remainder of the course, see the Slides page from last year). It must rely on independent library research and not on any of the materials on the course slides or in this semester's assigned readings (two or less references from the assigned readings is allowed, however). Click here for some tips on "reading for research."

Reference Requirements: Your RPv1/v2 reference list must include:

You are strongly encouraged to read and cite articles in professional and scholarly journals, such as Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and International Security, or high-quality magazines that address current affairs, such as The Atlantic.

You may use the online documents posted on the Reading Assignments page and documents posted on the web sites of the U.S. government and the nongovernmental organizations listed on the Course Documents page. You may not use any other online resources without express written permission from one of the instructors. For every online reference included in your list of references, you must include the complete URL and the date and time that you last consulted that reference.

You may use one or two newspaper articles from high-quality newspapers, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, and the Wall Street Journal, for current events (within the last six months or so) if they are essential to your thesis, but be cautious: the facts may change substantially during the semester.

Supporting Citations: Just as in your previous, required essays, all statements or numbers that are not common knowledge should be supported by an in-text citation. Every citation must point to a source listed in your reference list.

Common Knowledge: Just as in your earlier Required Essays, statements that are common knowledge need not be cited (e.g., "the United States is in North America"). Information may be considered common knowledge if it is surely known by University of Illinois undergraduates who have not previously taken and are not currently taking Physics/Global Studies 280. Another rule of thumb is to consider a piece of information that appears in at least three sources without attribution to be common knowledge. All other statements of fact or opinion must be cited.

Citation & Reference Form: Your paper must use the APA citation (in-text parenthetical) and reference (works cited) system, since that is what IJOIS requires. See Paper Formatting (below) for more on IJOIS style requirements.

Reference List: List all the sources you have cited in a separate reference list, provided on a separate page. The reference list in this paper is not a bibliography (a survey of literature on a particular subject).

Writing

Originality: The majority of the text in your research paper must be your own words written specifically for this assignment. You may also use ideas and text provided in the RPCR from your colleague, who serves as a secondary author on your paper.

Using text you have prepared for a previous or current writing assignment in this or any other course is not permissible, even if the text is placed inside quotation marks or paraphrased and properly cited, for three reasons. First, Physics/Global Studies 280 is a writing course and the research paper is supposed to be an exercise in original writing. Second, students are not yet authorities on any of the relevant subjects and therefore are not appropriate primary or secondary sources for the research paper. Third, doing so is a violation of Article 1, Part 4 of the University of Illinois Student Code.

Audience: In writing your essay, assume that your audience is that of the Illini Journal of International Security. In addition, you may assume from our course context that the audience is familiar with the material that has been presented in the course lecture-discussions and in the assigned readings. You do not need to define terms that have been defined in previous essays or provide citations for these terms. You must define other terms and provide citations for these definitions, but you do not need to place any standard definitions inside quotation marks.

Cover page: Your research paper must have a cover page preceding the body of the paper. The cover page should not be numbered. It must include the following three elements:

Body: The body of your research paper is defined as all of the pages in the paper except the cover page, the references page, and the figures and tables pages. Only the pages from the body of the paper count toward the 5-page minimum / 6-page maximum page requirement.

Page Numbering: Designate the first page of the body of your paper as page 1. Number pages continuously through to the end, including reference pages and any pages for figures and tables. Only the cover page is unnumbered.

Headings: Divide the body of your paper into several sections, using boldface headings. Use as many sections as you need, but note that dividing the body into more than five sections is probably excessive for a six-page paper. Avoid sections that are only one or two paragraphs in length. Do not label the introduction with a separate heading.

Introduction: The first section in the body of your paper should be an introduction to the paper. It should begin at the top of the first page following the cover page, which should be numbered page 1. The introduction should not be longer than 1.5 pages. Its purpose is to interest and engage the reader, provide context (e.g., “Iran has just tested a nuclear weapon”), and spell out your approach to the research question you are addressing. Do not list the sections in your paper or summarize your recommendations in the introduction; this paper is too short for that to be appropriate.

Conclusion: The final section in the body of your paper is where you will present your conclusion. For the RP, your conclusion should be written as a single, substantial paragraph in which you recommend a definite solution or solutions (policies or actions) that the global community or some subset of that community can take to address the global security problem you have presented. The solution or solutions should follow logically from your analysis and should be presented persuasively (i.e., addressing why this course of action is desirable and feasible given your analysis). Some explanation of your recommendation(s) is appropriate, but remember to keep the conclusion relatively brief and to avoid any unnecessary summary. The conclusion should not introduce any new facts or arguments and therefore should not need to include any citations.

Figures and Tables: You may include up to two (but no more than two) figures and/or tables in your paper, unless you have explicit permission from the TA who will be grading your research paper, and then only if they are essential for understanding the text.

Be sure to refer to any figures or tables in the body of your paper (e.g., "The decrease in weapons is shown graphically in Figure 1.") If you have figures or tables in your paper, they must occupy no more than two pages and be placed at the very end of your paper, after your references page.

Each figure must be numbered and have an explanatory caption. Each table must be numbered and have a title and a brief note explaining what is listed in the table. If any figures or tables are taken from another source, that source must be properly cited.

Content Footnotes or Endnotes: Do not use either content footnotes (consecutively numbered textual comments placed at the bottom of the page to which they refer) or content endnotes (consecutively numbered textual comments placed at the end of the paper). If you wish to include information that is parenthetical, simply place it in parenthesis in the text.

Paper Formatting: In general, follow the Phys 280 Style and Format Guide on the course website. In addition, follow the IJOIS style guidelines presented below:

“Punctuation: Please include a single space after periods, commas, colons, semicolons, et al. Periods should be used for abbreviations such as “i.e.”, “et al.”, “Mrs.”, “Dr.” etc., but do not abbreviate words when unnecessary. Additionally, there should be no periods inside acronyms (UN, NATO, CIA, etc.) or units of measure (lbs, mph, etc.)

Capitalization: Letters should only be capitalized for proper nouns, such as the names of names, cities, countries, or specific places, or for organizations. For example, words such as “West Africa”, “United Nations”, “Washington DC” and “Russia” should all be capitalized. Please refrain from capitalizing when speaking of governments and/or titles in general or for directions in reference to a geographical location (i.e. northern Mali.) All letters of acronyms should be capitalized.

Quotations: Please use double quotation marks to indicate quoted material, or any wording that is not one’s own. Single quotation marks can be used to emphasize irony. Example for single quotation marks: “The so-called ‘analysts’ have been wrong on many facets of the group’s modus operandi.” Please include the punctuation marks inside the quotations, as seen above.

Spelling and Grammar: All journal submissions must be in American English throughout.

Italics: Please use italics when referring to a title of a book, work, newspaper, journal, or any foreign language term.

Dates: A comma should come after the day of the month, as well as after the year. Example: “The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), founded on April 4, 1949, was originally meant to counter Soviet influence in Europe.”

Numbers: All numbers under 10 should be spelled out; those over 10 can be put as a numeral.

Citations: All citations need to be American Psychological Association (APA) style. A Works Cited page must be included with all submissions. In-text citations need to be used throughout and must contain the author’s surname and year of publication. Example: (Smith, 2015)…

Binders and Presentation Folders: Various types of binders and presentation folders are used to provide a "professional" look to documents, but they are inconvenient for grading. Do not use them. Use a single staple in the upper left-hand corner.

Submission: For information on submitting your research paper, see the Writing Assignments page of the course website. Remember that the paper copy of your RPv1 must have your commented-upon RPPv2 and a copy of your colleague’s RPCR attached (on the bottom); and your RPv2 must have your commented-upon RPv1 attached (on the bottom).

Final Suggestions