Los Angeles Pierce College Modifying Plants and Animals Controversies Paper

The body of your literature review should be a summary of the scientific literature as it relates to your topic. Be sure to address any gaps in the scientific knowledge on this topic or any controversies that exist. The Introduction section of most scientific papers is a good indication of what your review should look like.

You must use parenthetical citations in your literature review. In scientific papers, direct quotes are almost never used. Instead, scientists use different wording to restate or summarize the ideas or informationfrom another paper, and cite the source of the idea in the text using the author name(s) and the publication year of the cited journal article within the text, alongside the source of the information. This allows the reader to find the cited article easily and verify that the writer is not misrepresenting what the other scientist claimed.

Remember that the citation method used in scientific papers is different from methods you may have learned in other courses. A good summary of how to use and properly format scientific citations is available in a web page from Bates College (Links to an external site.).

Requirements for your literature review:

• Topic is scientific and related to Biology 7

• Literature review is a summary of the state of science on the topic, without opinion or personal commentary

• Approximately 1-2 pages in length

• Clearly written, using complete sentences and organized appropriately into paragraphs

• Parenthetical citations are used and formatted appropriately

• In-text parenthetical citations correspond to Literature Cited section (nothing extra or missing or inaccurate)

• At least five scientific papers are cited in the text and listed in the Literature Cited

• No non-scientific sources are used