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Choosing a Research Article

There are several ways to go about choosing an article on which to base your seminar. What follows is a survey of those methods. Some of what we talk about doing in the Science Information Center could be done on-line, but if you need help with accessing the literature, that is the place to go for help.

Go to the Boatwright Library and look through some of the bound issues (issues from 3 to 5 years old) of prominent review journals (e.g., Chemical Reviews, Accounts of Chemical Research, Annual Review of ..., Progress in ..., Advances in ..., etc.). Note that some of these may be available on line, which could save you a trip to Boatwright. Locate a review or two that catches your interest; then, look for those reviews in Science Citation Index (the science librarian can assist you in learning how to use this resource). What you hopefully will find is a list of current articles which cite those review articles. If the review article is too recent you may have trouble finding a listing in Science Citation Index. After finding several current research articles that have cited the review article, go to those papers (on-line or in the library) and consider them as potential candidates for your seminar. (Note that if a research paper is not in our library, you will either have to look for another or depend on interlibrary loan to get it for you, and interlibrary loan takes time.) It is a good idea to take several of these candidate research papers with their supporting review articles to the faculty member you think might sponsor your effort. If you and the faculty member (and eventually I) can agree on a paper in the group of research papers, then you will have at least the bare bones of a seminar topic; you will have both a current research paper and a supporting review article in an area in which you are interested. This should give you a smooth entry into the wider literature on the subject, and you should find it easier to complete the literature survey needed to establish a foundation for your written and oral presentations. The key to this approach is finding a recent review article and a more recent research paper that is on a topic of interest to you.

Alternatively, look through recent issues of primary research journals (e.g., J. Am. Chem. Soc., J. Phys. Chem., J. Org. Chem., Biochem., Organometallics, Analytical Chem., etc.). Again, look to find an article that catches your interest. Then look to see if the authors of that article lists any review articles in their references. Any such review article may help you initiate the literature survey needed to build a sufficient background on the topic. You should note that the earlier the review article is listed among the citations of that paper, the more useful it tends to be. Review articles cited at the front of a paper tend to provide a background for the entire work. Review articles cited later in the paper tend to support only a narrow point being addressed at that point in the paper. Use of SciFinder (or the reference lists in the papers cited in the review and the primary research paper) will allow you to find other pertinent research papers and review articles on the topic or by the same author(s). One important note: be sure that the review article you find is available on-line, physically located in our library or that it can be easily and promptly obtained through interlibrary loan, and once again, discuss your potential choices with a potential sponsoring faculty members before narrowing your choice to one paper

From time to time, Chemical & Engineering News, the news magazine of the chemical sciences, carries feature articles on noteworthy research and those who are doing such research. In addition, most every week there is a section called "Science Concentrates" which highlights recent articles involving important research results. Other journals often provide similar things; for example, in Science magazine, there is an "Editors' Choice" section that highlights recent articles in the literature. You need to know that often the articles that are highlighted are brief reports of preliminary results and not full papers, and thus more work may be needed to provide the contents of a good seminar report, but this is a way of identifying some active and significant areas of research

An even better source of important and significant journal articles is found in ChemTracts. This is a publication that features a condensation and discussion of several important papers in each issue, each written by someone expert in the field involved. Each quarter issues are published that deal with articles in organic, inorganic, or biochemistry.

If you are thinking about a particular school as a place to go to graduate school, and especially if you are thinking about a particular person as a possible graduate school mentor, search the ACS journals, SciFinder or some other journal site on which we have access to full papers, to see what people at that place (or that person) have (has) published in the past 5 or so years.

A parallel idea is to ask someone on our faculty who is knowledgeable about an area of chemistry in which you are interested, to tell you who are some of the most active and most significant researchers in that field, then search the ACS journals, SciFinder or some other journal site on which we have access to full papers, to see what such persons have published in the past 5 or so years.

In any case, watch for full papers and (maybe going back a bit more than 5 years) look for reviews they may have published in their field of interest.

Searching the Literature On-line

There are knowledgeable people (Melanie Hillner, the Science Librarian) who stand ready to help you with your on-line or hard copy searches. The University subscribes to several on-line data sources, and thus you can do some of your literature work anywhere you have access to the internet. Be aware, though, that in order to use many of those on-line sources, you have to be connected to the UR network, either by a wireless or hard-wired connection on campus or by some sort of VPN connection that authenticates you. Of particular interest is the list of journals currently received in the Science Information center. Some of the most important sites are given below (there are many other useful journals).

Advice to Presenters

When you prepare your oral presentation, you should prepare it for presentation to an audience of your fellow students. What you need to say should be decided on the basis of what such students would need to hear to understand the chemistry you are presenting from the paper you have selected. This will almost always include a significant amount of background information that will enable the student audience to appreciate the context in which the work was done, including both the reasons for doing the work and the implications of the knowledge gained. You may assume a knowledge basis on their part equivalent to your own when you began your literature review.

Use of overheads, slides, computer-aided display, chalkboard or any combination are all acceptable. Most students are now using PowerPoint or some other computer/projection system. (If you choose to use slides or computer, you need to arrange in advance with your mentor or the Seminar Coordinator for appropriate equipment to be in the room and for time to familiarize yourself with its use.) In all cases, be sure that the audience can clearly read your visual aids. A common mistake is to try to put too much material on one slide/overhead. Crowded slides/overheads are not only distracting, but they cause the audience to become frustrated and/or lose interest. Tables and diagrams taken straight from papers are usually too small. You need either to enlarge them or to rewrite/redraw them in larger print. Scanners for computer uses are available both in University Computing and at various places in our department. Students are responsible for the costs of overhead transparency film used in their seminar presentations.

In general, reading from notes is discouraged. Your slides/overheads/images should serve as your “prompter”. You should have enough on the slides/overheads/images that you don't need any additional note-cards, etc. On the other hand, you should understand the material well enough so that you don't have to read word-for-word from a piece of paper or from a slide on the screen. The more familiar you are with your material, the less likely it is that this will be a problem.

Start with the title and reference of the primary paper and a list of its authors (noting main author), as well as a mention of where the work was done. Many speakers follow this with an outline of the talk. Include some background on the topic or field of chemistry in which the work of the primary paper falls, so that your audience can begin to see the work in context. Most effective speakers will spend half or more of their talk carefully introducing the topic and building the necessary background. Then, when the proper background is established, you can begin to present experimental design and data from the primary paper and related work and to discuss the interpretation and implications of those results. At the end of your presentation, you should analyze the value of the work, which includes indicating why the work is significant and what implications there are for additional work, if you know.

In both the oral presentation and the written report, you should focus on experiments conducted, results obtained, and conclusions drawn from interpreting those results. We expect you to be able to describe the goals of the work (what the authors were trying to prove or to discover), the experimental design (what the authors did to get evidence), the data (the evidence from the experimentation), and the conclusions (including the reasoning they offered to interpret the data). Also include a detailed discussion of the implications and significance of the work. Include enough background material so that the target audience can appreciate these things

You should also read your chosen research paper with a critical eye and report your observations. Is the work important or trivial? Given the goals and scope of the research, were the experiments designed well? Do the data collected support the authors' conclusions? Was there something missing from the work (e.g., experiments insufficient; incomplete description of experimental details)? Is the work supported or refuted by others? What are some logical next steps in the research?

Because a group will gather for each student talk, there will be a faculty member serving as moderator to introduce you and to get things started. This faculty member will also help control things during the discussion period that traditionally follows a talk. However, it is your role as the speaker to let the audience know when the talk is over, and at that time to invite discussion, to recognize those with comments or questions in turn, and to respond as well as you can. Do not try to pretend knowledge you do not have, but do respond based on what you have learned in your study of the area of your presentation. Note that in the 35 minute period that is your time, your talk should take about 25-30 minutes, leaving 5-10 minutes for the discussion period.

Advice to Report Writers

Your written report should be targeted at chemistry faculty. Although a faculty reader may not be familiar with this particular research area, in general you may assume more in the way of background knowledge. However, you should still define any terms or concepts that are crucial to the work you are presenting.

Unlike the presentation, you may assume that your readers will have read your source article and have easy and immediate access to it. Thus, for example, you need not cover the experimental procedure in great detail; instead, summarize the important aspects of the experiment and refer the reader to the original paper for more details. For these reasons, you will probably have space to go into a little more depth and provide more contextual background than in your presentation.

At a minimum, all students must do the following in writing their report:

Beyond this, you should, if your topic is primary research:

As with the presentation, you should read your chosen research paper with a critical eye and report your observations in your written report. Is the work important or trivial? Given the goals and scope of the research, were the experiments designed well? Do the data collected support the authors' conclusions? Was there something missing from the work (e.g., experiments insufficient; incomplete description of experimental details)? Is the work supported or refuted by others? What are some logical next steps in the research?

Depending on the nature of the source article and your inclination, you might choose to make one of the following the focus of your report:

You should discuss your report extensively with your faculty mentor.