Ethics

I feel that I have been successful with my research process within the context of my writing.  Over the course of this semester I have become familiar with finding credible sources, citing them, and avoiding plagiarism. I have provided a list of my works cited that I have used for my essays.

I have used a variety of sources of information in my research process. The most helpful sources that I have used are course readings, scholarly research databases, and search engines such as Google. It was extremely helpful to have a workshop day with the librarian because I learned a copious amount of information relevant to finding and citing sources. One of the main things that I got out of the workshop was finding the difference between popular and scholarly articles. This is very important when using outside information because you want your writing to be as credible as possible. I found that databases such as EBSCO were useful when writing the historical framework essay and after the workshop it was a lot easier to evaluate authority to authorship.

Although my research process was successful, I did face some difficulties. There was a lot of information that I had to sort through to find something that was relevant to what I was writing about which at times took some time and effort. It was also frustrating when the keywords I used weren’t coming up with the articles that I needed. One of the biggest lessons that I learned about this process is that you should always remain critical of your sources and never just assume that they are valid or credible. One way to assure this is by using respected academic articles and journals. Another challenge that I faced with this process is avoiding plagiarism. When writing a research based paper it is easy to do this when paraphrasing another author’s ideas. I found that the best way to prevent this is to when in doubt quote and cite to give credit to the author. Also, if paraphrasing it is best to stick to small points because if you paraphrase a lot of information you are more likely to use the author’s work.

Works Cited

Works Cited2