Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
This section may also include the geologic setting of the topic.
Methods
The past tense should be used for the methods section.
Describe and define the experimental design; provide enough
detail for repetition.
Describe the research materials.
Do not describe the functioning of analytical instruments.
If the methods are original, describe all of the steps necessary;
otherwise give only a reference to the methods.
Do not include the results of the investigation.
Results
Give an overall description of the investigation-a "big picture"
view.
Present the data in the present tense (the facts are still true,
right?).
It is important to present the data with absolute clarity.
Be sure to separate data from interpretation, but problems with
data can be discussed.
Discussion
Present the principles, relationships, and generalizations shown
by the results; make sure to discuss the results, not restate
them.
Point out exceptions and define points of ambiguity; never try
to cover up or change data that does not quite fit.
Show how the results relate to the hypotheses
o Edited Books:
Authors, date, Title of article, in Editors, Title of Edited
Book, pages.
Zimmerman, J., Axel, R.S., 1989, Tectonic setting of
olistostromal units and associated rocks in the Talladega
slate belt, Alabama Appalachinas, in Horton, J. W., and
Rast, N., eds., Melanges and olistostromes of the
Appalachians: Geological Society of America Special
Paper 228, p. 247-269
o Geologic maps:
Author, date, Map name: Place of publication, Publisher,
Scale.
Staikopoulos, G. and Efstratiades, G., 1987, Geological
map of Greece, Akhladhokhorion sheet: Athens, Institute
of Geology and Mineral Exploration, scale 1:50,000.
All references must be cited, and only cited references should
be in the list.
References cited as sources for figures should be included in
the list.
No references from the Internet are allowed.
No "pers. comm." citations should be included in the
references cited list.
The list should be in order by last name of the first author.
Tables
Don't use tables if the data can be presented in word form in
the text.
Never present the same data in more than one way (text,
table, figure) in the same paper.
Provide enough information in the caption so the meaning of
the data is clear without reference to the text.
Figures
Figures are not for show. You should not include a "pretty
picture" on the cover. Every figure should present information
that is new and important, and is best served by an image.
There should always be a reference in the text to each figure,
and figures should be included in the order in which their text
references occur.
All drawings, maps, graphs, photos, etc. are "Figures".
Numerical or text information in a table is not (it's a Table). Do
not write "Graph 1" or "Map 1" or "Chart 1".
Only use a graph if the trends in the data are not apparent in
table form.
Figures should be referred to sequentially in the text. Examples
of figure references:
o "Gold is found in several locations (see Fig. 1)" (bad style)
o "Gold is found in several locations (refer to Fig. 1)" (bad
style)
o "Figure 1 shows..." (acceptable style, but not preferred)
o "Gold is found in several locations (Fig. 1)" (preferred
style)
If a sentence has some information from a reference, and
related information from that reference is in a figure, how do
you cite both? You don't:
o "MORB compositions are generally tholeiitic (Fig. 3)." (and
in the figure 3 caption, you would cite the reference)
If you are referring to more than one, write for example "(Figs.
2 and 3)"
You should put the figures themselves at the end of the paper
(after the References Cited); they do not need to be embedded
within the text.
All figures must have descriptive, useful captions. Indicate
briefly what the reader should notice or conclude from the
figure.
Figures adopted from other sources must be referenced, using
the same style as described in the Citations section. For
example:
o Figure 2. Rhyolite viscosity as a function of temperature.
Note the decrease is small relative to the effects of H2O
(Smith, 2001). (if the figure is included without substantial
alterations)
o Figure 3. T-X(H2O) phase diagram for CMASH system. Only
reactions mentioned in the text are shown (after Spear,
2000). (if the figure has been altered)
o Note that the figure captions begin with "Figure 4", not
"Fig. 4" like the references do.
o If you incorporate a figure from the literature, you should
make your own caption in order to highlight the parts of
the figure that are important to your paper. You should
number the figure according to your ordering, and cite
the original source in the caption (and perhaps in the
body) of the figure as: "Smith (1965)" or "from Smith
(1965)". If you alter the figure, or re-draft it (perhaps by
scanning it into a file and re-drawing over the scan), you
should cite it as: "after Smith (1965)."
Citations
In a scientific paper, any fact you write down is assumed to be
some fact you discovered unless it is general knowledge
(something that would appear in a textbook) or has a citation.
If you write down a fact somebody else discovered that is not
general knowledge and fail to cite them, your are committing
o You can also include text along with the citation: "there
have been many sets of mineral abbreviations (see, for
example, Kretz, 1983)."
o You can use the authors' name(s) in the sentence itself:
"Kretz (1983) lists the most recent set of mineral
abbreviations."
Grammar note: if you do this, you may run into
needing to use a pronoun to refer to the publication.
Some authors would use the personal pronoun,
suggesting that it was the person who did the listing.
I prefer to use "it" suggesting that the paper itself
did the listing. This saves you from having to figure
out gender of authors, and makes more sense,
because authors may change their positions on
topics, but publications never do.
Grammar note two: you also run into a tense
problem. The paper was published in the past, but it
can be read in the present. I prefer the present
tense. The 1983 Kretz paper will list that set of
mineral abbreviations indefinitely into the future, so
"lists" is used above, not "listed".
o Frequently we use the abbreviations "e.g." (which means
"for example") and "cf." (which means "see also") as precitation parenthetical text. You may also cite a specific
figure or page, in which case that is included inside the
parentheses after the year, as in: (Hirsch, 2000, Fig. 2).
Citing unread papers:
o You should read everything you cite, and you should cite
the original source. If you cannot obtain the original
source, you may need to cite something you have not
read. For example, if you are reading Hirsch (2000) and
you see a fact I obtained from Kretz (1974), but you
cannot obtain Lithos, then you would not cite Hirsch
(2000) as the source of the data, because I didn't discover
the fact, Kretz did. You would cite Kretz (1974) as follows: