Finally, I have commented on your papers

Common problems with course papers

• Here, I discuss only problems with formal side of papers (i.e. editing, formatting, citing, etc.)

• Problems (if any) with the content, argumentation etc. were pointed out individually in comments sent to you

• Remember, that on our course webpage there is a document „Formal requirements for papers” that gives the advice on all these formal matters

• If there will be serious problems with formal matters (e.g. no title page at all, no attempts at proper citing, plagiarism, etc.), then I will not be able to give you a passing grade for the paper

Citing – how and when to cite?

• Bad citing or no citing at all occurs in most of your papers

• Citing is referring to the source of the information that I am using in my text after that source

• If you take the information from a source and do not cite the source, then it is plagiarism – a form of stealing and an academic offence

• Citing vs. quoting

• Citing is showing that you have taken an information from other source – e.g.: As shown by Smith (1990, p. 22), the theory of consumption

function…

• Quoting is giving somebody’s text in extenso and citing it– E.g.: Smith (1990, p. 23) wrote that: „Consumption is the ultimate end

of production.”

Citing – how and when to cite?

• When to cite a source?

• Whenever you take some point, agrument, idea, fact or thought from this source.

• Better to give too many than too little citations – but of course you should not give citations to each (or to every second) sentance.

• It is a matter of appropriate intuition that can be gained only with experience (only after writing several papers).

• So, for example, if you construct the whole paragraph after a given source (e.g. a book by Adam Smith) then you have to cite the book (Smith 1776, p. 232) in the first sentence (for example) and not necessairly after each sentence in this paragraph

• If the next paragraph also is based on Smith or another person’s argument, than you cite him/her in the first sentence again

Examples of giving good citations (1): citations to the sources in general (not to a specific page in the source)

• And you put Vaughn (1994), Boettke (1996) and Rothbard (1997) in your bibliography using an appriate bibliography style

Examples of giving good citations (1): citations to the specifit page (range of pagezs) in the source

Examples of giving good citations (1): citations to the specifit page (range of pagezs) in the source, cont.

• And you put Villarreal (1984) and Stallings (1978) in your bibliography

Examples of giving good citations (1): citing the (shorter) quotation

Examples of giving good citations (1): citing the longer quotation

An example of bad approach to citing – no citations at all

Examples of bad citations

Plagiarism

• Not citing of the source of an idea/thought/argument etc. from which you take this thing

• But also using „copy and paste” to introduce somebody else’s text in your paper without quotation marks. – This is plagiarism even if you cite the source

– Example: Adam Smith (1776, p. 1) argued that the annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.

– It should be: Adam Smith (1776, p. 1) argued that „the annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.”

• So either use quotation marks or rephrase it in your own words.

Problems with quotations

• Not introducing them in a sentance

• Long quotations should be indented from both sides (wider margins)

• Citations should be given with quotations

• In quotations, either use quotation marks or italics, but not both

An example of bad quotation

Good example, short quotation

Good example, longer quotation

Abstract, keywords, table of contents

• These elements should be given on a page directly following the title page

• Abstract is a short summary of your paper (800 characters, about 10 lines)

– It should present the paper’s objective and shortly summarize the main findings, results of your paper

• Keywords – words and short phrases used often in your paper or best describing the content of your paper

• Table of contents = a list of section titles with corresponding page numbers in your paper (titles and numbers aligned to the left and right, respectively).

Introduction and conclusions

• The first section is unnumbered and titled „Introduction”

• Introduction should contain a short description of the topic of your paper and state the paper’s objective. It can contain a short review of the paper’s structure

• The last section is also unnumbered and titled „Conclusions” – they cointain a short reminder of the paper’s topic and objective and summarize main findings/results

Tables and figures

• Tables should be numbered,

• Source of the table or data should be given below the table

• They should be incorporated in main text and the data contained in the table should be discussed.

• A list of tables/figures should be inserted after bibliography

Good example of using tables

Example of a bad use of tables

Bibliography

• Use the bibliograpy style presented in „Formal requirements for papers” on course webpage

• No numbering

• No headings

• Sort in alphabetical order

Reminder from „Formal requirements for papers”

Examples of bad bibliographies from your papers

Examples of bad bibliographies

Examples of bad bibliographies

Other issues

• Main text has to be justifed

• New paragraphs have to be indented

• There should be no additional space between paragraphs and additional spaces betweenletters and words.

• Use spell-checker function to eliminate errors and typos

Final remarks

• You have to respond of my comments

• And of course all my comments should be removed from the final version of your paper

Final remarks

• So you have to correct the paper and send me a revisedversion

• Toghether with a revised version send me another Word document with list of changes introduced to your paper:

• Deadline is 13th May 2018 at midnight

Persons I would like to talk to individually:(but anyone wishing to talk about paper can stay, of course)

• Qingqing Yang

• Guchuan Tian

• Rongpu Han

• Alpay Cömert

• Kanamu Nakagiri