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Middle School Science Research
The University of Texas-Pan American has many sources available for scientific research. Most of those resources (books, magazines and journals, electronic databases, etc.) are available only for UTPA students, faculty, and staff, or for people who come to the library to use them.
People often look for information in books. Books have lots of well established, reliable information. To look for books, use the library catalog.
Another good source of information is articles. Journals and magazines publish lots of articles about the latest research; often the information in articles is more recent than the information in books. To look for good articles, start with indexes and databases.
Web sites can also provide good information. But some web sites are not reliable. Almost anyone can make a web page, and they could be filled with rumors, urban myths, deceptive or biased information, or even outright lies. Other web pages have lots of really good information. We'll try to show you some good ones.
When you read a book or magazine article, and use information from the book or article in your assignment, you often have to provide a citation for that information. A citation includes things like the author of the book or article, the title of the book or article, the publisher and it's city for the book, the date and page number of the article, etc. The specific information varies, depending on the type of source you are citing. You give the citation in order to acknowledge that you got your information from someone else, and to show where you found it, so that others can get it, too.
Sometimes students get in trouble because they plagiarize. Plagiarism is using the words of someone else without giving him/her credit. If college students are caught plagiarizing, they can get a "0" on the assignment, an "F" for the course, or even kicked out of school.
Now let's find out more about research.