Writing a research paper in six steps

1. Topic paragraph. (submitted via email on 10/12). Write a one paragraph description of the topic you would like to explore in your term paper. Try to be specific if you can, but expect to change some aspects of the description as you learn more about the topic.

2. Initial annotated reading list (submitted via email on 10/19). Assemble a short (5 – 10 items) list of articles and books that you have discovered to be relevant to your topic. For each reading, provide a full citation and a few sentences saying what it is about this reading makes it relevant to your writing project.

3. Idea inventory (submitted via email on 10/26). Having read some of the literature and having thought about your project, take an inventory of the key ideas you have encountered. I find a big diagram with ideas and connecting lines to be a useful part of this exercise, but you may choose any format you like. The goal is to get a sense of and some representation of the intellectual terrain in your area. Find out which ideas support one another synergistically. Which ideas are in conflict? Where are the controversies? Where is the as yet unmapped territory?

4. Outline or prospectus (submitted via email on 11/2). Assemble the pieces you have so far. Every paper in this genre contains the following parts:

a. Introduction. What is the paper about? Your rewritten topic paragraph should help here.

b. Background. What is already known about the topic? Your growing annotated reading list and your idea inventory will be essential resources here.

c. Methods. For essay style papers, your methods will concern analysis rather than data collection. How did you approach the problem of exploring the conceptual space? Many of you will be using the premises of the hypothesis of extended cognition to explore phenomena or domains of activity that have not previously been considered in that light.

d. Findings. What did you discover in your exploration? What do you know now that you did not know when you started?

e. Significance. So what? What implications do your findings have for cognitive science or our understandings of cognition?

It is understood that some of these five elements will be more complete than others at this point in the process. If you cannot fill a hole in your paper, at least describe the hole and say what you could do to fill it.

5. First Draft (submitted on paper in seminar 11/16). This rough draft should contain most of the ideas that will appear in your final paper. At this point the goal is to be able to say to yourself what you want your paper to say. You should not be overly worried about formatting or presentation here. It doesn’t have to be pretty. It just has to make sense.

6. Final Draft (submitted on paper in seminar 11/30). A nicely formatted easy to read paper with a clear exposition.

Your final paper should be between 5000 and 8000 words in length. There is no required number of citations, but I will expect you to use and cite some of the assigned readings for the course as well as additional readings that you tracked down on your own. Double-space the final version with reasonable margins and point size 11 or 12. Make it easy for me to read it.