The following is a general guide to writing a research report focused on GIS, spatial analysis, or modeling.  See the general resources page for other guides for writing and research.

This presents some standard conventions for writing journal articles but highlights where you may want to make changes for a class report or thesis.

• Journal article. The 'standard' format used by most journals is a bit restrictive because it reflects traditional publishing practices. Figures and tables, for example, are usually attached as separate pages at the end of your text instead of being embedded in the text itself because it is easier to photograph them for publishing and the text itself is easier to typeset.
• Class report. Class reports are less restrictive in form and content than journal articles but they still share many characteristics. Conventions such as line double spacing and use of 12 point serif fonts like Times New Roman are designed to make it easier for your reader to review the paper and provide annotations where necessary. Take special notice of the "Top 10 Checklist" as these are items that are particularly important for class reports.

Quick Links:

• Report structure
• General Considerations
• Top 10 Checklist
• References

Report Structure

The paper should be divided into sections that make the logical sequence of the argument clear. Common sections are described below.  Treat these as what they are, suggestions.  Some things, like the title, are fairly standard.  Other things, such as the divisions between 'results' and 'discussion' are more fluid.  If you are skipping a section, ask yourself why you feel it should not be in the report. The same advice stands for the suggested word limits - they are not hard and fast rules.

Page One: Title page with identifying information

• Title
• Author
• Affiliation
• Contact information (mailing address, phone, fax, email)

Page Two: Title page without identifying information

• Title
• Abstract: general description of your paper, highlighting the key theories, methods, findings [250-400 words].
• Key Words: three to five key words or phrases, be specific as possible.
• Word count: number of words in the main body

Note: having this second title page without identifying information is important when your work is going to be sent out for external or blind peer-review, for it allows your work to be easily disseminated without the readers knowing who you are, which may bias their assessment of your research (for better or worse).

Page Three: Main body

Main body: this is where you develop the argument in detail, leading the reader from the thesis laid out in an introduction through your reasoning and results to the conclusion. The word limits below are just guidelines for each section relative to the others. There is generally a word limit on your paper. If you are submitting it as a course assignment, check with the assignment description or the instructor on how many words the paper should have. If you are submitting to another venue, such as a journal or conference, check with the relevant authority, such as the journal editor or conference call for papers.

• Introduction [250-1000 words] this gets the reader’s attention and leads to a purpose statement (e.g., “This paper examines blah, blah, bah”), in which you explain the purpose and scope of the paper; followed by a thesis statement (“I argue that blah, blah, blah ”), in which you summarize the main points you wish to make; and concludes with a summary of the logical structure of the argument to come. Note that you do not have to use the word "Introduction" as the actual title of this section.
• Literature Review [100-2000 words]: set out the background literature and questions of your project.  See the resources page on writing a literature review to get a better sense of what is involved.  As with the introduction, this section does not have to be titled "literature review" - you could term it the "background" or "conceptual framework", for example, or better yet, something even more direct, such as "Key challenges in understanding climate."
• Study Site [100-1000 words]: if applicable, describe the area in which you are working and include a map of the area(see below about figures).  Assume that your reader has no idea about the study area and focus on characteristics that are germane to the work at hand and those that make it worthy of study
• Methodology [500-2000 words]: describe the models, methods, and techniques that you are using and then show how you applied them in your study. This section is where you also describe data as it relates to the methodology.  Some papers, such as review articles, do not have a methodology section as such, unless you are doing a content or citation analysis of some sort.
• Results and Analysis [500-2000 words]: describe the results of your study.  Use statistics, graphs, verbal descriptions, maps, and so on (see below about tables and figures).   Use whatever it takes to convince the reader that your research gave you what you expected or elaborate on why it did not.
• Discussion [500-1500 words]: explain why the research did what it did and why it matters.  Ideally, you started with a big question in your introduction, led the reader through a cogent literature review, laid out a rock-solid methodology, and wowed them with the results.  Now discuss how all the pieces fit together.  Describe your method, as evidenced by the results, and how you answered the questions laid out in introduction and literature review.  Also explore where the model failed or could be better. Better data?  Faster algorithm? Reworking of the hypothesis?  Need for more research?  Asked the wrong question?  By answering these questions, you tell the reader what research should come next (and, yes, there is always more research that must be done...).
• Conclusion: [250-500 words]: summarize the main points of your argument, restate your thesis statement, and bring your argument to a logical conclusion.

Acknowledgements: [50-100 words]: thank anyone who helped you with this work, including: funding agencies (put in grant numbers if available); data providers; anyone who helped with editing, layout, or graphics; anyone who helped you with suggestions and ideas; reviewers, if your paper involved a formal or informal review process. If you are submitting your work to a peer-reviewed venue, do not include the acknowledgements in the review drafts because they may carry identifying information.

Cited references: a bibliography of all the references you cited.  Do not include anything that you did not directly cite in the body of the paper.  See below for formatting references. Strongly consider using an reference manager for anything but the simplest papers. See the RefWorks page for information on RefWorks or EndNote.

Tables and figures: Use maps, diagrams and tables when they enhance your argument. If these are secondary materials (i.e., you have copied them without changes from somewhere else), the original source must be given on both the figure and in the list of references. If you are expecting to publish your work, you must get copyright permissions for works created by others. If you have prepared them yourself, you must cite the source of the data you that you used in their construction.

Placement: You place tables and figures differently according to document type:

• Class report, theses and dissertations: place the figures and tables directly in the document body and place their
• Journal articles: graphics and tables that you use in the paper should be referred to where you want the reader to be looking at them but the tables and figures themselves must be in their own sections after the references. Insert markers or 'place holders' for tables and figures in the text where they would be most appropriate (e.g. "<Figure 1>" or "<Table 1 about here>"). The first page of the "Figures" section lists the figures and captions of up to two or three sentences long that help the reader understand the figure. Each figure must have its own separate page. For the "Tables", place each table on its own separate page.

Appendices: put very technical matter here, or data that does not fit comfortably in single table in the main body of the paper.  In general, put material here that is not important to your arguments as such or material in which only a small number of readers would be interested. Use appendices sparingly!

Copyright notice: if you used copyrighted and/or commercial material, specify so here.

General Considerations

Formatting: Your paper should follow the page layout given above, particularly with respect to the first two pages. Moreover, follow these conventions for type and page formatting:

• Your paper should be typed, double spaced (not 1.5 spaced!), with 12 point font in Times New Roman or an equivalent serif font. This holds true for all text, including titles and references.
• Your left and right margins must be at least 1.25 inches and the top and bottom margins should be at least 1 inch.
• Indent each paragraph by 0.5 inches and do not have empty lines between paragraphs.
• Every page except for the title page(s) must be numbered. If you are submitting to a journal, you may want to consider also having line numbers because they make it easier for a reviewer to pinpoint where to make changes.
• Sections should be titled and numbered consecutively (e.g., 1, 2, 3) and subsections should be numbered logically according to where they are in the hierarchy of sections (e.g., 1.1, 1.2, etc.).
• Titles and subtitles should be typed on a separate line, without indentation. Use sentence case for titles - only the first letter is capitalized barring obvious exceptions such as proper nouns.

Direct quotes: Only quote a source if it makes a point more effectively than you can, or if there is a specific statement that you wish to analyze. A direct quote is a block of quoted text with a citation to the source of the quotation.  Here I have taken a direct quote from the paper and given a citation: "...USLE-derived field data likely vary from practitioner to practitioner as it is up to individuals to interpret where field breaks occur."  (Lewis et al. 2005: 828).

• Quotes should be as short as possible, and should reproduce the exact grammar and spelling in the original. You must do this even if it is incorrect in the origin. Let the reader know the error was in the original by placing the term "[sic]" directly after the error.
• Give page numbers where the quote can be found.
• You may abbreviate a quote by replacing a section of the author's text with an ellipsis (three periods in a row), but your abbreviation cannot alter the author's meaning.
• In general, quotes in total should be less than 5% of your paper.

Note: Any verbatim text that you include without citing the original source likely constitutes plagiarism! Review the course policies with respect to issues of research, academic honesty, and university rules on plagiarism.

Citations: Cite when you have a reference to a work in the paper.

• A citation can be direct and obvious, where you are referring the reader to the source of something.  Here you are saying 'treat this paper as the first and/or most significant example of this work.' "Soil loss is primarily estimated on farm and range lands in the United  States using the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) (Renard et al. 1997)." (Lewis et al. 2005: 809)
• A citation is also used to point the reader to research that relates to a general topic.  Here you are saying 'other people have looked at this too.' "One area of uncertainty in RUSLE and USLE that has been investigated by several researchers over a long period of time is the topographic factor (LS) (McCool et al. 1989, Moore and Wilson 1992, Desmet and Govers 1996, Gertner et al. 2002)" (Lewis et al. 2005: 809)
• A citation is also used as a signpost, to let the reader know you are adopting an argument or referring to research that someone else has done.  Here you are saying 'trust us, someone else has done the homework on this, let's move on.' "Segmentation, often used in image processing (Russ 1999), partitions an image into homogenous patches according to given criteria." (Lewis et al. 2005: 811)
• Examples taken from Lewis, L. A., G. Verstraeten, and H. Zhu. 2005. RUSLE applied in a GIS framework: calculating the LS factor and deriving homogeneous patches for estimating soil loss. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems 19:809-829.

Tables: Tables should be numbered according to their sequence in the text. The body of the paper should have references to all tables (i.e., do not have a table if it is not referred to by the text). Each table should have a brief and self-explanatory title. Similarly, column headings should be brief but explanatory. Standard abbreviations of units of measurement should be added between parentheses. Any explanation essential to the understanding of the table should be given as a footnote at the bottom of the table.

Table tips:

• Keep it simple. Don't overdo bolding, italics and so on. Use simple grid lines and the same font you have been using throughout the document.
• Put the title at the top of the table
• Be sure to note the units of the table and to give descriptive titles. The best tables are self-explanatory.

Figures: Figures should be numbered according to their sequence in the text and the text should include references to all figures. Maps should include a scale, a legend and a North arrow. Graphs should have the axes and units of measurement labeled. Each figure has a caption; together this combination of figure and captions should let the figure stand alone. The reader should not have to dig through your text to find out what the figure means.

Figure tips:

• Use tables to help with figure layout. Instead of just dumping an image or figure into the document, use a standard two-row table. Place the figure in the first row and the figure caption in the second row.
• Compress images. After copying or importing a data-dense image format (e.g., GIF or TIFF) into your paper, compress the figure to reduce the file size (e.g., in MS Word, right click on the image, choose Format Picture | Picture | Compress).

Paper Top 10 Checklist

This is a list of commonly overlooked aspects of research reports. If you are writing a paper for Dr. Manson, you must do these checklist items when possible and/or appropriate for your report.

1. Title page. Include a title page with your name, class, and title.
2. Structure. All levels of your report should have structure, from the use of sections and subsections overall down to each paragraph having an introductory sentence, body, and concluding sentence. Of course, it is easy to make the report too rigid, but given the choice between too much structure and too little, opt for the latter.
3. Style. The most common problem with papers is that the author has spent so much time working on the substance that style is relegated to the last minute. No matter how good the substance, the paper is lost if the reader encounters spelling errors, typos, or wordiness. Leave yourself enough time to take a few good passes through the paper just for style.
4. Numbered headings. Related to above, strongly consider using numbered headings to help your reader follow your argument.
5. Citing: Any numerical fact taken from a reference must cite to the page number in addition to the author and year (e.g., "(Smith 1999: 45)").
6. Figures. If you reproduce an image that someone else has created, you need copyright permission to publish it in a book or journal. If you make a copy for your report, thesis, or dissertation, you must give the original source and page number. If you create a new image that is based in part on someone else's image, cite to the source with the 'after' prefix (e.g., "Figure 1. XXX (after Smith 1999: 45)").
7. Serif font. As noted above, use a serif font like Times or Times New Roman. Sans serif fonts like Arial or Helvetica are hard on the eyes when reading something on paper.
8. Single document. When submitting a report for a course assignment, get all the material into a single document, especially the references and figures. This is good practice for your later career and ensures that the reader will get everything.
9. References. Be consistent in your referencing style. See below for more information. Also, as above, use a reference manager program like RefWorks or Endnote.
10. Acronyms: spell the full name of an acronym when first encountered in the text, no matter how obvious it may seem to you (e.g., spell out "Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)" the first time you use it).

References

A list of all references used should appear in a separate section - only include works to which you have directly cited in your paper. Do not include other material that you have read but not cited.*

Forms of Citations

Although many forms of citations exist, the method in the social sciences (and beyond) is parenthetical referencing with a reference list at the end of the paper. Authors' names and dates of publication are given in parentheses within the text. These correspond to a list of works cited which is placed at the end of the paper. This list is arranged alphabetically by author's last names and chronologically within lists of works by a single author.

Here is an example of a parenthetical reference following a quotation (note that the page number is set off by a colon):

Jean Roomer is an imaginative writer who sought to breach "the narrow constraints of conventional language" (Huggins 1999: 180).

The following sets of examples illustrate parenthetical-reference (PR) forms and corresponding reference-list (RL) entries.

Book, Single Author

PR: (Franklin 1985)
RL: Franklin, John Hope. 1985. George Washington Williams: A biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Book, Two Authors

PR: (Lynd and Lynd 1929)
RL: Lynd, Robert, and Helen Lynd. 1929. Middletown: A study in American culture. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.

More than Three Authors

PR: (Greenberger et al. 1974)
RL: Greenberger, Martin, Julius Aronofsky, James L. McKenney, and William F. Massey, eds. 1974. Networks for research and education: Sharing of computer and information resources nationwide. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Institution or Organization as "Author"

PR: (American Library Association 1978)
RL: American Library Association, Young Adult Services Division, Services Statement Development Committee. 1978. Directions for library service to young adults. Chicago: American Library Association.

Editor or Compiler as "Author"

PR: (von Halberg 1984)
RL: von Halberg, Robert, ed. 1984. Canons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Author's Work Contained in Collected Works

PR: (Coleridge 1884)
RL: Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1884. The complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by W.G.T. Shedd. Vol.1, Aids to reflection. New York: Harper and Bros.

Edition Other than First

PR: (Bober 1948)
RL: Bober, M.M. 1948. Karl Marx's interpretation of history. 2d ed. Harvard Economic Studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Component Part by One Author in a Work by Another

PR (Beech 1982)
RL: Beech, Mary Higdon. 1982. The domestic realm in the lives of Hindu women in Calcutta. In Separate worlds: Studies of purdah in South Asia, ed. Hanna Papanek and Gail Minault, 110-138. Delhi: Chanakya.

Secondary Source of Quotation

PR: (Barthes 1968)
RL: Barthes, Roland. 1968. "La mort de l'auteur" (The death of the author). Manteia, vol. 5. Translated by Stephen Heath in Image/music/text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977, 147. Quoted in Wayne C. Booth. Critical understanding: The powers and limits of pluralism, 372-373, n. 9. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Article in a Journal

PR: (Jackson 1979)
RL: Jackson, Richard. 1979. Running down the up-escalator: Regional inequality in Papua New Guinea. Australian Geographer 14 (May): 175-84.

Article in a Magazine or Newspaper

PR: (Weber 1985)
RL: Weber, Bruce. 1985. The myth maker: The creative mind of novelist E.L. Doctorow. New York Times Magazine, 20 October, 42.

Book Review in a Journal

PR: (Frankfather 1985)
RL: Frankfather, Dwight. 1985. Review of The disabled state, by Deborah A. Stone. In Social Service Review 59 (September): 523-25.

Thesis or Dissertation

PR: (Artioli 1985)
RL: Artioli, Gilberto. 1985. Structural studies of the water molecules and hydrogen bonding in zeolites. Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago.

Films and Videorecordings

PR: (Perlman 1985)
RL: Perlman, Itzak. 1985. Itzak Perlman: In my case music. Produced and directed by Tony DeNonno. 10 min. DeNonno Pix. Videocassette.

Works of Art Reproduced in Books

PR: (Nast 1967, plate 52)
RL: Nast, Thomas. 1967. The Tammany tiger loose: "What are you going to do about it." Cartoon. Harper's Weekly, 11 November 1871. As reproduced in J. Chal Vinson, Thomas Nast: Political cartoonist, plate 52. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press.

Citing Internet sources can be complicated, so generally you should use the following basic components: Author's Last Name, First Name (author's internet address, if appropriate). "Title of Work" (or the title line of message). In "Title of Complete Work" (or title of list/site as appropriate). <Internet . (menu path, if appropriate). Date (if available). Archived at: (if appropriate).

World Wide Web

Limb, Peter. "Alliance Strengthened or Diminished?: Relationships between Labor & African Nationalist/Liberation Movements in Southern Africa." <http://neal.ctstateu.edu/history/world_history/archives/limb-l.html>. May 1992.

FTP Site

Heinrich, Gregor <100303.100@compuserve.com>. "Where There Is Beauty, There is Hope: Sau Tome e Principe." <ftp.cs.ubc.ca> [path: pub/local/FAQ/african/ gen/saoep.txt]. July 1994.

Personal communications: if you have a personal communication (e.g., speak with face to face, on the phone, or over email) with someone and there is therefore no publication as such, cite to the interaction as a personal communication - e.g., "(Manson, pers. com.) the first time the reader encouters the name.

Based on Concordia University's libraries website. Available at http://juno.concordia.ca/faqs/turabian.html (Accessed 19 September, 2002). For a complete guide, consult: Turabian, Kate. 1996.  A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press