Annotated Bibliography Guidelines
Learning outcomes:
With this exercise, students will demonstrate their proficiency in:
• Finding relevant literature for their topic of choice
• Constructing a bibliography in CSE format
• Evaluating identified sources for their bias and validity of their scientific content
• Summarizing and commenting on each source identified
What is an annotated bibliography?
A bibliography (sometimes called “references” or “works cited” or similar) is a list of sources (books, journals, web sites, news articles, etc.) you have found while researching your topic. They appear at the end of papers and usually just include enough information to identify the source (i.e., the author, title, publisher, etc.).
In addition, an annotated bibliography contains a summary and/or evaluation of each source. You want to assess the articles you choose using the guidelines posted on AsULearn for fact-checking science news. Your annotations should contain your conclusion from this analysis such as the following:
• A brief summary what the article is about and what its main points and arguments are
• How relevant and useful of a source it is for your topic of interest
• Whether the source is trustworthy and contains reliable scientific information or merely an opinion piece
• What the goal of the article appears to be, e.g. whether it is biased towards a certain agenda
Format
You want to use CSE (Council of Science Editors) guidelines for formatting your literature citations. This is the most common standard for biology papers. An example is given in the grading rubric for the persuasive paper that can be found in the syllabus. You can find more detail about CSE formatting here: https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocCSE_NameYear.html
Your annotations should be written in full sentences in paragraph form following each citation. The lengths of the annotations can vary, but it would usually contain a few sentences of general summary followed by an assessment of its bias and scientific value and a concluding sentence how it fits into your topic (e.g. to support your arguments or as an example you intend to debunk).
Number of citations
You should have 10 sources in your list. Out of these, at least three should be peer-reviewed scholarly sources (e.g. scientific journal articles). The others can be web sites or news articles or anything else you find that is relevant for your topic and inspired your arguments.