Some Technicalities: How to Format, Cite and Finde Credible Sources
1. Formatting and citation
In addition to the content-based quality of your term paper, formatting and presenting the content properly is another indicator of a good paper. Although the criteria may change slightly in accordance to the preferences of the professors, there are a couple of standards, which will be expected in almost all seminars:
- A title page that includes author name, title, submission date and place, name of the course etc.
- A table of contents at the beginning of your paper
- Consistent in-text referencing by using a specific citation style (e.g. Harvard, ASA). Please ask your professor before writing if not specified in the syllabus.
- A list of references, which includes all in-text citations in a consistent format
- Text formatting with 1.5 lines, Times New Roman, 12 font size
- Total word count of approx. 3,000 (mostly expected without references)
- Page numbering excluding title page
2. What are credible literature sources?
There are many different methods to search for academic resources for your research. In terms of databases for journal articles, Google Scholar and Primo FU Berlin may be the first options to go for. If you already know which journal you want to search, it is more practical to go to the publisher’s website directly. There are number of well-known and credible sources for journal articles or academic books – JSTOR, SAGE, Taylor and Francis, Springer to name just a few.
Another important point while doing a literature research is to evaluate the quality or credibility of journals and articles. For a journal, checking out its “impact factor” would be the easiest way to understand how influential this journal is. Below, you can see a table that displays the ranking of the international sociological journals in 2017.
For an article in a journal, the best approach is to check out its number of citations, and overview of the citations throughout the years if needed. As a general rule, this information should be available in the web page of the academic article.
Wikipedia is often not a credible source and should not be cited in an academic term paper. You can of course read the Wikipedia entry to get a first insight into a certain topic before you then look for more credible sources.
If you are not working in the library or on campus, you can still access the literature provided by Freie Universität Berlin. To do so, you will have to connect your laptop/phone to the Virtual Private Network (VPN) of Freie Universität Berlin:
- Download the software “AnyConnect Client” (Please see this link)
- Click on the AnyConnect-Icon. Choose the name of the VPN-Server (vpn.fu-berlin.de), then click connect.
- Enter your username and password and press ok.
