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Overview

Module by: Gwen Morse

SCHOLARLY WRITING

Learning to write in a scholarly format is key to your success as a student. Follows are some helpful tips!

Literature Review

All graduate and most undergraduate courses require that you use some nursing research and articles from peer reviewed, scholarly journals. Appropriate scholarly journals are found in your University online databases such as Journals @ Ovid, Proquest, EBSCOhost, Infotrac, and Medline, not the freebies you get unsolicited in the mail such as Nurseweek. Free publications may say they are “peer reviewed” but because they are advertiser supported, there are biases which make them not acceptable as scholarly references.

After a topic is selected, do a comprehensive literature review. This means you must search the various databases. Some references from the Internet are acceptable but never rely on those exclusively. Avoid web sites that have a .com suffix and limit internet research to .edu or .gov sites. If you limit your searches to what is easy, you are going to be shocked when you fail your papers and classes.

Be cautious in your selection of references. As a rule, textbooks are acceptable for substantive support but not primary. Using the online library is your bet as this provides you the most recent literature.

Be careful when citing non-professional literature. This can only be done if your purpose is to show what the popular literature is saying about your topic. Lay or popular literature cannot be used as the scientific source for your topic. For example, don’t use patient education literature as your scientific source. You can cite it only if your purpose is to discuss what is published for patients.

Writing the Paper

Your next step is to develop an outline for your paper. Read the guidelines the instructor has given you and the grading criteria. Be sure to include those criteria on your outline so that you include all areas. Set up your level headings (visit the APA tutorial at www.drgwen.comto match these criteria).

Follow guidelines to avoid plagiarism and to produce an honest paper. Trust me, faculty can tell when a paper has been recycled from another class and when parts of it have been copied from other authors. When discussing research or publications, read what the author has said, think about it and then write it in your own words. Then cite the source by using APA criteria.

Support all fact type statements with literature. This not only gives credit where credit is due but also strengthens the point you are making. Remember, the rule of thumb is that you must cite all content that is not your original idea. Here is an example. Let’s say we wrote, “all graduate nursing students are under a great deal of stress.” A better way to say this would be “research has suggested that graduate nursing students are under significant stress (Morse, 2005).

Writing style must be scholarly, including vocabulary, sentence structure and the logical flow of thoughts. An absolute requirement is that you illustrate critical thinking. Avoid having your papers full of quotes and only use when necessary. If all you do is restate what others have said, you are writing at the high school level. Critical thinking occurs when you think about your readings, analyze and then insert your own ideas. One of the reasons that most nursing schools use the APA manual is because it has excellent guidelines for scientific writing.

Carefully develop your paper as a rough draft; never write your papers the night before it is due (it will show and your grade will reflect it). Set the paper aside and pick it up several days later to read it and edit it again. Plan to write about 2-3 drafts until the paper is finally finished. Have someone who is a good writer and ask them to critique and give you feedback. That person should be able to tell you what was confusing or didn’t make sense. Remember that everything you write reflects you, your paper should your best effort, beautifully written, and having a good appearance. If everyone uses APA properly, every paper should be identical, only the content will be different and that is all you want the reader to notice, your thoughts. If you have errors in style and writing, that is what your reader will notice most.

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