Laboratory Reports
General: A laboratory report should be written as if you were writing a real scientific paper. Therefore, it may be very convenient for you to have a real scientific paper beside you as you write. In this way, you can see how figures and tables are formatted, and have a concrete example (hopefully) of solid scientific writing.
In this course, and others in the Biology Department, we adopt the style of the National Research Council Press; this is Canada's official agency for the publication of scientific and engineering research. The NRC Press publishes 16 journals, the most pertinent to this course is The Canadian Journal of Zoology. Although this is journal reflects the typical format that we use in our Biology Department, individual courses vary.
Look specifically at the Canadian Journal of Zoology's Parts of the Manuscript.
Page limits:
|
|
|
Abstract |
|
5 |
Introduction |
|
10 |
Methods/Materials |
|
10 |
Results |
|
30 |
Discussion |
|
35 |
Acknowledgements |
|
0 |
Literature Cited |
|
5 |
--clarity/presentation-- |
|
5 |
Double-space your report, except for the Literature Cited (though put a space between entries), and table/figure captions. These should be single-spaced.
When writing about what you did, or what others found, use the past tense. When writing about your predictions, write in the future tense.
Always write the report as if you were an unbiased third party – in other words, don’t say "We measured haemolysis with a spectrophotometer" but say, "A spectrophotometer was used to measure haemolysis." There is a trend away from doing this, so some of the literature you will read is written in the first person; we will not adopt that in this course, though some other courses in this department allow for it.
Don't indent paragraphs.
Number the pages (by hand is ok, MS doesn't do pagination well in my opinion). Justify the text to the left.
Do NOT start each section on a new page - conserve paper! However, don't leave a title to a new section hanging at the bottom of a page (a "widow").
Multi-faceted reports - be sure to mention each facet in each section, preferably in the same order. Headings are very useful to subdivide sections.
SECTIONS of the REPORT - the full version of the instructions are at the NRC site.
TITLE and AUTHORSHIP
ABSTRACT
Except in rare circumstances, there are no citations to the literature nor references to figures. Do not include statistics (e.g. standard error) in this section.
INTRODUCTION
Never refer to your experiment's
results in this section.
Materials and Methods
You must name the species used, sexes, ages (or age categories, e.g. adult, newborn).
Typically, an author doesn't describe absolutely everything s/he did or how it was done. There are two reasons why you wouldn't do this.
The
Materials and Methods also includes how you
performed calculations and the way you did the statistics (which tests,
which software). No sample is
necessary unless you're doing something very odd - which likely won't happen in
your coursework.
Omitting data: If you did not use all the data provided, why not? You cannot arbitrarily choose to omit data, though if a point is clearly an outlier, it can be omitted.
RESULTS
The presentation and description (but no interpretation) of the pooled Results (using statistical analysis if possible) will be of considerable weight in determining marks. Do not mention, describe or analyze your own results, unless that is what the instructor asks you to do. In other words, do not (DO NOT) include Raw Data; I don't want to see print-offs from spreadsheets or tables of raw data.
There are two fully integrated components to this section, the text and the visuals (figures, tables etc). Figures and tables are incorporated within the text that describes them (i.e. do not pool them at the end of the section). In other words, present the figures in the order described. Within the text, you must refer to the tables; see this webpage for examples on how to do that, and much more.
Tables are lists of numbers that are useful for presenting a lot of data; appropriate headings for each column and row are necessary and the caption goes above the table. Units are listed in the column headings, not with each datum. A downloadable document on how to create a table can be found by clicking here.
Figures include diagrams, photographs, and graphs; the caption goes beneath the figure. Tips on graphing with (or without) a spreadsheet program are available at this webpage.
Some critical points:
The minimum number of figures should be used. However, cluttered figures are of no use.
Text: Report trends (or lack of a trend) and pertinent values in the text component of this section. Each figure or table that you present must be described in the text. The text should describe a figure so well that someone who hasn't seen the figure should be able to draw a good approximation of it.
Use short sentences.
Categorize the text into sections (each with its own title) if appropriate. The description of the results may sound rather mechanical, you are to describe (almost robotically) what your graphs and tables show. Do this in the order that the figures appear (and put your figures in a logical order). Remember, no interpretation of the results goes here (in other words, describe what the results show, but do not explain what the results mean).
Report the outcome of statistical tests on the data as you report those data. e.g. There was no significant difference between the urine output of those who drank the salt and bicarb solutions (p > 0.05). However, please remember that you are to describe the data, not the statistics. The statistics are one component of describing the data, but do not write things like, "Since the calculated value of t was not greater than the critical value of t, we conclude that there was no significant difference between groups."
These two sentences say the same thing:
In other words, the word "significant" means that you did the statistics, so there's no point in saying "statistically significant".
You never (rarely?) mention the results of other peoples' experiments in this section, therefore, we do not expect to see citations in this part of the report. In other words, the Results is a description of your data and only a description (no interpretation) of your data.
Do not include standard curves - these are not data; they are however, methods.
Marks are assigned half for the text, half for the figures.
DISCUSSION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Acknowledgements to people who provided you with assistance are included in a small paragraph (titled: Acknowledgements). Researchers typically thank granting agencies for financial support in this section.LITERATURE CITED
All references (books and scientific papers) cited (= referenced) in your report should be listed in a Literature Cited section. Why? Have a look at section 3.9 of the university calendar for the definition of plagiarism. If in doubt, cite the source!DO NOT use web pages as literature sources. Some scientific papers are available on line and those are fine to use; generally, these are available through Electronic Resources from the library's web site.
Be consistent in your citations. List all the authors of each resource (book, paper, report etc.)The words et al. are not to be found in this section. All authors' names are written out.
List the literature resources alphabetically, by the first author's last name.
Use these formats:
See the
NRC site for more examples, specifically the Canadian Journal of Zoology's
Parts of the Manuscript. Note, for example, punctuation, order of the
elements (e.g. date, title...), position of initials, and journal abbreviations.
for a journal article:
Lauff, R.F., and Wood. C.M. 1996. The effects of training on respiratory gas exchange, nitrogenous waste excretion, and fuel usage during aerobic swimming in juvenile Rainbow Trout. Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 54: 566-571.
Sterling, J.T., and Ream, R.R. 2004. At-sea behavior of juvenile male northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus). Can. J. Zool. 82(10): 1621–1637. doi:10.1139/Z04-136.
for a book:
Remember, this is a Literature
Cited section, not a References section. The only literature that goes
in this section are those you actually cited in the body of the report.
Citing References:
Within the body of the report, all literature is cited by the author’s (or authors’) last name(s) and the year of publication. Never use the title, author’s initials nor page numbers.
The proper procedure for citing a reference
within
the body of your report follows these examples (note the punctuation):
or,
In 1996, Brennan and Lauff (1998) found the first nest of a Northern Hawk Owl in Nova Scotia.
or,
In 1998, Brennan and Lauff reported the first nest of the Northern Hawk Owl in Nova Scotia.
...but you never do this:
Brennan and Lauff reported the first nest of the Northern Hawk Owl in Nova Scotia (1998).
In other words, you always keep the authorship and the date together.
Statements which are backed up
by two or more papers are cited like this:
Note that the cited papers are
listed chronologically and ascending, not alphabetically. If two papers
share the same publication date, then list those papers alphabetically
by first author.
In some cases, scientific papers are
authored by three or more authors. In these cases, you would only cite
that paper by referring to the first author and the expression et al.,
which translates to "and others". Note that the expression is always written
in italics and there is a period after al. but not after et
(since the latter is a whole word, al. is an abbreviation for alia).
If you want to include information
which you learned from class, that is certainly fine. This is known as
a "personal communication". This type of information would be presented
in the body of your report, something like:
Verbal communication (including someone
lecturing to you) is not "literature" and thus does not appear in the Literature
Cited section. Note that "pers. comm." is italicized.
Journal articles will be available in the lab for your inspection and assistance in using correct format. Many journals are available in the library, though we will adopt the format used by the Canadian Journal of Zoology.
Marks for this section will be deducted for incorrect citations (and personal communications) in the body of the report.
Acceptable References: Scientific
articles and books. Don't use encyclopaedias - that's grade school level
information. Web sites shall not be used. Remember, anyone can post anything to a website;
there’s no guarantee of truth. You can use peer-reviewed scientific papers from
the web, these are available on publishers' websites or author's websites. The
papers are normally in PDF format.
Other