How to prepare your academic paper

The following suggested steps are designed to help you locate information for writing your academic paper and documenting your sources, quickly and easily. Depending on your chosen subject and on how familiar you are with the Library, you can adapt these steps to suit your own particular requirements:

Trip to prepare your academic paper

Step		What to do
1. Formulate the subject of your academic paper		Formulate your subject as if it were a question or a phrase. Try and extract the most important concepts or keywords to find out whether it is easy to obtain information through the catalog or other tools that you have at your disposal in the Library.
2. Situate the subject within its context		Search for one or more sources of general information where you can read up about the subject; this will help you to understand the context of your subject and find out the current status of knowledge on it. The most common sources of general information are encyclopedias, dictionaries and handbooks, both in paper format and electronic. All these works often have bibliographies - lists of books and articles - which will help you find even more information.
3. Find books, journals, audiovisuals, etc.		Search the UPF Library catalog for books, journals, audiovisuals or other interesting material to do with the subject of your academic paper.
4. Find articles from journals		Search different databases for journal articles connected with the subject of your academic paper.
5. Find Internet resources		Search the Subject guide web resources selected by the Library, or use the search engines and directories available on the Internet.
6. Evaluate the resources you found		Do a critical analysis of the sources located in order to pick out the good quality academic information. You will find a list of questions for checking the reliability of the material located, as well as other resources depending on the type of material.
7. Write up your academic paper		Once you have searched, and evaluated, the resources found, it is time to sit down and start writing. The Library provides some resources to help you in writing your paper.
8. Cite your chosen resources		Once you have finished your paper you should document the bibliographic sources used. Your lecturer or tutor may tell you which style to use for citing the books, articles, websites, images, etc., that you have chosen.