For this assignment you need to turn in two things:
1. Literature search (50%): A collection of at most 30 abstracts from published papers and/or chapters that are directly relevant to your project. The collection should be sorted from most relevant to least relevant and each abstract should include:
- the full citation (authors, date, title, journal/source, volume, pages)
- the abstract itself
- the number of times this paper has been cited (if available)
Your goal should be to find all papers (up to 30) that are directly relevant to your project (be complete), but not to include abstracts from papers that are not directly relevant (be relevant). Grading will be based on both completeness and relevance. Note that the number of relevant papers will vary tremendously depending on the topic.
We will go over how to do literature searches in class. I recommend reading up on your topic in a few textbooks before embarking on the literature search. Doing so will provide context that may be helpful in identifying critical papers and relevant keywords from which you can start your search.
2. Abstract (50%): A brief description (150 words maximum) of the project you are working on this semester. Your abstract should:
- Explain the problem/question motivating the work
- Explain why this problem/question is important and/or interesting
- Describe the methods you will be using to address your question
- Describe the predicted results
Your abstract should avoid jargon and should be comprehensible to an educated non-specialist. Scientific abstracts are meant to interest and to inform and grading will be based on the extent to which your abstract satisfies these goals.
I recommend writing your abstract after you've done the literature search, because the literature search may help you to write a better abstract.