Neuroscience Junior Independent Work and Senior Thesis Guide

Current guidelines for Junior Independent Work can be found on Princeton Neuroscience Institute's website.

The Junior Tutorial Papers includes a background section with the following requirements:

Conduct a literature search and summarize the major and most relevant findings in the field. The background should be a succinct review of the topic in the paper being critiqued. You should rely on review articles to point the reader to a more extensive source of information, but don’t use a review article as a primary citation for a fact. You are strongly encouraged to research beyond the articles discussed or provided in class. Typically, 5 - 10 references should be used for the background section.

References should:

• Be in an appropriate scientific citation format for listing references
• Any fact that is discussed should be referenced
• The complete references should be detailed in a Reference Section found at the end of the document
• List all of the articles cited. Only include a reference if it is specifically cited
• Do not cite the Internet (e.g., Wikipedia). Many items found on the internet have not undergone “peer review” scrutiny and may be unreliable.
• Rely on published, peer-reviewed articles.

The Spring Junior Research Proposal will include a "survey of the literature." Specifically, in the Background section, students are required to

• Identify the key findings that have led to the current line of inquiry. Become proficient with the major databases for finding relevant papers (Web of Science, BIOSIS, PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar).
• Provide an overview of the relevant primary literature – give the reader enough information to understand the problem your research addresses.

References should:

• Reference each fact presented with the primary source, not a review. The citation is typically included at the end of a sentence; however sometimes citations appear within a sentence.
• Rely on recent reviews to point the reader to a more extensive source of information about a field. The style of citation is the same as for a primary literature citation; however the citation should be proceeded by, “reviewed in…”, or “… and the references therein”.
• At least 10 primary sources
• Only list articles that you cite in the document
• Detail each citation in the end in the reference section
• Use the format of a published journal
• Learn to use RefWorks or Endnote (both are free and the library gives tutorials)