Third Year Essay Assignments

Essay assignments

As part of the class assessment you are expected to submit an essay on the topic
assigned to you. The essay must be handed in by the appropriate deadline.

Any individuals guilty of copying/ plagiarising essays will receive a zero mark for the
assignment. Please also carefully read the advice on plagiarism below- Academic
Dishonesty.

Essay Guideline

These essays are not intended to be linked to specific information given

in lectures. The essay is to be a maximum of 1000 words +/- 100 (roughly 4 A4
sides), exclusive of any diagrams, Figures, Tables or photographs included. Please
include a word count at the end of your essay (Microsoft Word can do this from the
Tools Menu). The essay type should be no smaller than 12 point.

Ensure that you:

1. Read the Essay title carefully and make a plan of what points need to be covered.

2. Divide the essay into sections (at least 3 sections - e.g. introduction, main
discussion section, a summary/conclusion).

3. Figures/ graphs used to illustrate a point, or which form part of the answer, are
referred to in the text at the relevant section. Do not cut-and-paste a figure from
another source (you should re-draw to illustrate only the points that are relevant to
your essay and reference the source e.g. adapted from Smith et al., 2007). Remember
that Tables need a title and figures need a legend. Tables/ figures etc., do not add to
the word count. Do not use a figure/ table legend directly from other sources- you
should use your own words to explain the figure/ table.

Students do badly in essay questions because the answer:

a) does NOT address the Essay title given.

b) does NOT give the specific information requested
c) concentrates on just part of the overall material expected

Also remember that the presentation of the essay will make a favourable impression
on the marker. References, which are cited throughout your essay must be placed in
the references section at the end of the essay and should take the following form
shown below. Do not include references to any material which has not been
specifically referred to (cited) in the essay. Do not use websites or textbooks as
references !!
Search Engines

These should be used to search for original research papers relating to your
assignment. Reviews can also be referred to. The library should be able to provide
information on the on-line databases available to carry out literature searches. We use
PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) but there are others available. In the search
field type some key words e.g. if your essay was on antibody responses in parasitic
infections you could type antibody parasitic infection. A list of papers will then
come up starting with the most recent published papers. Some of these will then allow
you to download the paper as a pdf file for free. You may want to include review to
find reviews on the subject rather than specific papers and this can help lead you to
the original experimental work.

Academic dishonesty- reminder

It is VERY important that you do NOT copy information from a paper, a review or a
web site. This is plagiarism and is a serious form of academic dishonesty where you
are submitting someone elses work as your own. SIPBS has an official policy on
academic dishonesty which follows that of the University. You will find this
information in the Handbook (MyPlace: BM3 Biomedical Sciences 3rd Year).

References example

In the text as you write it would be exactly (Sneddon et al., 2003) and would appear
in the references section at the end as:

Sneddon, A. A., Wu, H. C., Farquharson, A., Grant, I., Arthur, J. R., Rotondo, D.,
Choe, S. N. and Wahle, K. W. (2003) Regulation of selenoprotein GPx4 expression
and activity in human endothelial cells by fatty acids, cytokines and antioxidants.
Atherosclerosis, 171, 57-65.

Dr D. Rotondo