Coral+Report+Guidelines

E.O. Smith Journal of Aquaculture Manuscript Submission Guidelines **Formatting (10)**: Manuscripts must be typed in 12pt font, Times New Roman font, double spaced. Spelling and grammar must be checked carefully! **Title (5)** – Give your experiment a name that describes what you did. Someone should be able to read the title and have a decent idea of your experiment. Something simple like “The effect of fertilizer on growth in //Homo sapiens//” works well. It doesn’t have to be flashy but should be informational **Author (3)**- Your name. **School (2)**- Always include the school that you did your work at so that people who are interested in your work can get in touch with you. **Abstract (10)**- This is a one paragraph description of what you did and a quick summary of your results. The purpose of the abstract is to allow a reader to look and see if your research is something that they are interested in, i.e. do they want to read your whole paper or not. It should tell the problem you are investigating, how you did it, and what you discovered in a few quick sentences. It might be helpful to write this after you do the rest of your paper. **Introduction (15)**- This is the section where you provide background on the problem you are investigating. You should try to answer the questions: -What is the question you are investigating? -Why is your question important? -Any useful background on your problem? -What information have people figured out about your problem previously? **Protocol(s) (10)-** You know this as your procedure from a lab report. Make sure your protocol is detailed enough so that anyone who reads your paper could carry out the same experiment to verify your results. **Results (15)**- Here is where your data goes. You can include your data tables, charts, graphs, etc… You don’t need to explain what they mean here, just present the numbers. Make sure to label all of your figures that you include, i.e. each one should have Figure 1, Table 2, etc… This will help you to refer back to it in your conclusion. **Conclusion (20)**- Here is the meat of your report. This is where you tell people what you learned. You should make statements that “answer” the question(s) you were investigating, but even more important, make sure to back all of your statements up with the data you collected, i.e. see figure 1, etc… In other words, use your data to back up your claims. In your conclusion you should also mention factors in your lab that did not go as planned, or possible sources of error. If your experiment failed miserably, this is particularly important. Why do you think it failed? Do you have evidence? The final aspect of your conclusion is ideas for future research based on your project. What could other students do to expand on your research? **References (10)**- What reference materials did you use in writing your report? As you go, you should include parenthetical references, like this (Swanson, 2007) and then in this section you write out the full reference. You must use at least one ref. when you write your lab report and it cannot be your teacher.
 * Required Sections **