Paper structuresUniversity & graduate
Undergraduate Research Paper
The college term paper, seminar paper or honors thesis: an argument that joins a conversation among scholars. Here are its parts, what professors look for, and how the shape changes from one discipline to the next.
What it is
A paper that makes an argument about a question scholars are already discussing, using their published work as sources. It goes by many names: term paper, seminar paper, research essay, and at the far end, the senior capstone or honors thesis.
The step up from high school is about who you’re arguing with. A high school paper takes a side on a debatable question. A college paper places itself among the scholars who’ve written on the question, says what they’ve said, and adds something: a new reading, a gap filled, a claim tested against new evidence. Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s textbook “They Say / I Say” is built on this move. You summarize the views you’re responding to, then state your own in relation to them.
Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb and Joseph Williams’ The Craft of Research gives a well-known test for whether you have a research problem or just a topic. Fill in three blanks: I am studying a topic, because I want to find out a question, so that my reader understands why it matters. If you can’t fill in the third blank, you have a question but not yet a problem anyone needs solved.
Who reads it
Your professor, reading the way scholars in the field read each other. They know the literature, so they’ll notice if you’ve missed a major source or misread one. They expect you to follow your discipline’s standards for evidence: what counts as proof in history isn’t what counts in psychology. A senior or honors thesis usually has a faculty advisor and sometimes a second reader or committee.
Write for an intelligent reader in your field who hasn’t read your particular sources and may disagree with you. State your claim and how the evidence supports it; don’t leave the reader to infer either.
The parts
1Title
A useful form has two parts: a short phrase that catches the reader, then a subtitle after a colon that states the topic precisely. The precise part is what makes the paper findable.
2Introduction
Set up the question, show what scholars have said about it, and name the gap, tension or disagreement your paper addresses. End with your thesis: your answer, specific and arguable. Many introductions also map the paper, saying how the argument will unfold.
3What others have said
Your engagement with existing scholarship. In a humanities paper this is often woven through the introduction and body. In a social science paper it’s often a separate literature review after the introduction, covering what’s already known and where the gap is. Either way, the job is to show where your argument fits, not to prove how much you read.
4Body or methods and results
This is where disciplines part ways most. A humanities paper is organized around its argument: sections that each develop one sub-claim, built on close reading of texts, archives or other primary sources. A social science paper that reports a study often follows IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion): how the data were collected and analyzed, then what was found.
5Counterarguments
Address the strongest objections to your claim and the readings that rival yours. In a seminar paper this often means a scholar who’d disagree. If you can’t answer an objection, revise the claim to account for it.
6Conclusion or discussion
Say what your argument adds and why it matters: how it changes the conversation you joined, what its limits are, and what someone should study next. Social science papers often call this the Discussion and connect the results back to the research question.
7Notes, bibliography or references
Every source, in your discipline’s style. MLA is used mostly in literature, languages and other humanities. APA is used mostly in the social sciences. Chicago has two systems: notes and bibliography (footnotes or endnotes), preferred in history, literature and the arts, and author-date, preferred in the sciences and social sciences. Your instructor’s requirements come first.
What this level expects
Peer-reviewed sources. Scholarly books and journal articles, found through your university library’s databases, should do most of the work. Popular sources can show what the public thinks but rarely settle a scholarly question.
A place in the conversation. You name specific scholars and say where you agree, disagree, or build on them.
Primary sources where your field uses them: the novel, the archive, the dataset, the court decision, not only what others have said about it.
Your discipline’s conventions for evidence, structure and citation, which you’re expected to learn by reading published work in the field.
Original thinking at the right scale. A term paper isn’t expected to overturn a field, but it should add an interpretation or connection that isn’t just a summary of the sources.
For an honors thesis: a longer project, often over two semesters, with a proposal or prospectus approved by a faculty advisor.
Common mistakes
A literature summary instead of an argument. Five pages of “Smith says, Jones says” with your own view saved for the last paragraph.
Arguing with nobody. A thesis that no published scholar would dispute isn’t joining a conversation.
Misrepresenting a source to make your contribution look bigger. Summarize the views you challenge in a way their authors would accept.
Citing what you haven’t read. Pulling a reference from another paper’s bibliography copies its errors along with it.
The wrong field’s conventions: a psychology paper written like a literature essay, or a history paper with in-text author-date citations when the instructor expects footnotes.
A topic, not a problem. If you can’t say why the answer matters to anyone, keep narrowing the question.
What varies
Almost everything above the core move. Length runs from a few pages for a course paper to an honors thesis of fifty pages or more. Some courses want a lab or study write-up rather than an argument essay. Honors thesis rules (eligibility, GPA, application dates, who can advise) are set by each university and department, and capstones at some schools aren’t research papers at all. Read the assignment, ask how your instructor’s field does it, and read two or three published articles in that field before you start.
Sources & further reading
- Argument — The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- History — The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Identifying a Research Question With Significance — Baruch College Writing Center
- Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide — The Chicago Manual of Style Online
- MLA Style Introduction and APA Style Introduction — Purdue Online Writing Lab
- Scientific Writing: IMRaD — Utah Valley University Writing Center
- Robert T. Koch Jr., “General Quantitative/Qualitative Research Document Format” — University of North Alabama Center for Writing Excellence
- Senior Honors Thesis — University of Houston Honors College
- Senior Capstones, Honors, and Synthesis Projects — Stanford University Undergraduate Advising
- Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein and Laura Davies, “They Say / I Say,” 6th ed. — W. W. Norton
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