When writing study papers, you have:
- know the requirements for preparing study papers;
- select appropriate sources of information;
- use sources properly, cite them, and compile bibliographies;
- to prepare study papers in accordance with the provisions of academic ethics.
Methodological guidelines for students
Kauno kolegija Higher Education Institution Description of the Procedure for the Preparation, Defence, Storage and Organisation of Qualification Examinations of Final Theses.
Template for the final thesis.
Other publications with methodological guidance for the completion or preparation of different types of coursework can be found in the Kauno kolegija Higher Education Institution institutional repository or in the Virtual Library.
Search and selection of information sources
Find reliable and relevant information for your studies and research in dedicated information retrieval systems, subscription and open-access databases, and virtual libraries. See: RESOURCES.
Use reliable information and appropriate sources for your studies and research. Sources of information must be peer-reviewed and evaluated by experts in the field or obtained from official institutions, organisations, or associations.
You may use: scientific articles, monographs, dissertations, scientific studies, scientific reports, legislation, institutional documents, statistical information, standards, patents, encyclopaedias, handbooks, dictionaries, etc.
Do not use: Wikipedia, popular science publications, media outlets, information portals, fiction and popular literature, student work, or undocumented sources.
Use up-to-date resources. Scientific articles should have been published within the last five years.
Use at least several types and languages of resources. In addition to books, you should remember to use scholarly articles, standards, legislation, statistical information, and other sources published in Lithuanian and foreign languages.
Citation and bibliography
Sources of information must be used in accordance with academic ethics and copyright provisions and citation rules. In order to properly prepare study papers and avoid plagiarism, it is necessary to write them independently and analyze (research) the topic or problem of the work, properly quote and paraphrase sources, indicate them in the text and bibliography.
Sources need to be analyzed, systematized, summarized, and texts should be written in a scientific style. For these purposes, various scientific language phrases can be used, which you will find in the library’s leaflet or in the compilation of academic phrases prepared by VU. When quoting and paraphrasing sources, it is necessary to distinguish the thoughts of scientists from your own comments.
Information from sources can be used in several ways:
- Citation – repeat exactly any words of the author or work. May contain sentence, multi-sentence, or paragraph-sized citations. All citations must be written in quotation marks.
- Paraphrasing – conveying basic information from sources in your own words and in your own style, but without distorting the substance. In paraphrasing, it is necessary to distinguish the thoughts of another author from your own comments, for this purpose various phrases can be used: From the point of view of the scientist…, As states… and others.
All used sources must be indicated:
- in the text – in parentheses – the author(s) and year of publication of the reference you are citing.
- in the bibliography (references list). E-sources are described according to the rules of the description, it is not possible to write only the Internet address. At the end of the e-source description, it is necessary to specify the date and access.
Bibliographic descriptions in the study papers of Kauno kolegija Higher Education Institution must be compiled in accordance with the international rules of APA. Many bibliographic descriptions are automatically available in the Virtual Library, Scholar Google, and databases.