Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Eight Common Misconceptions About Psychology Papers
- 2 How to Generate, Evaluate, and Sell Your Ideas for Research and Papers
- 3 Literature Research
- 4 Writing a Literature Review
- 5 Planning and Writing the Experimental Research Paper
- 6 A Word About Content, Language, and Style
- 7 Commonly Misused Words
- 8 American Psychological Association Guidelines for Psychology Papers
- 9 Guidelines for Data Presentation
- 10 What Makes a Good Paper Great? Standards for Evaluating Psychology Papers
- 11 Ethics in Research and Writing
- 12 Submitting a Paper to a Journal
- 13 How to Make Your Paper Even Better: Proofreading, Revising, and Editing
- 14 Writing a Grant or Contract Proposal
- 15 How to Find a Book Publisher
- 16 Writing a Lecture
- 17 Article Writing 101
- References
- Appendix: Sample Psychology Paper
- Index
10 - What Makes a Good Paper Great? Standards for Evaluating Psychology Papers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Eight Common Misconceptions About Psychology Papers
- 2 How to Generate, Evaluate, and Sell Your Ideas for Research and Papers
- 3 Literature Research
- 4 Writing a Literature Review
- 5 Planning and Writing the Experimental Research Paper
- 6 A Word About Content, Language, and Style
- 7 Commonly Misused Words
- 8 American Psychological Association Guidelines for Psychology Papers
- 9 Guidelines for Data Presentation
- 10 What Makes a Good Paper Great? Standards for Evaluating Psychology Papers
- 11 Ethics in Research and Writing
- 12 Submitting a Paper to a Journal
- 13 How to Make Your Paper Even Better: Proofreading, Revising, and Editing
- 14 Writing a Grant or Contract Proposal
- 15 How to Find a Book Publisher
- 16 Writing a Lecture
- 17 Article Writing 101
- References
- Appendix: Sample Psychology Paper
- Index
Summary
In this chapter, we enumerate some of the standards we believe our colleagues use in evaluating the contribution to knowledge made by psychology papers. We then cite three classic articles exemplifying these standards. We have deliberately picked classics that have withstood the test of time. Little has been written about how psychologists evaluate a paper's contribution. Nor have psychologists passed down from one generation to the next a clearly explicated, spoken tradition of evaluative standards. It is therefore remarkable that psychologists find a high level of agreement in their evaluations of one another's papers. In an Annual Review of Psychology chapter reviewing the literature on memory and verbal learning, Tulving and Madigan (1970) noted their own remarkable agreement in evaluations of papers and offered some keenly perceptive tongue-in-cheek comments regarding the state of the literature:
In the course of preparation for this chapter, we selected a sample of 540 publications – slightly less than one half of all relevant publications that appeared during the main time-period under review here – and independently rated each paper in terms of its “contribution to knowledge.” We agreed to a remarkable extent in classifying all papers into three categories. The first, containing approximately two thirds of all papers, could be labeled “utterly inconsequential.” The primary function these papers serve is giving something to do to people who count papers instead of reading them. Future research and understanding of verbal learning and memory would not be affected at all if none of the papers in this category had seen the light of day. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Psychologist's CompanionA Guide to Writing Scientific Papers for Students and Researchers, pp. 217 - 235Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010