PB2A

     As a genre bearing the unfortunate connotations of tedious reading and monotony, how can the tone of one scholarly publication possibly differ from another? One would think every scientist or researcher needs to write in a formulaic way that offers no leeway for personal style or opinion. Surprisingly, even in peer-reviewed research articles, the writer's style can greatly influence the tone and atmosphere of a paper. The online SCIgen generator creates random scientific journals. These articles can not be accessed again due to the randomization, but they all contain the expected conventions of academic writing."Community College Men and Women: A Test of Three Widely Held Beliefs About Who Pursues Computer Science" is a paper found in the UCSB library that records the results of a survey on gender and the computer science major. The SCIgen and computer science social relations articles both share many conventions of a scholarly publication, but the latter offers a much more reader-friendly style that reaches out towards an audience less experienced in reading scientific papers. 

    Although the SCIgen article focuses on the actual technical aspects of a discipline while the computer science major article focuses more on the social relations to it, they are both still research papers that share a variety  of rhetoric techniques geared towards an academic audience. Everyone has access to these publications, but of course these types of writings are not meant for mere entertainment or amusement. As scholarly writings, these papers contain copious amounts of scientific jargon. To the average person unfamiliar with the involved field of study, these words mean nothing, and will leave the reader confused and disoriented. Only an audience experienced in the specific discipline would understand all the vocabulary that no other field uses. The writers have tailored the papers with the assumption that their intended audience already has a deep understanding of the topic.  Both papers contain a title and an abstract at the beginning to serve as an intro to the experiment. The abstract - a short paragraph that gives a little background info on the experiment topic - also summarizes the purpose, procedures, and sometimes the inspiration behind the research. Almost all research articles contain an abstract, so it is a good indicator of this particular genre. The following table of contents allows for easy navigation when the reader wants to move quickly to a certain part of the page. The labeled sections give off a sense of organization. Both of the articles have graphs and charts, visually presenting data collected during the experiment. A reader can quickly compare or refer back to data in these tables. At the end of the paper is a list of references, as expected for scholarly publications. These references give credit to original writers who recorded information mentioned in the article, showing that it is a legitimate scientific work where the author has put in lots of research and effort. 

        The article on gender and choosing the computer science major uses a few more rhetoric techniques that clarify and give a better understanding of the experiment. Before the authors dive into the actual contents of the experiment, they provide a list of keywords. The entire paper revolves around these main phrases. Together, the words provide a clue of what the article will be about. The audience can construct a general idea of the experiment's purpose by relating the given terms. Acronyms such as CIS (computer and informational sciences) are explained, which makes this article much reader-friendly and understandable if the audience is unfamiliar with jargon. Before writing the explanation of the methods used, the authors show a few questions and claim that they have been the inspiration for the experiment. Now that the readers have context, they have an idea of the importance behind the paper's data and realize that the research extends to other works. Additionally, the actual questions of the survey in the experiment are provided. Not only does this clarify and directly show how the authors proceeded with the experiment, but the reader also has a chance to criticize or find flaws in the wording. The authors of the computer science major beliefs article present a couple paragraphs that discuss the importance and application of the experiment findings in society.  By explicitly explaining the implications, the writers can tell the audience why and to whom the research matters. 

     

Link to Article: http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=5&sid=d54c3689-05b4-4af6-87c3-2f57b204f759%40sessionmgr115&hid=106&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=99149684&anchor=AN0099149684-21