PB2A: Comparing SCIgen and a Scholarly Source

An interesting academic research paper I recently read was called “Golden eagles, feral pigs, and insular carnivores: How exotic species turn native predators into prey,” which investigates the ecology of the animals on the Channel Islands in Santa Barbara—specifically the relationships between the island fox, the feral pig, the golden eagle, and the island spotted skunk. I found this paper by going to the UCSB library website, logging in through the off-campus log in, going to the Article Indexes and Research Databases quick link, and clicking on the Web of Science Database link.

            Research Papers have a specific format that many follow, and these many conventions tie in with rhetorical features of this genre. The audiences of the SCIgen papers and the "Golden eagle..." paper differ, mostly because SCIgen is a genre generator that is mainly used for entertainment. While its format can be reviewed as a scientific research paper, its purpose is to create fake Computer Science research papers. Therefore, its audience is the viewers who want to read them for pleasure or the unsuspecting people who are being played on and believe they are reading real scientific papers. The audience for the “Golden eagles…” paper, however, is the community of ecologists or graduate and undergraduate students that are interested in the topic or writing papers. The purposes of this research paper are to explore the question being asked and provide the authors’ interpretation of the answer to the question based on the data and models being used. The tones for SCIgen and the “Golden eagles…” paper are true to their genre of scientific research papers and are scholarly, confident, and respectful.

The format of these research papers allows readers to know what to expect when reading a research paper. By taking a superficial glance at the pages, readers can tell by the sections, graphs, and references that what they are holding is an academic research paper. The specific organization of these papers also helps readers find particular information very quickly. For example, if the paper is six pages long and the reader is specifically looking for the methods that the authors used, then he/she can easily flip to that section in the paper.

            The usual order for research papers is: Title, Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, and References. SCIgen papers and the scholarly source I found mostly follow this order. One difference is that SCIgen often adds an “Implementation” section that has diagrams (usually diagrams are mostly found in the results section) and a “Related Works” section. This could be because the generator’s creators believed that adding these sections would improve their research papers, or it could be a convention of Computer Science research papers that is often used.

           

            Usually, the Results section is filled with the graphs, tables, charts, or observations with explanations of the data, and the Discussion has the analysis of the results and the interpretation of them. Both SCIgen and the “Golden eagles…” paper combined their Results and Discussion sections. SCIgen follows their Results section with Related Work, Conclusion, and References sections, while the “Golden eagles…” research paper has a combined “Results and Discussion” section and no “Conclusion” section. The “Golden eagles…” paper also does not have titles for the Abstract, Introduction, or References sections, and the titles for Methods and Results and Discussion Sections are not numbered like the titles in the SCIgen research paper are.

Both SCIgen and the “Golden eagles…” research papers follow the usual conventions and rhetorical devices, and the minor differences seen are from each author’s individual preferences. SCIgen follows the conventional rules for the stereotypical structure more precisely because it is a genre generator and the papers it produces are not actual papers written by certified scientists. That means that the SCIgen papers rely on the conventions of research papers to match the expectations of their viewers. In other words, SCIgen relies on looks, not contents—so they have to make their papers look like stereotypical Computer Science research papers. The “Golden eagles, feral pigs, and insular carnivores: How exotic species turn native predators into prey” research paper, however, is a real, published and peer-reviewed research paper written by biologists and ecologists who have their own ideas on how they want their paper to be organized on top of the usual conventions.

Scholarly Source

SCIgen