Posted: February 8th, 2015
Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements
Research Assignment Guidelines:
Each student can choose any paper, on any topic, in the primary literature published in a journal with the word “Pain” in its name and an impact factor of more than 2.0 (i.e., Pain, Pain Physician, Journal of Pain, Regional Anesthesia & Pain Management, European Journal of Pain, Molecular Pain, Clinical Journal of Pain, Journal of Orofacial Pain, Journal of Pain & Symptom Management, Journal of Headache Pain, Pain Medicine, or Pain Practitioner) in any year from 2009 until 2014. The assignment is to annotate the PDF version of this paper, using the “Sticky Note” tool in Adobe Reader (free software) or Adobe Acrobat. Hyperlinks to other published papers, websites or student-created files (e.g., PowerPoint slides) are also acceptable as annotations or parts thereof. In addition to annotating the PDF (to be sent to the email address), please create a hard copy text (e.g., Word) document containing, in order of their appearance in the PDF, all your annotations. This document needs to be printed out and handed in during class on Nov. 27th.
The purpose of the annotations is to convince the TA/instructor that you have a deep knowledge of both the findings of this paper and the context surrounding those findings, as if you were the reviewer of the manuscript when it was originally submitted. Any point you feel like making to demonstrate this deep knowledge is acceptable. Here are examples of relevant annotations:
1) does the title/abstract accurately reflect the finding?,
2) how experienced are the authors in the techniques used?,
3) is the introduction complete, fair and accurate?,
4) are the citations the appropriate ones?,
5) are the methods performed similarly to other related papers?,
6) are the data convincing?,
7) has the statistical analysis been performed and reported correctly?,
8) are the findings actually as novel as the authors are claiming?,
9) what impact did or will this paper have on the field?, and
10) was this paper published in the “appropriate” journal?
This is an open-ended assignment; there are no “right” ways to do it. Grades will be relative to everyone else in the class. We expect that on average students will come up with approximately 10 annotations; we will pay attention only to the first 12. The more clever, probing, incisive and/or informed those annotations are, the better grade you will receive.
What is Annotation?
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