BIOL 796: Professional Aspects of Biology

An annotated bibliography is a list of sources on a topic, properly cited, with commentary about each article. It is NOT just a summary of each article. Instead, it includes analysis of the quality of the source and how it fits in with your research.

This page focuses on how to create annotations. Visit the citing sources page for information on how to create the citations for your source.

A good annotation includes:

• A short summary of the article. The summary should be no more than a few sentences. It is not the majority of your citation.
• Your judgement of the quality of the source.Questions to consider:
  • What are the strengths and weaknesses of the article?
  • Did the researchers use good methodology?
  • Is the study replicable?
  • Are the data analysis methods appropriate for the study?
  • Did you identify any sources of bias?
• How the source relates to your research topic. It is rare that you will find an article that is an exact match for your topic -- this is a good thing! It means your research will make a unique contribution to the field. Explain how this source is related to your study.
• Discuss how you might use this source in your project. Questions to consider:
  • Does it provide context for your experiment?
  • Would you consider using similar experimental methods?
  • Does it explain or contradict the results you found?

The links below show examples of annotated bibliography entries for articles in biology.