Comparing "SCIgen" and a scholarly source

Throughout college and beyond, pretty much all of us will have to use scholarly articles.  We will have to read them, cite them, and possibly even write them.  Due to this, it is important that we become familiar with many aspects of them including their rhetorical features and their conventions.  In this project builder I chose to compare and contrast a scholarly article about exoplanets with the scientific generator.

The scholarly article that I chose is called Statistical Properties of Exoplanets and it was written by Stephane Udry and Numo C. Santos.  Just like the scientific paper generator, it starts with an abstract.  In the abstracts of both papers there is a brief introduction to what the paper is about, but there is no information regarding research or data from the paper.  Next, there is an introduction.  The introduction is longer than the abstract in both papers and the introductions can go into more detail about the what the paper is about.  They contain some background and insights into what research has been done in the field that help readers understand the context for the paper and why it is necessary.  Next, the paper on exoplanets goes right into the findings.  It has many sections with titles that include constraints from orbital properties, and multiplanet systems.  The scientific paper generator however, gives less information about research and is a bit more structured than the actual scientific paper.  Both papers contain many graphs which help to explain and illustrate the research that’s being done and the ideas that this research creates.  Another aspect of both papers that should be pointed out is that each section is labeled with not only a title, but also a number.  This makes the papers more structured and makes it easier to find a certain section.  Both papers also have conclusions which help to wrap up the papers.  The actual scientific paper however has an extra section that acknowledges people and organizations that helped it being written.  Both scientific papers also include words that are associated with the subject of the paper and not normally used in everyday life.  The paper about exoplanets even has a section at the beginning labeled “keywords.”Finally, both papers have a long list of references at the end.  The references legitimize scientific papers and make easier for readers to learn more about the subject if they want to go back and look at the references.

Every part of a scientific paper is important.  Scientific papers are not like books in the fact that they are not written for entertainment.  This means that they don’t contain interesting but unnecessary descriptions of things.  They also do not contain advanced writing techniques. Overall, I would say that the most important part of scientific papers is the that they present data.  This is the point of them after all.  They could go without titles because people reading the scientific papers are probably already familiar with the subject, and although the graphs are very helpful, they could be explained simply using words.  Finally, the reverences are important, most people reading the papers probably don’t pay as much attention to them.  Overall, the scientific paper generator does a good job of generating papers that look like the real thing.