6.2 Are You Still Playing with Trains?

Module 6

Page 2 of 8

What Is a Train & Why Is It Not a Good Model for a Thesis or Article? 

The average student paper is often developed like a train. The student evaluates and summarizes/paraphrases one source after another.

Emmert followed by Tamanaha followed by Trebilcock and Daniels followed by Bingham

If the student is diligent, she will summarize or paraphrase the arguments in the source, rather than the source itself. However, she is still building a train and this can often be identified very easily on the basis of the footnotes, which will look something like this:

____________________________

  1. See Emmert, Rule of Law in Central and Eastern Europe, Fordham Int’l LJ 2009, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 551-586, at pp. 553 et seq.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Ibid.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid.
  6. Ibid., at p. 571.
  7. See Tamanaha, On the Rule of Law, Cambridge (UK) 2004…
  8. Ibid.
  9. Ibid.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Ibid.
  12. See Trebilcock & Daniels, Rule of Law Reform and Development – Charting the Fragile Path of Progress, Cheltenham 2008
  13. Ibid.
  14. Ibid.
  15. Ibid.

However, the goal of an academic writing project should not be the mere recital of prior academic writing projects and certainly not one after the other! Almost by definition, a project that is executed like a train will be descriptive and ultimately boring and mediocre. As Lea Bishop puts it, a good paper "puts [previous] scholarly publications in conversation with each other."

Moreover, if previous publication are too diligently described, there is a fine line into plagiarism that is easily crossed, either because sentences or half-sentences jump from the source into the keyboard and do not get identified the way they should be with “quotation marks”, or because the student, in a conscious or subconscious effort at concealing the heavy reliance on one particular source for several pages of her project, does not add enough and enough clear footnotes in the first place.

The goal of an excellent academic writing project has to be the development and persuasive presentation of an innovative hypothesis, a new voice, a new point of view, or at least some new ideas added to the conversation of the prior scholarly publications. In this quest, the other sources alone cannot carry the story line or, at the very least, they can carry the story line only to a certain point. Beyond that point, YOU, the student or the author of the new writing project, have to come in with YOUR OWN ideas and arguments, and you have to TELL YOUR OWN STORY. Naturally, your stories should be based on prior research and publications, which means that they will be supported – to an extent – by the other sources but the reference system will look quite different, much more like a neuronal network than a train: 

"You" in the center, circled by author names with arrows pointed to "You"

In the diagram above, the paper is organized like a network. Here the author has her own idea(s) and discusses what others have said of relevance and how and why she agrees or disagrees with them. You enter into a conversation with those who came before you and then you add to it. In the end, it becomes clear and persuasive how and why the author has a new argument or solution of her own that organically builds on prior research and publications, adding to the collective knowledge of humankind,  rather than merely restating it.

Accordingly, the text and the footnote will also look different. The text will have YOUR OWN language, and the footnote may look something like this”

____________________________

  1. This definition of Rule of Law is inspired by the work of Emmert, see Frank Emmert, Rule of Law in Central and Eastern Europe, Fordham Int’l LJ 2009, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 551-586, in particular pp. 563-569. Emmert, in turn, relies on Craig… and Raz… For a more formal approach see … and … On the other hand, the UN has been advocating a human rights-centered approach, see, for example, … The latter is rejected here because…”

Watch this video for further explanation: