The generation and economic importance of North Sea oil.
- The essay should focus on the British geology
- Jurassic period
- The sources used should mostly come from scientific articles related to my topic
- 3000 word literature report (It should not exceed 3000 words)
(1) Overview
The Literature Report is a major independent research exercise that counts 15% of the assessment. The aim is help you to learn to critically read the primary scientific literature on a specific well-focused topic and prepare a synthesis in the format of a scientific paper.
(2) Topic
You can write your report on any topic of your choosing within three constraints: (1) the report must deal with some aspect relevant to (2) the report must predominantly focus on British Geology, and (3) the report must deal with the period of geological time that been randomly allocated to you (see attachment). However, within those limitations, you are free to chose whether you focus on sedimentary environments, biosphere evolution, correlation, tectonics, igneous activity, earth resources, palaeogeography, atmosphere evolution, climate change, catastrophic events, or anything else that captures your interest. The best reports will identify a particular area of controversy and will critically test hypotheses based on the literature. Note that it is important to avoid making your topic too narrow (so there is not enough material to discuss) but equally important, it is important not to be too broad (the danger being that your report will lack depth as a result).
(5) Preparing report
You will then undertake a further WoK/Scopus literature search based upon a more refined word search of titles and abstracts from a larger time range (e.g. 1985-2018). However, bear in mind that geological concepts in older resources may be out-dated – science moves on at speed! Be sure to start structuring and writing your report as early as possible so it can go through multiple revisions. Remember that the report must be in the form of a scientific paper (not an essay), drawing on a variety of literature sources to cover the chosen topic. The style must, therefore, follow that of published papers (abstract, introduction, methods, data, discussion, conclusions, references), to which you should refer for guidance on layout. Specifically, we ask you to follow the layout and structure of Journal of the Geological Society, London.