Term Project

Purpose

This term project is designed to give you experience performing a critical literature review (i.e., a critique of papers in the literature), and preparing a written report in a format identical to that used in AMS conferences, on a topic of personal interest in mesoscale meteorology. It also will provide you experience conducting an anonymous peer review of work by your colleagues and responding thoughtfully to their critiques of your own paper.

Schedule

Tuesday, April 1 Submission of first draft by 5 pm

Thursday, April 3 Each student receives 2 drafts to review (Exam #2 is on April 8)

Thursday, April 17 Submission of 2 anonymous peer reviews

Tuesday, April 22 Anonymous peer reviews distributed to authors

Friday, May 2 Final version of paper due by 5 pm (last day of classes)

Paper Guidelines

The research paper will utilize the AMS conference 2-column format (a template file will be made available) and must be 6 pages in length including all figures and references. The paper must provide a critical review (not simply a re-statement) of current research on a mesoscale topic of your choice, and make use of at least 6 references, 3 of which must be archive journals (web references are allowed for the other 3). Both the first draft and final version of the paper will be graded on overall organization, clarity, grammar, completeness, and neatness (see below).

Review Guidelines

Each student will conduct an anonymous of 2 papers. The review must be limited to two typewritten pages and you can download a Microsoft Word version of the review forms: REVIEWER A and REVIEWER B. You should complete the reviews by filling out the form electronically, print the 2 reviews, and then submit them to me on Thursday, 17 April.

Final Version

In writing the final version of your paper, you should address the comments made by the 2 anonymous peer reviews, providing in a separate document a written point-by-point response to each issue or question raised.

Grading

Your grade for this project will be based upon a) the rating given to your first draft by the 2 peer reviewers; b) the quality of the 2 peer reviews that you made of other papers; c) your response to the 2 reviews of your paper; d) the final version of your paper. The term project is worth 20% of the total class grade.

Template

You may download the template for your term project at http://kkd.ou.edu/METR4433_2008/Template.doc

Example

You may download an example term project report HERE. Note that this report was created for the former METR 1004 (Introduction to Meteorology for Majors) and thus does not precisely follow the page limits set above. Otherwise, however, the paper does reflect the type of product you should produce in this course.