On this guide, How to Access Full Text tells you how to get to ALL of our full text.

In addition to news, news items can also provide names of companies working on your question and other information about what is happening in your research area.

• Here is the list of news sources
• The best database for BUSINESS news is ABI/INFORM.

Your Reference List

1. The "style" of your references must be either IEEE or ACM
2. For more information about these styles, go to the library's Citing Sources guide and click on More Styles
3. This page of the Citing Sources guide lists several citation management tools

Due on SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12:   Mid-project progress summary and an annotated report outline.
 

---> The annotated outline is the first draft of your project report. It should include all of the sections listed in the MSSI Capstone Project Requirements.

The final report should be about 25 pages (as shown on tab #1). Because the mid-project summary should be the first draft of that final report, you should include as much information as you can. 

• The progress summary should describe what have been completed, what still need to be done, and any significant changes to the project proposal.
• The outline must include a review of at least 5 literature items.
• The references and citations should follow the “Reference Style” specified in “MSSI Capstone Project Requirements” (that is, either IEEE or ACM).
• This is an example of a good progress summary + annotated report outline (as listed in the Fall 2025 Capstone Schedule and Requirements).

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1. Definitions

• “Annotated” = “with notes”
   
• “Citation” and “reference” are almost the same thing.
  --- “Citation” = author, title, journal or book title, year, and the other things required to identify an article or other work
  --- “Reference” = information that you actually USE, and so you "cite" it in your reference list.

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2. Problem Definition
Make sure that your problem definition (also called "thesis statement") is very clear, and include evidence to support it.

---Definition from the Writing Center at U. North Carolina Chapel Hill:  "A thesis statement is “usually a single sentence near the beginning of your paper (most often, at the end of the first paragraph) that presents your argument to the reader... The rest of the paper…gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your [analysis].”

---"Write a Strong Thesis Statement!" (from U. Evansville, IN)

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3. Writing Tips

1. Spell check is good, but you must still read through it or have a friend read through it, because there are many words that mean different things. For example:  there/their;  great/grate
2. A Capstone is a formal piece of writing, so do not use informal language
3. What about authors who disagree with you or point out limitations to your approach? You should make sure to talk about those; for example, "Some authors point out that _______. However, our approach avoids that problem by ______."
4. Every word and every sentence must be clear. If you use words like "it" or "he" or "those," make sure that the reader will know who or what the word is referring to.
5. Every paragraph must follow logically from the one before it -- if you are going to introduce a new subject, say something like, "Related to that is the concept of X," or "Now we will discuss Y."

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Writing and Language Help

Library tutorials on YouTube, including “How to Read a Scholarly Article,” and “Developing a Research Question”

Technical Communication Lab  (Center for Leadership Education) -- You can make appointments online.
---Technical Writing Consultations
---ESL Consultations

Center for Language Education -- ESL programs and courses (here is the application form)

Writing Center (Gilman Hall) --You can make an appointment online (they will not proofread your work)

Also see these guides:

---Writing Resources
---Writing a Literature Review

What Should The Final Report Look Like?

At the end of the MSSI Capstone Project Requirements are examples of the general structure for your final reports. This is what it says:

"...In general, all the papers published by ACM or IEEE conferences and journals can be followed for the organization of your report and the style of citations and references. The following are just a couple examples."

• ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security(ACM CCS)

• IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security

To find more examples, you can go to the IEEExplore (the IEEE database) or ACM Digital Library (the ACM database).