From the Citation Project, a recent study about first-year research essays that found “research papers written in first-year composition courses at 15 colleges … simply copy chunks of text from the sources they cite without truly grasping the underlying argument, quality or context.” Many educators are therefore arguing that the first year research paper should be abandoned. Read about it on the Princeton University blog:
https://blogs.princeton.edu/librarian/2011/04/the_library_and_the_research_essay.html
Worcester State University Library 