Research writing is a contribution to academia. It should not be a mere regurgitation of the facts and ideas of academics and specialists. As educators, we must teach students to realize that they must have their own view of the sources. They must engage in dialogue with the sources they consult. Without this dialogue, their research is meaningless and becomes a simple exercise in collection and organization. We must distinguish between reporting and research. Report writing is objective writing; writing a research paper is subjective writing. Research is not just about finding information: it is about processing information. Researching a topic requires filtering sources through a single point of view. Research is a dynamic brain activity; reporting is mechanical reporting. The report is a story of found ideas; it is not an analysis of the ideas found. Although reporting involves gathering information, say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay Students should break down the texts for details, recognize them as relevant to their focus on a particular topic, and then bring them together under the overall thesis idea theme. The document itself is a balancing act between interpretation and evidence. We do not ask for opinions regardless of evidence. We are not asking for separate proof of what we call an opinion, but an interpretation. An academic argument is an interweaving of evidence and interpretations. Many student essays are heavy on one side or the other: that is, they are either largely opinions without any support in the sources of information, or they are simply a literal, factual restatement of the source material without any insight. These unbalanced essays should be discussed with students so that they recognize the preference of one over the other in their own writing. Students should be encouraged to overcome the temptation to simply copy information from secondary sources, because understanding is more likely to be accomplished if they paraphrase and summarize. If they can put the information into their own words (paraphrasing and summarizing), they demonstrate that they understand the information. Paraphrasing and summarizing require more commitment than quoting. Copying is easy. Students often copy entire pages (which they could have photocopied and pasted into their journal more easily and with the same success in terms of improving their understanding of the content). Obviously, in this electronic age, cutting and pasting is a simple task. If, in haste, a student forgets to cite the source of the quotations (cut and paste materials), he or she is plagiarizing.