Since you're about to submit Draft 2 of the white paper, I would like to direct your attention to items we discussed a couple of weeks ago related to research -- especially emphasis on including several types of professionally-oriented sources. When doing research for a document that is as professionally-based and topic/audience-driven as a white paper generally is, it's essential to your white paper's overall success that your research activities are both extensive and intensive. Give yourselves plenty of time and energy to access, read, and evaluate the relevance/suitability of a wide variety of sources, presenting a wide information base, as well as one that is balanced (represents variety and diversity in viewpoints, audiences, and approaches).

IMPORTANT REMINDER: Many of you have probably already accessed Wikipedia -- which is a good place to start, especially if you're working with a topic and/or open source program (or collection of programs) that you're not all that familiar with. But unless Wikipedia is the best and only source for a certain, specific, point of information...this is where Wikipedia's involvement in your white paper needs to stop!

ADDED INFO: For more about Wikipedia and its "place" in academic research, please read this column published today in the Chronicle of Higher Education's website!  It's in response to an article published in another academically-oriented site.

Again, our white papers are professionally-oriented documents that incorporate research to advance specific positions/arguments related to specific topics. In addition, these white papers are directed toward specific target audiences -- who look to our white papers as credible, knowledgeable, relevant sources of information in themselves, not as mere reporters of someone else's knowledge.

Finally, it's essential that you use research-based information to support your position and/or to present examples that illustrate where the overall "conversation" regarding your topic is, and how it has evolved over a period of time. Once you've presented this information, it's even more important to respond to it, to analyze it...to clarify, qualify, or even "debate" it. In any case, do not let research "take over" your white paper -- otherwise, you come across as lazy, indifferent, or even not knowing enough of what you're talking about to justify your audiences taking the time to read your white paper.

So if the first and/or second drafts of your white paper:

• represents an account of "the world, according to Wikipedia," or some other encyclopedia-type source;
• doesn't have sufficient balance and variety in sources;
• doesn't contain a suitable mix of foundation-based information and the latest developments;
• relies too heavily on outside sources "doing the talking" and skimps on your own interpretations, analyses, and connections to your argument and target audiences

...you're going to have a very hard time making any kind of case for the arguments that you present, and an equally hard time establishing yourself as a credible, knowledgeable source.

With balanced, organized sources that give you plenty of room to maintain your presence in your white paper, you can focus your efforts on those sources that are useful and applicable, and on ways to successfully incorporate them into your white paper, without their dominating over your own contributions -- helping you establish credibility, authority, relevance, and timeliness within a document that demands all of the above!