Risks/Trade-offs | 8 Levels | Adapting Assignments | Reactions | Suggestions | Works Cited Eight Levels of Electronic Research Papers Classifying electronic research papers into three major categories is one way to have students understand the range of possibilities available to them. These three categories, which I refer to as “primitive,” “linked,” and “true hypertext,” can be further subdivided into eight general levels. While I simply refer to all research papers uploaded to the web as “electronic,” Jennifer Bowie makes interesting and useful distinctions between hypertexts and webtexts. Her characterization of these two types would make my top three levels fall into her definition of “hypertext” and the other five types could be termed “webtexts.” At times throughout this discussion I may refer to all eight types as “electronic,” so as to distinguish research papers on the web from traditional research papers, but for most purposes, referring to these as “electronic” would be far too too simplistic, which is one reason why I have classified and defined them further.           The kind I would label “primitive” are still unbroken linear papers that are simply uploaded to and viewable on the web. These are electronic papers but are not hypertext papers. In Bowie’s distinction between webtexts and hypertexts, these are neither, but simply electronic. A second type of electronic paper which is in the “primitive” category is one which lists sources that are from the Internet (though not hotlinked).           The second major category of electronic research paper could be referred to as “linked” because their links jump to references in some way. One type might involve Internet sources which are hotlinked to their sites. Another type requires the writer to embed links within their own text to their Works Cited page. A third type of “linked” paper requires creating more internal links which would link each parenthetical reference to its own specific source listing.           Finally, in the third major category—which I classify as “true hypertext” because of the higher level of sophistication involved in creating them, I refer to one as a “pathmarked” paper, another as a “multimedia” paper and a third subtype (the eighth and highest level) as a “design-rich web essay with source.” This last type is usually a multi-column, heavily formatted pathmarked paper which might use frames, various forms of multimedia, professional-looking designs or logos, and show exceptionally deep and/or intricately structured links, perhaps even offering a visual map of the entire webtext.   * Student Examples: Aimee, Julie M., Amber, Don, Katie, Bryan, Holly, Julie S.