RESEARCHING & CITATION

Keimyung Adams College – April 2010

Surviving KAC – Week 7 / 8

Citation

Topics Why Cite? Plagiarism Research Strategies Citation Standards In-Text Citation Lists of References Summary & Practice

Why Cite? 1

Throughout your high school years, you may have done some original writing or some short essays. But these were all your thoughts alone. In the academic and professional world you will be entering, you will be informing people or persuading them about difficult or complex issues. Your arguments will be far more convincing if you have textual support from other experts in your field. This is what citation is about: using what other experts have written to support or inform your own arguments.

Why Cite? 2

A special note: Don’t Overdo It!

One matter that should be clear before we begin: in academic and professional writing, the majority of the paper should be your work, and a minority should be cited text. Do not make your entire paper a string of quotations, with only a few of your sentences connecting them together. This sort of paper is worthless to the reader. He or she can read those books. The reader is reading your paper to see what you have to say that is new or helps to explain or understand the subject. Quotes are meant to help.

Why Cite? 3

A special note: Don’t Trust Everything in Print!A second matter is who to cite. It’s a big, scary world!

Don’t trust everything you read in print. In particular:1.Be careful of the expert who’s not an expert in the field you’re researching. Toward the end of his life, Sigmund Freud wrote several books on religion. Freud was a psychologist and not a theologian. Similarly, if Rupert Murdoch writes on business he is likely a good authority. If he writes on soccer or cooking he has no special credibility.

Why Cite? 4

A special note: Don’t Trust Everything in Print!2. Be careful about sources with an obvious bias.

Government websites from totalitarian countries, or organizations with a political, religious, or social activism mission aren’t necessarily untrustworthy, but should be considered carefully and balanced with other sources.

3. Be very careful about internet sources. Any nutbar can write his or her own blog or web page without any evidence or proof. Check if the website is made by a professional or academic organization. Ask your professor about using community-edited sites such as Wikipedia.

Plagiarism 1

Plagiarism is the “use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.” This definition is not mine; it was written in the 1995 Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary. But I am not guilty of plagiarism myself as I’ve used quotation marks (“”) to indicate that the text wasn’t written by me, and I’ve told you where it’s from.

Plagiarism is not using other people’s words or text in your paper. Plagiarism is using other people’s words or text and not telling your reader that you have done so.

Plagiarism 2

Without being offensive, plagiarism is taken much more seriously in the west than in Asian countries. Using other people’s text without attribution in speeches, papers, or theses, if caught, typically results in firings, expulsion from universities, and cancelation of degrees. As a professor or journalist, it is considered a betrayal of trust that can instantly end careers permanently.In 1988, now Vice-President Joe Biden had to cancel his campaign to be US president when a plagiarism charge he had from 1965 as a freshman in legal school was exposed!

Is it serious?

Plagiarism 3

Avoiding Plagiarism

Most students don’t choose to plagiarize, but feel that they’re under pressure or that it’s no big deal. When they are expelled, they discover that it is a big deal. Do you want the doctor who is operating on your heart, or the engineer who designed the bridge you are driving on, to have plagiarized his or her papers, and said ‘it’s no big deal’ rather than being skilled in their subjects?

But many students do plagiarize innocently. How can we tell so that we can avoid it? • Go: Handout 1: Recognizing Plagiarism

Research Strategies 1

Research strategies simply mean the skills that you build for the following tasks:

A)Finding books, magazines, or websitesB)Scanning them for useful information or quotationsC)Taking the material from the source and putting it in your paper

This is a little like teaching you to dance. There isn’t one correct way to research. Probably the best way is to have a clear idea of what information you need, and to develop a system of organizing sources which matches your multiple intelligences or learning styles. Use note cards, highlighters, charts, or whatever helps to keep your sources and quotations ready so that you can enter them into your text.

Research Strategies 2

Advice: Do not get all your sources from Naver! That is lazy research and it will probably not lead you to serious or professional sources. Learn to use an academic search engine such as the library’s.

Unless your subject is very new, you will probably not be taken seriously by your reader if you only have internet sources. The future may be different, but for now there is no substitute for searching for and reading real books in a library!

Citation Standards 1

The History of CitationIn the west, ancient scholars simply explained within the text where their source came from. But developments such as printing in Europe allowed more precision. Early modern books had notes and sources listed in the margins, such as in this example from 1605. True footnotes appeared around 1710 in England and bibliographies (works cited lists) by 1900, but there were no uniform standards for authors or printers.See: “The Rhetoric of Citation Systems, Part I: The Development of Annotation Structures from the Renaissance to 1900” (Robert J. Connors, Rhetoric Review, 17:1,1998)

Citation Standards 2

Modern CitationThe first modern citation system in the west came with the Chicago Manual of Style in 1906. Other popular systems are the Modern Language Association of America style (MLA), which is mostly used in the humanities, and the American Psychological Association style (APA), which is favored in the social sciences. The KAC program permits MLA but encourages the APA system in student thesis projects.

In-Text Citation

In-Text Citation

In-text citation in APA format is really quite simple. List A) the author’s last name, B) the year the source was made, and C) the page number. If it’s a website, you can omit the page number if necessary.

Despite the growing numbers of overweight Americans, many health care providers still “remain either in ignorance or outright denial about the health danger to the poor and the young” (Nemseh, 2005, p. 5).

You can also say the author’s name in the text:Nemseh (2005) states that many providers still “remain either in ignorance or outright denial about the health danger to the poor and the young” (p. 5).

List of References

List of References Goldstein, J. E. (1960). In a word. New York: Harper & Row. Morawski, T. (2000). Social psychology a century ago. American Psychologist, 55, 427-431. Steuer, R. J., Jr. (1999). Keeping an open mind. In Psychology of intelligence analysis (chap. 6). Retrieved July 7, 2009, from http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/art9.html

A list of references comes at the end of your paper. It lists, alphabetically, all of the sources you used. The format differs depending on whether the source is a book, magazine, website, or other types of media, such as interviews or films.

Conclusion

Using secondary sources and quotations in your paper can make your arguments stronger and more credible to the reader if done properly. But be careful to:

A. Use reliable sources B. Always credit what you used! C. Use the proper typographical format

Go:Practice taking information from the two sample

articles on the worksheet. In pairs or groups, quote from the articles onto a new sheet of paper.