Chapter 2: Researching With Integrity
Chapter Summary
Key Takeaways
- When you research, you’ll need to build on the ideas of others. Citation is the way to give credit to the people whose ideas influenced you.
- In APA papers, in-text citations include the name of the author(s) and the year of publication whenever possible.
- Ideas and information taken from outside sources must be cited not only in the body of the paper but also in the references section.
- Material taken from sources should be used to develop the writer’s ideas. Summarizing and paraphrasing are usually most effective for this purpose.
- A paraphrase restates ideas from a source using the writer’s own words and sentence structures.
- Plagiarism has serious academic and professional consequences. To avoid accidental plagiarism, keep research materials organized, understand guidelines for fair dealing and appropriate citation of sources, and review the paper to make sure these guidelines are followed.
Activities for Further Reflection
- Create a quiz that tests your classmates’ citation skills.
- Come up with 10 questions that you still have about citation. Compare them to your partner’s questions. See how many you can answer together. If you don’t know the answer, ask your instructor.
- Complete a Citation Scavenger Hunt. Using the Internet and Loyalist Library APA reference guide, do the following:
- Cite an instagram account
- Find a blog post about the rising costs of textbooks and cite it
- Cite a scholarly article
- Create a block quote
- Cite a tweet
- Cite a news article without an author
Attribution
This chapter contains material from Choosing and Using Sources: A Guide To Academic Research by the Ohio State University Libraries, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
