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How and Why to Cite Other AuthorsYou've probably noticed that all the articles you read are riddled with citations that look like this: (Smith, 1999, Jones, 2004, Brown, 1941). What a bore. These things really slow you down when you're trying to figure out what the main point is. So why do they do this? What is the point of all these citations? This is actually a multiple choice question. Here are the options a. To demonstrate that you've read all these guys Often students think option a is the right answer, and it often does seem right when you are a student. But once you're a famous researcher you don't need to do that any more, yet everyone does. So why do they continue even after they're famous? That question leads us to option b. And this one also seems true in many cases. When you see an author say, "It is colder in Winter than in Summer (Brown, 1218) you know he is citing out of some compulsion to document everything. Even though some authors do this, you don't need to be one of them. Grow up. The real secret to citing is to use citations when your reader may doubt what you are saying. If you think others may not buy what you are saying, then you want to site the authors whose work justifies your argument. If your point is self evident, or is common knowledge, you don't really need to insert a citation to justify it. So that brings us to option c. This is the right answer. Academic writing is different from other writing in that it is relies of very close reasoning. It can be distinguished from, say, inspirational writing, which aims to elicit emotional surges in the audience. In academic writing, your aim is to persuade not be moral persuasion or emotional appeal, but by laying out an argument, a set of reasons, and/or a set of evidence that supports your argument. Citations are often needed to do that. So the first thing you need to learn is how to use citations not judiciously. Not citing support for things are are self evident or that are common knowledge, and not citing wildly as a way to show off all the stuff you've read over the years, but recognizing when you are making a claim that needs some support. It's not always easy to tell. Often something that you think is obvious won't be obvious to one of your readers, and that reader may challenge you to justify your claim. The second thing you need to learn is how to cite. To help you with this, I've got some sample texts that show you how different authors do it. I picked these because they differ in important ways. So lets look at them. First let's look at Researcher A. His concern has to do with how classroom time is spent and he offers some citations to develop his argument. Each time he cites, he says something about how the citation helps him with his argument. I put these verbs in bold italics to help you see them. So, for instance, the first sentence cites two other authors and he says that these authors note the important need for studies. So he is telling us that they don't provide evidence, but they do see the need for evidence. Then in the second sentence, he tells about a study that does provide evidence. So what he does here is try to convince us BOTH that people care about this issue AND what we know about it. Then he gives us details he provides for the evidence. (The red lines are my insertions, not the authors. I put them in to draw your attention to the specifics of what he has presented. In the second paragraph, he summarizes the findings from the study. Notice that, as he does this, we know enough about the study to decide whether these findings are likely to be representative of all types of school settings. So he is telling us enough about the study he cites that we can decide for ourselves whether it has evidence that is persuasive.
Now lets take a look at Researcher B: His concern is with school culture. Notice that he tells us right off the position he supports. He wants to persuade us that culture influences everything that goes on in schools. In his first sentence, he basically tells us that he is citing authors that support that particular contention. But notice that he doesn't really give you any detail about how these authors arrived at their conclusions. Are they making this up, did they conduct empirical studies, how did they develop their arguments? This what we call using authority to justify your argument. This author is telling us we should subscribe to this argument because other people do. But it is not very effective if you don't know who these "authorities" are, or what the quality of their own reasoning is
Now lets take a look at Researcher C. His concern is about professionalism. Like Researcher B, though, he doesn't give us any detail about how the authors he cites came to their conclusions. By hanging his references off the end of his sentences, we can't really know anything about what the original author actually said about the topic. For instance, the first sentence has a number of ideas in it. Did Shulman say all of these things, or just one of them? How persuasive was he when he made this argument? Why should you believe this, just because Shulman said it? Notice especially that there is some confusion about the bunch if references at the end of the paragraph. The sentence is that a movement has gained momentum, and it is supported by several citations. Does that mean these people are part of the momentum, or does it mean they have pointed out that there is a momentum? We can't tell. One lesson to take from Researcher C is that is is dangerous to stick references off the end of a sentence because we can't know for sure how that author's work maps against the sentence it is tacked on to.
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