Step 5: Document Research
As you identify relevant information, carefully document all of your sources and take copious notes. Of course, when your professor asks you to search out library source material for your paper, he or she expects you to use the ideas, data, interpretations, even words of other writers. No professional writer works solely on his or her own. We all borrow from other writers. The crucial issue that separates research from plagiarism is the "full and proper acknowledgement" of the writer from whom you are borrowing.
In this age of electronic databases and indexes, of cutting and pasting, student writers need to work at conforming to the standards of academic integrity. Whenever another writer's words or ideas appear in your writing, they need to be clearly identified. Take great care in noting citation information for all materials you find in your research explorations, and make sure that this information appears in your papers in association with quoted or paraphrased words and ideas.
Note Guides
You must include the following information for all of your sources -- title, web address, author, year published, and dates sources were accessed online. You can use a graphic organizer or note cards to document your work. Download the example below to document your research.
research_notes.pdf | |
File Size: | 46 kb |
File Type: |
It is important to quote, paraphrase, and summarize essential information for your final project. The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University designed a handout to define and describe each of these terms; Dana Lynn Driscoll, Allen Brizee are the contributing authors.
"These three ways of incorporating other writers' work into your own writing differ according to the closeness of your writing to the source writing. Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source. They must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the original author. Paraphrasing involves putting a passage from source material into your own words. A paraphrase must also be attributed to the original source. Paraphrased material is usually shorter than the original passage, taking a somewhat broader segment of the source and condensing it slightly. Summarizing involves putting the main idea(s) into your own words, including only the main point(s). Once again, it is necessary to attribute summarized ideas to the original source. Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview of the source material
(Purdue Owl, 2010)."