Ask OASISUsing & Crediting Sources: Why We Cite
Last updated 5/6/2020
Visual: Screen opens to a background image with a person typing on a laptop and a notebook and pencil, along with the Walden University Writing Center logo. The title Walden University Writing Center and tagline “Your writing, grammar, and APA experts” appears on the screen. The screen changes to show the series title “Using and Crediting Sources” and the video title “Why We Cite.”
Audio: Guitar music
Visual: Slide rotates and changes to a blue and brown slide with a heading of "Why do we cite?" Below that is an image of a laptop and coffee mug and a text box in the center. The text box includes a sample paragraph with no citation, and it reads: “Teenage girls are more likely to do poorly in math and science courses when compared to boys of the same age. Researchers found that one reason for the increased rate of female failure in these subject is the low self-esteem of girl students. Often, female students begin courses in these subject areas with the preconceived belief that they will not to do well. However, it has been found that with the help of college-aged female mentors, these high school girls can improve their confidence in math and science and successfully complete courses in these subject areas.”
Audio: In this video we’ll explore why we cite. To do so, let’s look at this sample paragraph. Do you see any citation-related issues in this paragraph? [Reading from the slide]: "Teenage girls are more likely to do poorly in math and science courses when compared to boys of the same age. Researchers found that one reason for the increased rate of female failure in these subjects is the low self-esteem of girl students. Often female students begin courses in these subject areas with the preconceived belief that they will not do well. However, it has been found that with the help of college-aged female mentors these high school girls can improve their confidence in math and science and successfully complete courses in these subject areas."
First of all, you might notice there are no citations in the paragraph, and you might have noticed that the writer is referring to researchers. So, this combination would be a red flag in academic writing, because there appears to be research in this paragraph without citations.
Visual: Slide changes to a new slide with the same heading and the same paragraph from above written in a smaller text box that's centered on the page with room for comment bubbles in the margins. There are four blue thought bubbles with comments that read:
- “Who are the 'researchers' the writer refers to in her paragraph?”
- “Who says girls fail more often than boys? How does the writer know this is true?”
- “Is it simply the writer’s opinion that self-esteem contributes to this failure, or have actual studies been proven?’
- “Has this writer done any research? If so, is she plagiarizing?”
Audio: Here are some of the questions or issues that you might have noticed as I read the article. [Reading from the slide]: "Who are the 'researchers' the writer refers to in her paragraph?" Is it her opinion that the researchers found this information about the increased rate of female failure? As the reader I’m thinking that she likely found this information in a research study but she didn't indicate which study. Additionally, the writer gives evidence for her claims, but as the reader, I’m not very convinced since it's not clear if this evidence came from a legitimate resource or if the evidence is something that she heard casually from a friend or made up; it's really not clear. In this case, it appears that the writer used resources such as articles or books to provide content for this paragraph and didn’t cite the sources, so this is an example plagiarism, and wouldn’t be acceptable citation in APA.
Visual: Slide changes, showing the heading "Why do we cite?," the image of the computer and coffee mug, and the following paragraph: “Teenage girls are more likely to do poorly in math and science courses when compared to boys of the same age (Reece, 2013; Ziger & Marks, 2010). Researchers found that one reason for the increased rate of female failure in these subject is the low self-esteem of girl students (James et al., 2008; Ziger & Marks, 2010). According to James et al. (2008), female students begin courses in these subject areas with the preconceived belief that they will not to do well. However, Kelly (2012) found that with the help of college-aged female mentors, these high school girls can improve their confidence in math and science and successfully complete courses in these subject areas.”
Audio: Let’s now look at how the writer could revise this paragraph and avoid plagiarism by using citations. Notice how in this version of the paragraph, every sentence that includes an idea from one of the sources has a citation. It's clear now in this paragraph where the author retrieved the information from. You'll notice that some of the sentences have two sources listed. For example, the first sentence states that [reading from the slide]: "Teenage girls are more likely to do poorly in math and science courses when compared to boys of the same age," and it includes a citation with both Reece as well as Ziger and Marks, so from the citation we can infer that both Reece and Marks and Ziger agreed on and wrote about this idea. This is an appropriate example of citation, giving credit to the sources the author used in this paragraph and clearly answering the questions we had about the previous version of the paragraph. This is why we cite in academic writing and APA—to answer and clarify those questions.
Audio: Guitar music plays.
Visual: The screen changes to an ending slide with slide a background image with a person typing on a laptop and a notebook and pencil, along with the Walden University Writing Center logo. The email address writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu appears on the screen.