Citing Sources

Citing your sources is the most important step towards honesty and transparency. The sources you use and cite are supposed to be those that helped you to refine your topic and to understand both the background of your current research and its implications. They should be clearly identified so other researchers can understand your thought process and to acknowledge the work done by those prior researchers. For more information on citing sources, see our guide.

• Read what you cite. To properly incorporate your sources you need to have read and understood them. Resist the temptation to pad your references by simply copying citations from other papers. At best, you will end up with possibly irrelevant citations—at worst, you could end up misrepresenting another researcher’s work.
• Cite what you read. All of the papers you read as part of your secondary research that helped you come to grips with your topic were important and influenced your thinking. They should all be cited. Resist the temptation to cite only the key articles related to your topic.

Sometimes you can't read a paper that's referenced in another paper. Say you have an article by Sam Smith. In it, he constantly refers to an article by Jill Jones. It can be very tempting to cite Jones's article in your paper on the strength of Smith's description of her work, even though you don't have copy of her article and haven't read her work directly.

THAT IS A BAD IDEA!

If you cite Jones's article, you're telling your readers that you read it and understood it. You may get away with it, but why risk it? What if somebody asks about another part of Jones's paper? Then again, Smith may have misunderstood what Jones was writing about -- or worse, he may have deliberately misrepresented what Jones wrote. In that case, anybody who reads your paper will think that YOU misunderstood her article or are lying about what she said. In any case, indicating that you read a paper when you didn't is clearly academic misconduct and could land you in a world of hurt.

For those reasons, it's always best to actually read all the articles you reference in your papers. However, there are many reasons why that isn't always possible, so there is a way to INDIRECTLY cite a paper. That's what's called "citing a source within a source." Here's how it works:

1. In your paper, indicate that you are referring to something that was cited in another paper. For example, you could write "Jones's study (as cited by Smith 2018) found that . . ."
2. In your reference list, only include the article by Smith. Do NOT include the article by Jones.

In this way, you make it clear that you did not read Jones's article yourself but are relying on Smith's interpretation instead. Any errors or misrepresentations of Jones's paper are clearly on him, not on you.

Retracted papers present an unique challenge when citing sources. Papers are retracted for a variety of reasons, but they all involve either errors or research misconduct by the researchers.

As a general rule of thumb, retracted papers should not be used. However, there are cases where the use of a retracted paper is warranted or even required. Some specific use cases are listed below.

• Normal source of information. An error in one part of the methodology or analysis does not necessarily invalidate all the other parts of the research. Errors can indicate a lack of care or inattention to detail on the part of the researchers, though. Review the other parts of the paper carefully to see if they are free of error. If so, they can be used.
• Counter examples. Papers retracted for errors can serve as examples of how not to do a particular research activity or experiment.
• Correcting the scientific or research record. If your research is intended to correct the errors introduced in the original paper, then you will definitely need to use and cite the original retracted paper.
• Research about research misconduct. If your research is about research misconduct, you will want to use published example of bad research. In this case you will want to specifically look for papers retracted due to forms of misconduct or research fraud.

In all cases, retracted papers should be clearly labeled as "retracted" in your citations and reference lists.

Content on this guide helps support Illinois Tech's RCR initiatives. For more information on RCR at Illinois Tech, see: