Identifying and Citing Sources/Post-Class Activities

Identifying and Citing Sources: Post-Class Activities

These post-class activities are designed to complement the pre-class and in-class activities and further develop the skills you learned when completing them; your main task, which encompasses the majority of the activities in this post-class set, is to compose a short piece of properly cited writing that focuses on the science topic you initially chose.

Before you put that together, read the information about choosing appropriate words to introduce sources that you cite. You should then complete Question 1, which will give you some practice in applying these concepts.

Choosing Descriptive Words to Introduce Citations

Because you must interpret a source when you paraphrase it, you must be very careful not to misrepresent the author in any way, which can be easier to do than you might think.

For example, writing that Reilly (2010) ‘found’ that more than one cup of morning coffee slows response rates in people, is not the same thing as writing that Reilly (2010) ‘argued’ that more than one cup of morning coffee slows response rates in people. Finding something after conducting an experiment suggests the result was objective, whereas arguing something suggests the opposite.

Although it is sometimes important to use strong descriptors such as argue, challenge, confess, attack etc. when they appropriately describe the stance being taken, it is generally a good idea to use neutral descriptors whenever possible, as these cannot be misinterpreted as easily.

For example, writing that Reilly (2010) ‘wrote’ that more than one cup of morning coffee slows response rates in people cannot be misinterpreted, and therefore removes any concern that you might have about paraphrasing his/her work.

Question 1 (4 marks)

Read the following excerpt from a primary source (written by Jonathan Nolan, and published in 2009) and then rank the descriptive words used by people that paraphrased and cited this material; rank these words from best to worst.

In our controlled experiments, we saw that 92% of newborn rats showed a preference for bedding that smelled of their mother rather than of another unrelated female rat when offered the choice.

Nolan (2009)…

A: found that newborn rats choose bedding that smells like their mother.

B: intimated that newborn rats choose bedding that smells like their mother.

C: proved that newborn rats choose bedding that smells like their mother.

D: showed that newborn rats choose bedding that smells like their mother.

Citation Formatting

This information is also found in the in-class materials, but is included here in case you missed that lesson/workshop. You will need to follow these hints to answer Question 6.

In science writing, there are two general styles for citing references in text: expanded referencing or abbreviated referencing. The first of these is the most universally used, and we are going to focus solely on that one, which includes:

1. The author’s last name and the year of publication in the body of the writing
2. An alphabetical list of all these references at the end of the article, which contains more complete information (the title of the paper, the journal it was published in, the issue of this journal, and the page numbers)

Rules for In-Text Citations

• If there are one or two authors, cite both surnames (and the date of publication)
• If there are more than two authors, only write the first name followed by et al.

Examples

• Blue, left-handed widgets are actually wodgets (Smith, 1993).
• Bloggs et al. (1995) found that …
• Smith and Jones (1997) wrote that…

Rules for Reference Lists

• Place at the end
• List sources in alphabetical order
• There are numerous different styles, but the most common one uses the format: All Surnames, Initials, (Publication Year). Title. Journal, Issue: Pages.

e.g. Smith, T (1993). Widgets and wodgets. Journal of Computing, 37: 6-15.

Question 2 (12 marks total)

Compose a short piece of writing about the science topic you initially chose in the pre-class activities, and about which you found additional primary sources in the in-class lesson/workshop. This piece of writing does not need to be long (200 words is fine) but it should be written as though you are providing information about the topic to an audience that would not know much about it.

To attain high marks, try to make sure you:

1. Include information from at least four primary sources, and cite these properly by using in-text citations (4 marks)
2. Use appropriate descriptive words when referring to these sources (4 marks)
3. Produce a correctly formatted reference list that provides full information about these sources at the end of your piece of writing (4 marks)

Question 3 (4 marks)

Recall from the pre-class activities that you do not need to cite certain types of information to avoid plagiarism. Provide two examples of information in your writing for which you have not provided an in-text citation, and then justify why you have not provided a citation for this paraphrased information.