The citations style you use will depend on your class, so you should check your assignment details or talk to your professor to make sure you know what style you are expected to use. More resources on citing sources can be found in the Harvard Guide to Using Sources.
Citation is important because it helps you indicate to the reader when you are building on someone else's work. Citation ensures that you give credit to the intellectual work of the author(s) of that work, and it helps identify the line between evidence and analysis, which, in turn, helps the reader see what your intellectual contribution is.
USING SOURCES
TYPES OF PUBLISHED SOURCES
- Peer-reviewed primary research articles
- Peer-reviewed review articles
- Chapters in edited books
- Books from university or popular presses
Websites maintained by government agencies or foundations that collate descriptive statistics (like the NIH or the CDC)
Sources are the published articles, books, or digital resources that contain the facts and information that your ideas build on. Science fields are centered around sources just like any other field. As you learned in Expos and from the Harvard Guide to Using Sources, when you deploy sources in your papers, you show how your thinking builds on the scholarship of your field. The same is true for the sciences; for example, the rationale behind your hypothesis or your interpretation of your data is based on your knowledge of the field, which you have gained from reading relevant sources.
However, the sources you use in science papers function differently from the sources you use in papers in other disciplines because of the importance of experimentation. As a result, sources are not treated equally in terms of their authority: peer-reviewed primary research articles are the most highly valued. Peer-reviewed review articles are also highly valued.
Additionally, how you use the source material in your paper may differ from what you learned in Expos. Typically, source material is NOT quoted in the sciences. Rather, there is an expectation that you paraphrase the findings, analysis, or information from the source. Doing so indicates that you understand the ideas behind the words and aren’t simply repeating what someone else has said. Because science typically isn’t about analyzing someone else’s language, the use of sources is anchored in your adept paraphrase of what you’ve read.
In the sciences, the default method of presenting source material is by paraphrasing it.
Paraphrase poses a challenge because science also uses a lot of technical language. To speak intelligently about your topic, you have to know what language from the source must be maintained.
Paraphrasing is a learned skill that you will become better at as you develop expertise in your concentration because you will develop better judgment about what words you can keep and what words are replaceable.
Paraphrasing is tricky because there is not one right way to do it; any given sentence or paragraph can be paraphrased in many different ways. Whether you keep more or less detail, highlight some elements and not others, depends on the purpose you are using that evidence for.
For example, if you are establishing the key findings in a particular area, you may concisely paraphrase the findings from an article with very little detail about the article’s experiments.
In contrast, if you are evaluating how previous research has portrayed a particular phenomenon, you may want to provide more detail about the article’s experiments or the interpretations in addition to details about the findings.
GOOD PARAPHRASING
- Accurately re-presenting the author’s meaning
- Using correct citation information
- Using your own words to re-present an author’s meaning
- Using your own sentence structure when re-presenting that meaning
- If you’re paraphrasing a longer passage, you may consider reconfiguring the order of the ideas if necessary
BAD PARAPHRASING
- Changing one or even a few words
- Rearranging words
- Replacing the words with synonyms
- Omitting a few words
- Changing punctuation
- Reordering the phrases in a sentence
- Reordering the sentences in a paragraph
From "Principles of Paraphrase," Harvard Graduate School of Education
Quotations aren't forbidden in science writing, but they are uncommon. The reasons for their limited use lies in the nature of science. Scientists build theories and models about how the natural world operates. In science writing, the focus is on concepts, data, and interpretation, rather than the language used to relay information and ideas.
If you are analyzing the language someone has used to represent a natural phenomenon to interpret their results, then you might quote the author’s original language. Quoting in this way occurs when the writer’s intent is to challenge someone’s representation or interpretations, and is not usually applicable to the written analysis you'll do in your science classes.
You should use quotations only when you have a specific and necessary reason, like when it is critical to describe a key term in the way in which it was originally defined. For example, in their 2014 paper on planarian regeneration, Reddien and Sánchez quote Morgan's (1901) original description of a term, writing that "he coined the word morphallaxis simply to describe that after amputation '... the relative proportions of the planarian are attained by a remodelling of the old tissue'” (Reddien & Sánchez Alvarado, 2014, p. 728).
In your library sessions in Expos, you began to learn how to navigate the Harvard Libraries to find sources that are relevant to your class assignments. The same lessons apply here but simply need to be adapted for the purposes of your science classes.
The Harvard Libraries has a set of research guides for some concentrations and individual classes that you can consult. Click on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Libraries to see a list of their resources.
Here are some common databases used in the sciences to find sources.
If you want more one-one-one help with this process, you can contact the Harvard librarians to ask questions or set up an appointment, or you can work with a Peer Research Fellow who works with your house.