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This is dumb [also Avoiding Plagiarism]
ceres
When the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
When the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
This is a stupid problem, nevertheless I am anxious and easily worked up when it comes to doing school work properly... ironically to the point where I sometimes end up not doing it at all, rather than do it wrong. This has not historically been very good for my academic career, but since I've come back to school this time around I've fought this tooth-and-nail. I'd rather not fail now.
Every class I have this term requires at least one research paper, a couple of them require more, and I have one due tomorrow which I have yet to start because of this. Papers aren't hard; my problem is that I never feel comfortable with citation.
Yes, I realize how stupid this is. Seriously though, I feel like if I don't cite every last word I'll be nailed for plagiarism because someone somewhere has probably combined words to make the sentence before, and surely my teacher will find where and I'll get suspended. I know that direct quotes and paraphrasing all require citation. But I learned everything I know somewhere - where will the madness end?
Also, we are supposed to cite everything using NLM format, and I'm unfamiliar with it. I can easily look up how to do the bibliography, what concerns me is the citation within the paper. It's (author, page number.), right? What do you replace the page number with for websites? You can't just throw a URL in the middle of your paper... or can you?
This is what happens to me with school work, and one of the many reasons I have so much trouble approaching it. Once I get started (which almost always involves at least some hand-holding) I'm usually okay. But the first time I encounter something I don't know how to do, instead of dealing with it like a normal person I let the whole thing spiral out of control in my head until it's so big and scary and the Fate of the World balances on it so delicately that I can't take it anymore and say "fuck it" and go play a game or watch TV because right now I can't think about the stupid assignment anymore or I'm going to cry.
"Go look it up, silly," right? I'm aware of what's happening in my head, and why. I don't know how to deal with it, and while I've been brute-forcing my way through up to now, this is very crippling to me and I feel like getting anything done is so much harder than it needs to be. Every assignment is an uphill battle I mostly win in the end, but really? The kind of work I have due this term is extremely unfriendly to this particular mental block. Every week is terrifying, this anxiety is awful, and I'm reaching the point where a zero sounds kind of nice because I don't have to do anything at all to make sure I get that right.
Help. How can I change the way I think? I don't want to fail.
Every class I have this term requires at least one research paper, a couple of them require more, and I have one due tomorrow which I have yet to start because of this. Papers aren't hard; my problem is that I never feel comfortable with citation.
Yes, I realize how stupid this is. Seriously though, I feel like if I don't cite every last word I'll be nailed for plagiarism because someone somewhere has probably combined words to make the sentence before, and surely my teacher will find where and I'll get suspended. I know that direct quotes and paraphrasing all require citation. But I learned everything I know somewhere - where will the madness end?
Also, we are supposed to cite everything using NLM format, and I'm unfamiliar with it. I can easily look up how to do the bibliography, what concerns me is the citation within the paper. It's (author, page number.), right? What do you replace the page number with for websites? You can't just throw a URL in the middle of your paper... or can you?
This is what happens to me with school work, and one of the many reasons I have so much trouble approaching it. Once I get started (which almost always involves at least some hand-holding) I'm usually okay. But the first time I encounter something I don't know how to do, instead of dealing with it like a normal person I let the whole thing spiral out of control in my head until it's so big and scary and the Fate of the World balances on it so delicately that I can't take it anymore and say "fuck it" and go play a game or watch TV because right now I can't think about the stupid assignment anymore or I'm going to cry.
"Go look it up, silly," right? I'm aware of what's happening in my head, and why. I don't know how to deal with it, and while I've been brute-forcing my way through up to now, this is very crippling to me and I feel like getting anything done is so much harder than it needs to be. Every assignment is an uphill battle I mostly win in the end, but really? The kind of work I have due this term is extremely unfriendly to this particular mental block. Every week is terrifying, this anxiety is awful, and I'm reaching the point where a zero sounds kind of nice because I don't have to do anything at all to make sure I get that right.
Help. How can I change the way I think? I don't want to fail.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
ceres on
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edit: after a bit of searching it seems that NLM doesn't use in text citation it uses a reference list
http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/electric/quickguides/docs/nlm.html
http://www.refworks.com/
but they're listening to every word I say
My school recommends this: http://www.endnote.com/
I used it on my first paper this semester and I haven't been kicked out yet!
correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that is how a well documented paper should go anyways. :P
it'll be much easier to write your essay and worry about citation after the fact. make a note on the page where you think a citation is going to be needed. but remember, you don't need to cite everything you write about a work; i can say, 'In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the author explores ideas of a chaotic, structureless world.' it references itself - no marker is going to misread that as improper sourcing, much less plagiarism. it's only where you've directly taken something from the page, or refered to something that's specific, that's not necessarily implied knowledge, that you need to put a direct source in. 'The character Kurtz sums it up with his own words: "The horror. The horror." (Conrad, !!!)"' "Ultimately, the narrator lies to Kurtz's wife to protect her - and in turn, structured society - from this chaos. (Conrad, !!!)"
you may even find that the latter sourcing of paraphrased ideas isn't necessary in all cases. that part of sourcing is more for ease of reading and making sure your ideas have an actual weight of textual evidence behind them than preventing plagiarism anyway - plagiarism is only something you need to worry about if you're actually doing it
edit: that was about refworks... I don't have a hundred dollars for endnote, unfortunately.. but bsjezz is encouraging.. maybe a good way to approach this would really be just to write the paper and worry about it later.. it sounds like such a simple thing and I don't know why I don't go there instead of panic.
Yes, do that.
Just write.
For your first draft, use a [1] or a (smith) or a {Snuffleupagus} or whatever wherever you use a citation, that way you can go back and mess with the format of your citations later and keep your flow going now.
In fact, I'd highly recommend doing your first draft in Sublime Text or another text editor with a "No distraction" mode. Hit Shift+F11 and the text window goes full screen, no controls no menus no nothing. And then you write. It's 60 bucks if you want to buy it, but you can download the full version and it will just nag you gently every couple of times you save.
Professors are pretty forgiving when they go hunting for plagiarism. Especially if the topic is a well-covered one, it's really easy to inadvertently duplicate someone else's argument or reasoning. You basically have to be copying entire sections verbatim to get nailed with a really academically harmful plagiarism charge (grievance, complaint, whatver your uni calls it.)
If you really want to be safe, you can footnote sources generally; like, if the material in a particular graf comes from a particular source, just attribute the paragraph without quotations.
As far as your larger psychological issue, my advice would be to just write the paper without giving a crap about citations, then go back and sort them out when you're done. At least that way if you come up against your deadline, you can go to the prof and say "hey, I'm sorry about this, my paper's finished, I just didn't quite have time to add all the parentheticals."
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Style and citation quality depends - to a certain extent - on school quality. Prestigious law universities will likely require a strict adherance to style guides. I haven't gone to any of those sorts of prestigious schools. My experience involves state university systems and some international universities. In my university career I only needed to actually use a cover page twice (for seminar classes with semester-long research projects). Of course, you can always get those hard-nosed professors who insist your bibliography be spotless and that your paper features an abstract and a cover page.
Additionally, the higher the level of education, the more in-depth the style and quality needs to be. Citations in undergraduate courses are often much less stringent than in graduate or doctorate work. This is still highly dependant upon your professors; some have the expectation that by the time you reach postgraduate work you know how to cite things and they just want to see that you know the information.
Finally, subject matter has a large impact on how and when you should be citing things.
Papers in foreign language classes (particularly early program courses) tend to require very few citations - especially if they're written in the foreign language. The paper is used to test your language skills, not your ability to list page numbers. Usually the information will all come from in-class, anyway.
Science courses tend to have few "papers". Usually writing consists of lab work and very simple essay questions. Research papers tend to be the big projects that need citations. In those cases your literature review is going to be exceptionally thorough (usually multiple citations per double-spaced page), while the actual research methodology and results portions will have few - if any - citations. Generally APA, Turabian or some subject specific citation style will be needed (NLM for medicine, AIP for physics, etc.).
Humanities courses tend to be the big essay sinkholes. History, geography, political science, philosophy and the like all tend to have an abundance of essays. These tend to require Turabian, MLA or occasionally APA. Here you'll want to build a reference list with all of the works you consulted or read for information in your paper to put at the end. Citations may be sparse or thick depending (although your bibliography should cover you if you happen to miss a specific citation).
Actual use of citations can vary wildly. You'll definitively need a citation for direct quotes or close paraphrases. Your only real concern about plagiarism should come if you're taking someone elses style or taking someone else's writing and trying to pass it off as your own (i.e. if you're actively stealing ideas or copying text without citing it, then you should be concerned).
Even with direct quotes there are a few caveats. If you cite a term used by someone else, your first citation covers your repetition of the term. E.g.
If you're using the same piece of research repeatedly without any other sources in-between you may not wish to re-cite it (at the very least you don't want to cite every sentence if all of the content is on the same page). Again, there are caveats: if the content is difficult to locate, if individual information is contentious or sounds dubious, or if you're disagreeing with something specific.
I'll have to disagree (partially) with ceres and Monolithic_Dome. Depending on the type of paper, writing it in advance can be a terrible decision (particularly with scientific content...since that basically violates the scientific method). But research projects tend to be very structured; I doubt the importance of these papers is as high as you've convinced yourself they are (I remember my first English 150 paper where we needed to use dreaded citations and research). Of course, the way you've laid them out, these sound like normal "big essay fluff" papers where you learn all sorts of information, except how to write research papers (in which case, writing first and citing later works perfectly fine).
Unless you are (or already have) spending the semester learning where to find good (specific, current) information, how to keep track of notes and ideas, formulating effective arguments or valid methodologies, crafting a literature review or historiography, and the like it's probably not a very formal research project.
TLDR: don't steal stuff and write your papers and you'll be fine; citations only get important when you start on the semester-long (or longer) papers full of intense research and specific detail
Keep a list of what you're citing on a notepad or a separate file, use MEANINGFUL placeholders (especially if it's a lot of similar papers where you might get confused) and go back and slot them in when you're done. And if you can use something like Endnote (see if it's installed on your campus PCs) then it saves a huge amount of hassle.
Endnote is absolutely fantastic by the way.
*Guide to referencing from the academic support/student services/library etc
*Faculty and/or programme handbook
*Course guide/introductory hand-out
*Any kind of guide produced by the students' union or similar body
At least two of those documents must exist, and the best thing to do about this is to read them and read them again. Then, if you're still confused, which may happen as these things aren't always consistent unfortunately, you need to go and talk to the person running the course and someone who has responsibility for this kind of thing in the faculty or wider university. I apologise if this is wrong, but you sound like the kind of person who tends to get so stressed out by what they don't understand that they just have to ignore it, which only makes it worse in the long run. That's why you need to go and find out everything you can from the relevant people about this, so you can get the information you need to be successful in your assignments, but also to get more used and more confident in these kind of situations in general. Again, apologies if I've got that wrong.
It sounds like you are suppose to have numbered end notes and then an alphabetical bibliography
You don't read too many scientific papers, do you
Generally you say a statement that is either a direct quote or something that is not really your own opinion or conclusion and was made in your reference.
Example:
I hate babies, and most mothers do too. In a recent study, 50% of all mothers hate their babies [1]. This implies that these mothers are terrible.
Where [1] is some cited reference (a journal article, webpage, anything.. depending on the class I guess).
When someone sees that [1] or [2] or [6] or whatever, they will look at your reference section that labels [1] or [2] or [6] that pertains to your cite. What she is saying is that she wants the reference section alphabetical, by author or something. So if you have three references:
[1] Adams, J.K. Journal of Scientific Reasoning. Blah blah blah. 2009
[2] Johnson, Ima. Who give a shit what book I wrote. Stupid publisher. 2000
[3] Ling, Xi. Whatever Journal article. etc..
See? Not so hard. It's just a numeric way of citing your sources. It is irrelevant in which order you cite them in your paper. You order your references alphabetically, and that is where your numbers come from. Kind of a pain in the ass if you keep adding references while you are writing your paper.
Okay, so what you're saying is that the reference list looks like
[1] Adams, J.K. Journal of Scientific Reasoning. Blah blah blah. 2009
[2] Johnson, Ima. Who give a shit what book I wrote. Stupid publisher. 2000
[3] Ling, Xi. Whatever Journal article. etc..
so even if I site Johnson first in the actual paper, I put a [2] next to the quote.
That's where I'm getting hung up.
if you had:
Authors such as Johnson [1], Levitt [2], and Carver & Rondstein [3] all claim that fiction is primarily an escapist device. This is a common view, and one that has only recently been objected to: most notably in Stephen Stephens' Fiction as Politics [4]
at the bottom of that page you'd have something like:
[1] Steve Johnson, On Stories, p47 (for a first reference)
[2] Levitt, p1 (for a work you've already referenced in a footnote)
[3] Carver & Rondstein, 1995, p3 (for an author or authors that have more than one referenced publication - you clarify it by the date of it)
etc.
the alphabetic bit only comes in to the bibliography, where you fully list all sources' full details - date, publisher, vol. & issue no, everything - in alphabetical order. as long as it's in the bibliography you're good to go: you can pretty much use as little information as possible in the inline referencing, as long as the reader has enough info to easily look it up in the bibliography
edit: as far as i know you'd do it the same way as endnotes rather than footnotes. endnotes are a bit confusing because you'd have a 'notes' section with the numbered sourcing followed directly by a 'bibliography' which has a lot of the same info, only with nothing specific to how you've used it: just a list
If you're still edgy about the whole thing I can email you a reseach paper of the 15-20 page variety to take a glance at, which will show you that it's not nearly as scary as it can seem.
I'll try to resist the temptation to go through papers to correct embarrassing mistakes.
1) Clear documentation via footnotes of any claims or evidence used in your paper which are pulled from other sources. These should be numbered sequentially, with the direct source noted at the bottom of each page.
2) A final Reference Page or Bibliography which provides a comprehensive accounting of all sources used in your footnotes throughout the paper. Sometimes you can include any additional sources which may have been used as background research but not directly quoted as well. This list should be alphabetical.
The precise formatting of both is dependent upon the course and the field of study. Track the first one marginally while writing your paper, then clean it up when you're done. Once you've actually finalized the paper, use the footnotes to complete a Reference Page.