Locating Source Material

Your classes often require you to do various kinds of research before you start writing, a process that can be difficult, time-consuming, and mysterious!  For these reasons, you need to give yourself enough time to track down source materials you need.  To get started researching, check out the information below.

A good place to begin is the UT Libraries home page and its resources:

• The Library’s “Research Help” webpage has useful tutorials and tips.
• The Library has organized the databases by academic disciplines and subject.
• Trained Librarians can help you with your research.  Try the “Ask a Librarian” chat tool on the left-hand side of the Library’s website.

Integrating Source Material

Coming soon: we appreciate your patience while our website undergoes further development In the meantime, here are some resources to check out:

For help with knowing when to summarize, paraphrase, or quote your sources — or even with learning more about the differences between all three — see the OWL’s handy guide on Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing.

If you are stuck on how to talk about your source material, check out Cathy Birkenstein and Gerald Graff’s They Say / I Say (2017) in the library. In particular, the third chapter, “‘Yes / No / Okay, But’: Three Ways to Respond,” helps writers to boil down their responses to one of three main categories (disagreeing with a reason, agreeing with a difference, and both agreeing and disagreeing at the same time) and also includes templates and models for introducing your sources.

Citing Sources

When using another author’s intellectual property (from primary or secondary source material), it is essential that you properly cite your source.  Giving credit not only benefits your credibility as an author, but will also help you avoid plagiarism.  Be sure to carefully document all the necessary citation information for your sources while researching to make the process much easier.

There are multiple formats for citation styles, and they vary according to academic discipline.  The Modern Language Association (MLA) has a specific format for citation information that is to be included both in-text and on a Works Cited page.  This format is used for English and some other humanities courses and includes stylistic conventions for the format of the essay as well as for the citations.

Similarly, the American Psychological Association (APA) has its own form of citation and formatting that is most often utilized by courses in the social sciences.  Yet another style of citation is the Chicago Manual of Style, which is often used in research papers for history and some humanities courses.

You should always check with your professor about which citation format to use.

For specific information on the guidelines for in-text, bibliographic, and footnote/endnote citation, see the links below:

The Owl at Purdue: APA Style Citation

The Owl at Purdue: Chicago Style Citation

The Owl at Purdue: MLA Citation

UT Libraries: Citing Sources

 

Avoiding Plagiarism

In your classes, you’ll be reminded by your teachers often that plagiarism is against University rules and constitutes academic dishonesty.  Even if your professor doesn’t mention it, the Student Code of Conduct reminds all students in every course at the University of Tennessee to abide by the Honor Statement:

An essential feature of the University is a commitment to maintaining an atmosphere of intellectual integrity and academic honesty. As such the University utilizes an Honor Statement that reads, ‘As a student of the University, I pledge that I will neither knowingly give nor receive any inappropriate assistance in academic work, thus affirming my own personal commitment to honor and integrity.’  (§11.1)

You may know that plagiarism is bad, but do you know exactly what it is and how plagiarism occurs?  Committing plagiarism means representing someone else’s ideas, thoughts or words as your own.  People plagiarize when they do not give credit to someone else’s “intellectual property” by omitting citations and references.

Furthermore, the Student Code of Conduct is specific about what constitutes plagiarism:

Plagiarism is using the intellectual property or product of someone else without giving proper credit. The undocumented use of someone else’s words or ideas in any medium of communication (unless such information is recognized as common knowledge) is a serious offense, subject to disciplinary action that may include failure in a course and/or dismissal from the University. Specific examples of plagiarism include, but are not limited to:

1. 1. Using without proper documentation (quotation marks and citation) written or spoken words, phrases, or sentences from any source;
   2. Summarizing without proper documentation (usually a citation) ideas from another source (unless such information is recognized as common knowledge);
   3. Borrowing facts, statistics, graphs, pictorial representations, or phrases without acknowledging the source (unless such information is recognized as common knowledge);
   4. Collaborating on a graded assignment without the instructor’s approval; and
   5. Submitting work, either in whole or partially created by a professional service or used without attribution (e.g., paper, speech, bibliography, or photograph).  (§11.4)

Here are some other examples of plagiarism:

• You take ideas about a historical event from a history professor’s blog and do not provide credit for those ideas in your history paper.
• You find a journal article with data accumulated by scientists about Japanese honeysuckle and use it as your own data in a biology paper.
• You copy Mark Twain’s ideas about humor writing word-for-word in your English paper without any quotation marks.
• You neglect to provide a citation and reference for information that you have paraphrased.

The consequences for plagiarism can be severe.  For example, you could receive an “F” for a course if you forget to include a Works Cited page with your paper!  To avoid being accused of plagiarism, you need to give credit to the concepts, facts, ideas and words you find from other sources and use in your papers.  You give credit by properly using quotations or paraphrases and always providing correct citation and reference information whenever you do so.

If you are ever in doubt about whether you have properly cited source material, be sure to check with your professor or visit the Writing Center.

Other Useful Links:

See also UNC Chapel Hill’s handout on plagiarism.