Information Literacy In Real Life (IL IRL)

Citations as a Research Tool

You may have heard in your classes at SCC that you need to make sure you are citing your sources to make sure you are not plagiarizing and to show that you did your research. However, citations can act as a great research tool for students. Next time you are doing a research assignment, take a quick look at your source's citations. You could learn:

• If your article included outdated research. While your article might have been published this year, consider how old their sources are. Are your article's sources published recently, or are they relying on older information? If you are reading an article that uses APA format (usually scientific or medical information), this is why dates are included in in-text citations, since dates are very important to those subject areas.
• If your article used credible sources. Credible sources don't make up their information. They do their own research and then use that research to write their articles. A quick scan of a source's citations can tell you what kinds of sources they used in their own research (such as other journals, books, studies, etc.). If you look at an article's citations and they are not citing other credible sources, chances are, this article might not be the most credible.
• Citations can help you find other sources. Think of your article's Works Cited or References list as a "See More Reading List." If you find an article you like, check out their references to see where they did their research. You might be able to find the sources they reference and they can help lead you to more sources to help you with your research.