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Referencing other work
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A strong and broad pair of shoulders
To advance our research into the future, we must acknowledge the past through appropriate use of references.
"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."
--Isaac Newton (1643-1727)
我经常会拿来他人的文章进行改写或解读，总结出简练的意思，归纳主要的发现和结论，然后这些心得去论证或支持我今后的研究或结果分析。尽管我对他人的语言进行了重组，我依然对原文抱有感激的心情，它们传达了原作者的观点和构思，因此我必须在我的文章中对原文加以引用。
我会时不时地读到一些没有根据的观点，让我不禁疑问：这些观点是否恰当？论据在哪里？参考文献的一大作用就是为你的主张提供佐证，而不是直接在文中自圆其说。
在本贴中我会谈到学术文章中参考文献的重要性，应当引用何种类型的论著，以及什么样的情况需要参考文献的支持。
我建议大家使用Zotero 或 Mendeley来管理参考文献，这种参考文献管理软件可以从互联网上免费获取，下载地址分别为：www.zotero.org ， www.mendeley.com
Isaac Newton lived and worked in a time when, compared to today, the scientific community was relatively small. In fact, it was confined largely to European men of means who were privileged enough to not have to deal with the travails of life suffered by most of the population. The giants he referred to in his most famous saying included the philosophers and mathematicians of classical Greece, the Arabic scholars of mathematics and optics, and later major contributors to the advancement of physics such as Galileo and Kepler. All these people were indeed giants in the history of scientific advancement, and Newton was expressing an admirable humility in declaring his intellectual debt to them. But it was more than humility; it was also honesty. If Newton had taken credit for advancing a field of science without acknowledging the distinct contributions of those that had gone before him, he would have been dishonest.
Another early example of crediting of the work of others is Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859). Over at least two decades Darwin amassed voluminous examples of changes in domesticated animal lineages through selective breeding, and compiled a vast compendium of evidence to support his argument for the process of natural selection. Although much of this was from his own observations, he also depended heavily on the scientific evidence of other researchers, and the active support of people around the world in sending him specimens, data and examples. The text of Origin is speckled with gentlemanly, but also obligatory, attributions of information to not only the other major naturalists of the day, but also to less well-known enthusiastic individuals within an international community of colleagues and supporters.
Although each modern scientific discipline has its own handful of historical giants (in my fields these would be people like Charles Lyell, the great Charles Darwin himself, Alfred Wegener, Vladimir Vernadsky, and paradigm-setters such as Vasily Dokuchaev and Hans Jenny), each of us is able to see a little further through our own research by building upon the foundations laid down by thousands of lesser-known researchers before us over the past century or more. None of our research occurs in historical isolation, and therefore we must acknowledge this past work if our own current and future work is to be taken seriously.
In my previous post I described the process I go through when reading and writing. One of the things I often do is re-write or paraphrase the words of others in an effort to make the ideas more concise, and to essentially provide summaries of key findings and conclusions that I can then use in constructing justifications for what I am doing (for example in the Introduction of a manuscript) or to support or counterbalance my interpretations of my own results (for example in the Discussion of a manuscript). However, even if I rearrange someone’s words through paraphrasing, I am still indebted to their original words which represented their ideas and motivations. This is why I must cite the original work: I am obliged to if I am to be taken seriously (and not be accused at worst of plagiarism).
In the course of editing manuscripts for Chinese and Japanese scientists (although this problem is certainly not confined to them), I often come across unreferenced statements which make me ask: “What is the justification for this statement? Where is the evidence to support it?” Usually, if I ask myself these questions there has been no attempt by the author to demonstrate that the statement is truly their own by referring to their own results, or that based on a synthesis of other work they have arrived at a genuinely new generalized or specific insight. In most cases where I ask myself these questions, there will be an individual reference or body of work that can be cited to provide supporting evidence for the statement. In the peer review process, it will sometimes be recommended that you refer to some other works to demonstrate that you have a grasp of the wider field, and especially of any counter-arguments or controversies your readers should be aware of.
Another issue that needs to be considered is the appropriateness of using a specific reference to justify something. Care needs to be taken in the interpretation and paraphrasing of others’ work, so that a reader should be able to read the cited work themselves and see easily how you have used it with justification. I do not think intentional misattribution to bolster otherwise weak arguments occurs very often, especially because in the peer review process this would be caught. But I do know through my own experience that managing many different references can occasionally lead to mistakes, including unintentional misattributions. However, these can usually be identified by knowledgeable co-authors and colleagues prior to manuscript submission.
It is essential that you use appropriate citation management and bibliographic software. Most universities and research institutions will provide commercial bibliographic software (my old university had Endnote available to all students and researchers). But there are also free packages available that are extremely useful. I have recently started using Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com/) because it is free and easy to use, and also because it is an academic social network where you can easily share references with colleagues and others. One of the key advantages of using any bibliographic software is that with a click of a button your reference list is formatted appropriately to the requirements of specific publications. You really cannot be a successful academic writer without some sort of bibliographic software.
I want to re-iterate that your use of references is an important link to the past. Although we will often have no specific need to refer to the so-called giants of our respective sciences, we can think of the collective work of past and current researchers as representing a set of strong and broad shoulders upon which we lift ourselves to see that little bit further ahead.
But more than an obligatory link to the past, the appropriate use of references – using those strong and broad shoulders – provides a solid basis upon which your future work depends. Accurate and careful referencing establishes the credibility of your work, and helps it move through the peer review process and ultimately to publication. In that way you make your own contribution to the scientific literature, and grow your reputation and identity as a scientist.
Although not all of us can be a Newton or a Darwin, we can all participate fully in something they held dear: the appropriate and respectful acknowledgement of how our own work is fundamentally dependent on that of others.
Matthew Hughes, PhD
Senior Editor, Edanz Group China
https://m.sciencenet.cn/blog-288924-427029.html
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