Citation - whats the right way to cite a paper? (Sep/08/2009 )
Penguin on Sep 8 2009, 05:43 PM said:
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I think in a thesis this depends on your supervisor
you can cite the inventors, but with methods which are "common knowledge" (which are all methods used in CSI no matter if correct or not
) you can just assume that the reader knows the principle behind it. Nevertheless for a thesis it is never a fault to repeat the priciple of the method in your own words and not using wikipedia (showing you understood what you did; it is really, really embarrassing if you defend your thesis and you cannot even explain the principle of PCR which you used all the time 
).....in a paper space is limited and this part is omitted usually. Good advice, gebergszeige
Generally you have to establish the validity or your methodology and that's accomplished with data. As was said, you shouldn't use a hearsay citation.
gebirgsziege on Sep 8 2009, 04:21 PM said:
pito on Sep 8 2009, 02:06 PM said:
gebirgsziege on Sep 8 2009, 01:19 PM said:
Otherwise cite eg. "Smith et al. 1901 cited by Miller et al. 2005" so you can avoid that the mistakes leelee pointed out happen (I am sure you know the spinac/iron story....)
Is this a general rule ? That you need to use the cited by.... ?
This would be the correct way (at least I was taught this). Otherwise you are giving someone else the account of finding out fact x. With the - more complicated - cited by you give the account of a fact x to the person who did the original research. But this is only used when the original literature is not available. And it can cause you troubles....maybe your reviewer is the one who found out fact x and you are not citing....and you might be suprised why your manuscript is rejected
But if you are refering to general facts of something (like eg the necrotroph lifestyle of Botrytis) you can cite a review article as well without refering to all original sources (sometimes indicated as "reviewed by xyz" to make clear that you did not use primary sources at this point.
I think it always depends on the type of facts you are citing....eg. you will not need the primary source for "Botrytis is a necrotrophic pathogen" but for you will need it when you discuss the behaviour of Botrytis in the presence of different fungicides.
I can indeed accept this method or understand that this is indeed the correct method. On the other hand, its not always easy to find the correct literature.
What with the following problem: lets say you find that X dissolves in Y , you read this in a paper (paper 2) that got it from another paper.. (the original one, paper 1), but you can not find a copy of the original one.
What would you do then?
I would think: oh well, you know its from that paper (original one, paper 1) (because you saw the abstract or you know for sure its in that paper..) so you can refer to that one (the original one)...
Or would you then do it like you allready said: Otherwise cite eg. "paper 1" cited by "paper2"
I am asking this because my supervisors always assumed that I have every paper that I quoted... So often I couldnt coute the original ones because I did not have this paper.
Eventough you know 100% sure it is stated in that paper (commen knowledge or..)
And leelee sure got a point, when mistakes are made.. its easy to copy such a mistake.
Another point is that when you always need to search for the original ones: you could lose a lot of time.
pito, the abstract thing: as far as I am aware it is accepted that you cite the original paper only having the abstract.....BUT be careful when you read papers in the future: is the abstract the same than what is written in the paper???? It happens time by time that what is written in the abstract cannot be found anywhere in the article????
Nevertheless I would advice you to ask yourself the following question: Is this work covering a key point of your research? If the answer is yes, you should order the original article. Otherwise you have to decide if you trust the abstract before you cite it (e.g. by looking at other papers of the same author).
gebirgsziege on Sep 10 2009, 08:35 AM said:
Nevertheless I would advice you to ask yourself the following question: Is this work covering a key point of your research? If the answer is yes, you should order the original article. Otherwise you have to decide if you trust the abstract before you cite it (e.g. by looking at other papers of the same author).
I agree,
however I only use the abstract if I am sure its indeed covered in the text itself (by checking in other papers: if they say its like you read it in the abstract, then normally its ok or just when its cited so many times that you know its in there.)
However: I have only done thise twice and both of those times it was 100% sure it was indeed covered in the paper.
But , why would they say something in the abstract thats not in the text? That would make no sense to me.
pito on Sep 10 2009, 08:45 AM said:
You are right, but keep aware of this when reading papers. You will be suprised how often this happens.
Cannot understand it either....maybe its just bad writing that the point of the abstract does not get clear or it is sloppy writing......
I disagree with using just abstracts -- many authors make declarative statements in their abstracts that might not be fully supported in the text. This is where your critical analysis comes in -- the authors may state something unequivocally in the abstract because they believe it (one hopes), but the key point is whether their data fully supports such a statement *in your opinion*. You can not make this judgment unless you read the paper itself.
HomeBrew on Sep 10 2009, 01:24 PM said:
Thank you very much homebrew.....this is just what I meant with something in abstract which is not supported by the paper. I should work on the precision of my English.
gebirgsziege on Sep 8 2009, 12:19 PM said:
Otherwise cite eg. "Smith et al. 1901 cited by Miller et al. 2005" so you can avoid that the mistakes leelee pointed out happen (I am sure you know the spinac/iron story....)
Could you explain me the spinac/iron story because I do not understand this?
And I also wanted to add that I always used to put the original source or paper, but I got my ass kicked because I used a paper that was "too" old and I needed to put in another, newever one that conformed the old paper
I just don't get that.