Once you have gone through the process of gathering up all of your evidence (i.e., scholarly articles), you will need to have a way to present the information in an organized fashion. There are different styles in which papers and bibliographies should be organized depending on academic discipline (AMA, APA, MLA, etc). Since we are in the nutrition and health field, we are going to focus on learning about the AMA or American Medical Association Style for organizing evidence. However, always pay attention to the instructions on how to organize your evidence as instructors may recommend another style (e.g., APA) to organize your evidence. In this particular lesson, we are going to focus on formatting a paper, citing scholarly articles, and creating a bibliography (aka a reference list) using the AMA Style Guidelines. When presenting your evidence, whether it be for a research paper or presentation, it is important to cite (give credit) to the sources used in your research. We’ll also share with you tools that you can use to manage your references too! This skill applies to all of the steps in the scientific method!
(Knowing how to organize the evidence benefits all steps in the scientific method)
Review the Required Resources thoroughly BEFORE going through the Graded Activities. Please be aware of the due dates associated with this lesson.
Required Resources
Plagiarism
(Estimated time to complete: 14 minutes)
Most campuses have policies that address academic integrity – which refers to honesty in your academic activities. At the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, for example, the Academic Integrity policy clearly defines and addresses plagiarism as including, but not limited to, “submitting, to satisfy an academic requirement, any document that has been copied in whole or in part from another individual’s work without identifying that individual; neglecting to identify as a quotation a documented idea that has not been assimilated into the student’s language and style; paraphrasing a passage so closely that the reader is misled as to the source…”. These examples of plagiarism are all based on a lack of accurate source citation.
Plagiarism can be summarized as passing off others’ language, thoughts or ideas as one’s original work. It is considered a serious ethical violation in academia. Because academic work generally involves referencing and building on prior ideas and works, students need to know when and how to cite the work of others to avoid plagiarism.
Without a citation, each of these would be considered plagiarism:
- A quote from another author without identifying the author
- Re-writing someone’s work
- Incorporating others’ ideas along with your own
Watch this video on the 10 Types of Plagiarism (3:58 minutes)
To avoid plagiarizing, make sure to include citations, which are references to source material. Depending on the context, this can be accomplished through footnotes, bibliographies, reference lists, hyperlinks, and other means. Each academic discipline has a preferred citation style, which is typically part of a comprehensive set of publication standards. This will be reviewed further in the section below.
This quick tutorial on identifying and avoiding plagiarism* is from the UH Mānoa Library. It includes 5 self-check questions, a useful benchmark for determining if you understand plagiarism.
*Please make sure your Flash plug-in is updated to view this tutorial, or try viewing it in the Chrome browser.
In Text Citations
(Estimated time to complete: 4 minutes)
Learn more about writing in text citations by reviewing this website on in text citations. Pay particular attention to instructions on how to cite when Paraphrasing/Summarizing, using Direct Quote, and using Block Quotes.
Practice
View this example of a citation and answer the question in the 2nd flashcard.
Basic Formatting for Citations
(Estimated time to complete: 3 minutes)
Review the basic formatting for reference citations (aka creating a bibliography) using this website on references. Also review the instructions for formatting newspapers, journal articles, books/e-books, websites/webpages, video, and TV/radio.
Practice
Open the 1st journal article and the 2nd journal article and answer the two questions in the flashcards.
Basic Formatting for Papers
(Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes)
Review how to format the title page, main body and reference list of a research paper. View this example of a paper formatted using the AMA guidelines.
For tips on how to format documents using the features in Microsoft Word see the complete Word 2016 Tutorial Set from the Goodwill Community Foundation’s GCFLearnFree.org program. Each linked unit includes step-by-step instructions, complete with screenshots and a video walk-through. A “Challenge!” activity culminates each lesson using practice documents. While the tutorial, videos and screenshots are specific to Word 2016; the content and feature descriptions are nearly all applicable to any other Word version.
Practice
Free Bibliographic Management Tools
(Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes)
To make your life easier, there are a number of free bibliographic management tools (i.e. tools that will manage your references) that you can use. The list below reviews a few of those tools. Choose one that is best for you!
- Go to EndNote Basic to register for an account. View the guide for using EndNote Basic.
- Go to Mendeley to register for an account. View the guide for using Mendeley.
- Go to Zotero to register for an account. View the guide for using Zotero.
It is important to know that you, the student, are responsible for using citations – including knowing what to cite, how to cite, and by using correct formatting. These online tools can take much of the hassle away, but students (not Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley, or any other software) are responsible for correct citations in their own writing. You should always obtain a copy of the appropriate style guide for your use while writing academic papers.
Resources in this section are meant to help reinforce the content in this lesson.
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Google Scholar called "Cite"
Knowing that there are lots of different formatting styles used in academia and sometimes you just want to pull citations easily and quickly, there is a nice tool in Google scholar called “Cite”. "Cite" will generate a citation in a number of different styles. The citation can then be copied and pasted as appropriate.
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"Cite" generates a citation in a number of different styles, but not the AMA style.
The citation may not be perfectly formatted so you will need to double check it. Unfortunately this tool does not include the AMA style we learned about in this lesson as of right now.