Citing sources in your academic writing ethically and accurately

Via academic papers, researchers, therefore, have the responsibility to not only accurately present the study's results, but to also truthfully discuss the findings of other related studies in the light of their own. Prior studies agreeing with your findings could influence a reader differently than say past research contravening it. Wrong referencing, especially if repeated across generations of writing, could turn inaccurate information into commonly accepted facts. 1 

Your study is obviously based on existing knowledge. It is, as Issac Newton once wrote, "if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Any information in your article- be it a hypothesis or an idea or even the methodology — your readers will not know where it came from unless you have informed them. Accurate attribution is one of the guiding principles of academic integrity ensuring that credit is given where credit is due and that anyone can trace the genesis of a scientific theory, a conjecture, model or framework. 2 

Citing your references – where can you go wrong 

This could be an innocent mistake where you unintentionally provide wrong or missing reference information (of author-date-publication-page-version details), which impedes the discovery of the right reference. 3 Of course, you could reduce the probability of such mistakes using reference management software such as EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, etc. But even then, if you, for instance, get the authors right but the publication year wrong, you could end up inserting the wrong citation. 3 These errors are mostly (but not always) picked in the copy-editing stage with or sometimes without the assistance of an automated reference extraction and checking process.4  

It could also be that you missed citing a source that is relevant. The source could be another researcher’s article or even your own previously published paper. Or perhaps it is an individual not at all connected with the academics, whom you casually interreacted with, that helped you arrive at an important insight about your work.5 Failing to cite in any of such cases could be considered as plagiarism and it could be categorized under either plagiarism of idea, plagiarism of text, mosaic plagiarism (copying perspectives and opinions along with and a number of verbatim terms or phrases without crediting) or self-plagiarism.6 These could result in penalties ranging from disciplinary actions including apology letters and retraction of the published article to criminal charges such as suspension and prosecution.7  

Peer-review rings are coalitions formed between real scientists and pseudonym accounts created with fake e-mail addresses with the intention of rigging the peer review system. Citation rings or citation cartels, on the other hand, are groups of researchers who vow to cite each other’s papers even if they are completely irrelevant. These are usually a network of researchers driven by the need to improve their citation scores. A particularly infamous case is that of “a peer review and citation ring” uncovered by Sage Publications, in 2014, that had been operating in one of their journals. This led to the retraction of 60 implicated articles and the resignation of a researcher who was a key player in the ring.8  

Before you read anything as part of your literature review, it is best if you could crosscheck its credibility. For instance, was the paper published in a peer-reviewed journal? When was it published – is it possible that the data in it could be considered out-of-date now? Has it been retracted since? Have there been any corrections released after its publication? It isn’t just a matter of getting the citation wrong: working with unreliable sources could have major consequences on the foundation of your study as a whole. 

It is always recommended that you read and understand a paper completely before citing it. Getting a citation wrong could lead to a fellow researcher being incorrectly linked to a claim that they do not support in the first place. 9 It is rather easy to copy references from another article on the same topic without actually reading the original paper. But what if that paper had gotten the citation wrong? Careless or wrong referencing could lead to perpetuation of false information and Chinese whispers that defy the very idea of scientific progress. 10  

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