ECI 645: Modern Elementary School Science

Integrating sources into your papers effectively is an important component of research-based writing. In academic writing, this often happens in the literature review section of the paper. Here are some guides and tips for writing effective literature reviews. The suggestions for organization, quoting versus summarizing, and using your own voice are useful for other types of writing beyond formal literature reviews.

To avoid plagiarism, NAU's e-Learning Center advises you to cite sources when:

• You directly quote a source
• You paraphrase a source
• You summarize someone else's ideas in your own words
• You draw on facts, information, data or media from someone else
• You want to add supplemental information not included in your paper, such as footnotes or endnotes

Note: You do not need to cite generally accepted knowledge. For more information, see Not-So-Common Knowledge.

(the text above is a direct quote from the e-Learning Center's Academic Integrity @ NAU tutorial. The e-Learning Center was paraphrasing Princeton University's guidelines. In this case, we credit both sources to show the progression of the ideas -- we'll learn how to format citations properly in the next two boxes).