Citation Conventions

Go to the library's tutorial on citations and complete the section "Why We Cite:"

http://www.lib.unc.edu/instruct/citations/introduction/index.html


Good citations accomplish the following goals:

• They allow you to show how your argument is built upon the ideas of others.
• They allow you to indicate which ideas are taken from others, and from whom those ideas were taken; in other words, to give credit where it's due.
• They allow the interested reader to follow your argument and confirm its logic by investigating the ideas on which the argument is built, or to further explore those ideas on their own.

The problem is that there are no established standards for how to cite references in blog posts, though there are generally accepted guidelines. Return to the science blogs we looked at a few weeks ago and note how each of these cites the material they reference in their posts:

http://scienceblogs.com/thoughtfulanimal/

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/

http://science.blogdig.net/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog

After you've looked at each blog, discuss your answers to the following questions with your group:

1. Many of the posts that appear on these blogs, like your Feeder 1.2 assignment, are summaries of single articles that appeared in another journal. How do the authors of these blogs cite the articles on which their posts are based? Is there a standard format? If so, what is it?

2. How do the authors credit other material they reference (i.e. images, background reading, etc.)? Do these follow a standard format? What is it?

3. According to the standards outlined in the UNC Library's tutorial, are the citation conventions employed by each of those blogs ethical? Why or why not?

4. How do you think you should cite sources on your blog? Which aspects of the above blogs do you want to emulate? What mistakes do you want to avoid?