While writing an article or thesis, we search the literature and benefit from many sources related to our subject. Literature is used a lot, especially in the introduction and discussion. One of the most frequently asked questions is that we get information from a review article we read, do we need to refer to the review we read or to the original article mentioned by the review?
We can best explain this issue by giving an example. But first of all, we need to know what the types of articles are. What is a compilation? What is the original article? What is a case report? What is Meta-Analysis? We have explained these issues in detail in our other article, you can have a look there. In short, when we say review articles, they are articles that scan articles published on a subject within 5-10 years and analyze where science has come in that subject. Review articles do not contain original findings.
Therefore, if we write such information while writing an essay or thesis, “The subject of XXX has been very popular in recent years and many articles have been published. ” Here you can refer to this information as the compilation because the compilation gives the information here. Because the compilation we read gives this information. But let’s continue writing an article or thesis. Again, we are talking about information in the review we read as follows: ” In one of these studies, substance X was found more in patients than in controls .” Although the review also mentioned this issue, it is not the article that made this study. Therefore, it is necessary to refer to the original article by accessing the original article and checking whether it has been reported that substance X is found in excess in patients.
The referral program is important!
As we have mentioned in our other my premium essay, it is absolutely necessary for everyone who starts an academic life and tries to write a thesis or article to use a reference program. Otherwise, you will waste a lot of time. Concentrate on and use which reference program you use well. However, as a team, we recommend EndNote. We also have a detailed article on this topic.
Quality of cited sources
Whether it’s a compilation or an original article, another issue you should pay attention to is quality. The higher the quality of the articles you cite, the higher the quality of your article. So what does quality mean? The quality of an article is directly proportional to the impact factor of the journal in which it is published. If we accept the impact value of 2 and above as a quality journal, you should also consider the impact factors of the journals in which the articles you refer and read are published.
Every journal has an impact factor. However, new journals or journals that have not proven their quality and are less well-known may not have an impact factor.
Let’s formulate
Citing especially confuses fellow students and it is a known fact that they sometimes get stuck on which article to cite. We can formulate it as follows. While writing an article or thesis, we give a lot of information both in the introduction and in the discussion, and we did not find this information. This information is information found by other scientists or may be information from previous articles we have written. Let’s imagine that whatever information we are writing, the referee will ask the following question. “Where did you find this information?” Here, instead of replying directly to the referees, you need to give the message “This information is correct and you can find this information in this article”. Here, in which article the information you provided was first published and announced to science, we need to put that article at the end of the sentence in which we gave the information.
Definitely avoid giving a raw literature summary in article and thesis writing. In other words, it is very unnecessary to give information and refer to 10-15 articles behind it. You will give information, but you must also synthesize it. What we call the unsynthesized raw literature summary; this did that (1-10), that did that (11-20) explanations are not welcome. After saying that he did it, you should have a story in which you will give information about how his work contributed to your article and how it guided your work.
