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Crush your naysayers with reputable information and citations, just like the Credible Hulk! (Image from Google. (n.d.). Credible Hulk. *Pinterest.* https://www.pinterest.com/pin/291115563390912288/)

When you're conducting armchair research (or just interacting normally with others online and through social media), you may attempt to give credit to others in lots of ways. For example, you might hyperlink an article or webpage in your post on X. Or, you might include the original poster's handle in a photo description or comment before sharing an image on Instagram.

While attempting to give credit in these ways is admirable, it is not always enough. Simply stating "All rights belong to the author(s)" or "No copyright infringement intended" doesn't give you the right to distribute a photograph, and will not protect you from a copyright infringement claim.

For academic research, scholars use standardized techniques like in-text citations and bibliographies to formally give credit to others and to participate in scholarly conversations. When you cite someone in your academic papers, you are acknowledging their contributions to the field and their contributions to your assignment. Giving credit in this way lends credibility to your argument because it shows that you've done your research and know what you're talking about.

Giving credit by paraphrasing

Whether the ideas you use come from images, tables, charts, statistics, websites, podcasts, interviews, emails, speeches, songs, movies, or any other source, you still need to credit them. Most of the time, you’ll be paraphrasing ideas from the sources you cite.

Paraphrasing

Incorporating someone else’s ideas into your work and restating them in your own words.

Paraphrasing is more than simply swapping out a few words with synonyms or running a chunk of text through an online translator. When paraphrasing, you analyze the ideas presented, synthesize that information, and summarize it while citing the original source. When you paraphrase well, you demonstrate an understanding of the author’s ideas and that you can restate them without altering the author’s meaning.

Tips for paraphrasing

Understand your source: you can't put something into your own words until you actually understand it. Use the techniques outlined on page 1.4a of module 1 to help you get a better understanding of the scholarly materials you're reading
Be true to the source: make sure you're accurately representing the message of the original author in your paraphrasing. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with their ideas, just that you explain them accurately
Give credit every time: if you didn't think of it yourself, then it is someone else's idea, and you need to give them credit.

It is okay if you don’t feel confident paraphrasing yet. This skill can be challenging and takes practice. You can get help learning about paraphrasing, citing sources, and structuring your bibliography at the Writing and Media Center.

Using direct quotations

Sometimes an author presents an idea in a way that you cannot paraphrase without losing something important from the original wording. In these cases, use a direct quotation by copying the text and putting it into your paper with quotation marks around the phrase and the appropriate in-text citation (more on that in a minute).

When you do this, keep the quote as short as possible while still illustrating your point. Be careful not to rely too heavily on quoted material since, the purpose of research is to make an original argument, not to just pull together big blocks of quotations.

You may have been told at some point that you don’t need to use quotation marks unless you copy a specific number of words in a row from an author’s work. There’s more to it than that.

If an author used words or phrases in a distinctive way, use quotation marks if you use the same words in your paper. For example, “action painting”, coined by American art critic, Harold Rosenberg (1952), is a term that combines common words in a new way.

Notice the words action painting are in quotes (and in this sentence, in italics) followed by the in-text citation referencing Rosenberg's article where the new term appears.

An example of action painting, described by American art critic Harold Rosenberg. (Source: Jackson Pollock. (1952). Convergence [Oil on canvas]. Buffalo AKG Art Museum; Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1956. https://jstor.org/stable/community.21795384)

Rosenberg, H. (1952). The American action painters. ART news, 51(8). 22-50.

Key takeaways

Academic researchers use standardized techniques like in-text citations, paraphrasing and bibliographies to formally give credit to others and to participate in scholarly conversations.

When you paraphrase, you analyze the ideas presented, synthesize that information, and summarize it while citing the original source. When you paraphrase well, you demonstrate an understanding of the author’s ideas and that you can restate them without altering the author’s meaning.