Literature Review: Citing Sources That Cite Sources

General Advice

The overriding idea behind providing citations is proper attribution. Work (i.e., analysis, ideas, interpretations, and so forth) that is not your own should be attributed to the people that actually did the work. The general advice to undergraduates and graduate students often boils down to the following:

1. Information that comes from sources needs to be correctly attributed to those sources.
2. Word-for-word reproductions from sources need to be correctly attributed and accompanied by a location identifier—usually a page number.

In the first situation, you are paraphrasing a source, and in the second situation you are providing a direct quotation.

That advice covers most of the territory that students and other authors are likely to encounter. But concrete advice on the finer points of citing sources can be scarce. For example, what if you are citing a source that cites another source?

Citing Sources That Cite Sources

Direct Quotations

If you are reproducing a direct quotation, you should find the original source with the quotation and cite from it. If the original source is unavailable, you can still provide the direct quotation and indicate that the quote is from a secondary source. The correct format for citing from a secondary source varies according to style guide. In Chicago style, for example, authors should “mention the original author and date in the text, and cite the secondary source in the reference list entry. The text citation would include the words ‘quoted in’” (University of Chicago 2010, §15.52).

Paraphrasing

A common situation that involves paraphrasing sources that cite other sources is paraphrasing academic journal articles, which themselves contain many citations. Literature reviews in these articles can be great sources of information about a given topic. But when you paraphrase from the literature review of such an article, should you cite the article or the sources cited in the article? It depends on what the article says and why you’re citing it.

Consider the following scenario: Paper 1 cites papers A, B, and C. You have read paper 1, but you have not yet read papers A, B, or C.

If you are paraphrasing paper 1’s analysis of papers A, B, and C, then cite paper 1. For example, paper 1 might say, “Researchers in the field have struggled to develop a valid and reliable instrument for this variable of interest (Paper A, Paper B, Paper C).” Your paraphrase of paper 1’s analysis of the state of the field should be made directly to paper 1. You’re not reproducing paper 1’s analysis of the field, and you didn’t come up with that analysis of the field on your own (presumably). So paper 1 should get the credit for that analysis. You might even cite paper 1’s analysis and then argue that it’s incorrect.

However, if you are discussing the contents of papers A, B, or C, it is your responsibility to read those papers and cite them directly. For example, paper 1 might say, “Participant recall improves when [some condition] is true (Paper A, Paper B, Paper C).” Assuming all three papers (A, B, and C) directly address this point (that [some condition] improves participant recall) and paper 1 is simply gathering and citing the sources that have shown this to be the case (i.e., no additional analysis is done in paper 1), then you should read and cite papers A, B, and C.

Remember that by citing a source, you are indicating to the reader that you have obtained and reviewed the source. There are at least two reasons for taking this approach: (1) honesty and (2) accuracy. First, an in-text citation indicates that you are paraphrasing from that source, and it does not make sense to paraphrase from a source you have not read. You should not grab citations out of a source, like an academic journal article, and use them in your own work unless you have reviewed the cited works yourself. Second, sometimes authors misinterpret or even misrepresent the sources that they cite. I have often found that I disagree with the way that authors characterize sources that they cite after I have found and reviewed the original sources. And unless authors are rigorous about reviewing the sources that they cite, misinformation about original sources can easily propagate.

References

University of Chicago. 2010. The Chicago Manual of Style. 16th ed. Chicago; London: University of Chicago.