You can stay organized while working on your literature review by writing as you read.
Writing as you read helps you avoid plagiarism. You can track which ideas from which authors you are using.
When you read an important section of text that is relevant to your research assignment, paraphrase the text. When you paraphrase, you:
- Apply another authors' ideas to your research topic.
- Show you understand the other authors' ideas and the context of your research topic.
- Still cite the author from whom the ideas originated.
To paraphrase as you read, you can follow these steps:
- Read the original text. Focus on the main ideas from the author. Check the author's citations and consider if those might be closer sources to the idea you want to paraphrase.
- In your own words, explain the original text to yourself or to a friend. Check your understanding of the passage.
- Ask yourself: How does this text apply to my research project?
- Write out a paraphrased version of the original text, including explaining how the text connects to your research topic. Keep track of what text you are citing.
- Check the paraphrased text you wrote. If you copied any of the original author's phrases, then those phrases need to be in quotation marks.
- Whenever you use your paraphrased text in your research project, always properly cite where you paraphrased from.
