*Public Health

Summarize, paraphrase, and quote to include others' ideas in your own writing.

• Summarize: Summarization condenses the information to a few general statements. Summarize when you find the same information in many sources. Summarize when one source provides a lot of context for your project.
• Paraphrase: Put the information in your own words. Paraphrase when one idea is important but the exact wording does not matter. You will often find paraphrasing useful if multiple sources have similar information.
• Quote: Use a small portion of another person's words, exactly as that person wrote or said them. Put quotation marks around the words or phrases you borrowed. Quote when information is unique to one source and is not easy to reword. Quote when one source uses especially compelling language.

Most research papers follow a similar format (IMRAD).

Introduction

The introduction provides background information on the topic and summarizes previous research on the topic (the literature review). It points out gaps in the research or conflicting findings. It helps the user understand why the author did their own research and what they wanted to learn from their study. Many times, the introduction will also include the author's hypothesis and the reasons they expected that outcome.

Methods

The methods section describes the study's scope and explains what the authors did. It should tell you what you would need to know if you wanted to do the same study. It will tell you how many people or items the author studied and how they collected the samples. You will see descriptions of important information about the participants or samples. You will see names of tests, chemicals, and software the authors used in their study.

Results

The results section tells you what the authors found. You will often see charts or graphs in this section. The results section has facts. Sometimes the results section is combined with the discussion section.

And

Discussion

The discussion section analyzes the results. It will tell you how the author's results compare to other studies. It will tell you why the author's results are important. If the author's results did not match their hypothesis, it will explore why the results were different than they had expected. The discussion section also usually tells you limitations of the study and topics for further research.

Citation managers are amazing tools that can do so much for your research process, including:

Here is the citation manager we recommend:

Most of the Library's eResources can generate a citation for you. Look for the Cite Button or other Citation Tools in these locations:

• In the menu to the right of an article/abstract.
• At the top of the results list.
• Under each citation in the results list.
• At the bottom of an article/abstract page.

The following tools can help you decide where to publish.