Why use resources for a paper or assignment?
An important task in writing a research paper is to take the ideas and words of experts found in the sources and synthesize them into your paper so that they support your thesis statement. This gives credibility to your written work. When you selected your sources, you probably made some preliminary choices about what to quote, summarize, and paraphrase in your paper. Your next step is to integrate these expert ideas into your work.
Some basic steps for integrating a source into your research paper include:
- Briefly introduce the source.
- Provide the source (as a quotation, paraphrase, or summary).
- Cite it with an in-text citation.
- Comment on the source or explain how it supports the point you are making in your paper.
You can learn more about how to integrate sources into your paper by going to the library's Cite Sources Guide.
