For my graduate students… and other readers:
When you are referencing others’ work in our course, whether it is on the discussion board, in your presentation or in your final paper, I urge you to find the primary sources for your citations.
I will be upfront about this and say that I am not at all a fan of citing a work that someone else has cited. Please find the original reference yourself and cite that instead.
The reason for this is three-fold:
- You want to be sure that the “original” author actually exists. As heinous as it may seem, people have been known to fabricate references.
- More common is that a researcher will mis-quote an author or take someone’s work out of context. By going back to the original source, you have the opportunity to verify for yourself what the original author was trying to say.
- “As cited in…” can be an indicator of either a lazy or disinterested scholar who does not care enough to find and cite original authors. I do not think this is the case with anyone in our course, but it is not uncommon for other scholars to dismiss the credibility of a researcher who does not take the time to find primary sources.
Earlier this year, I conducted an informal in-class experiment with a Master’s level class at the U of C. I challenged them to find the original version of Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”. To their surprise, they found that the pyramid that has become an iconic representation of Maslow’s hierarchy is nowhere to be found in his original work. (You can read about it here: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Is the pyramid a hoax? http://wp.me/pNAh3-1rU)
I tell my students, “My point to you is this: Please cite only primary sources in our course. Avoid using ‘as cited in…’ or similar strategies. If you can’t find an original source, don’t cite it.”
The only exception to this would be original works of extreme rarity which are almost impossible to source without physically visiting historical archives.
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Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D. 
Learning, Teaching and Leadership 
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