There are several suggestions on how to conduct research and cite literature:
Firstly, analyse the content outline or core ideas of the references to avoid wasting time by reading the whole original text at once.
Secondly, for longer articles, you should memorise as you read to prevent forgetting. Some students often fall into this misunderstanding, so it is necessary to clarify the purpose and direction of each step of reading the literature to avoid purposeless and rigid reading.
1. REF (citation)
When reading journal articles and other conventional references, you can first read the brief introduction to find out whether it contains the information you need; if not, check the introduction; if it is still irrelevant, then you may not choose the literature.
2. Existence of information that can be borrowed
At this point, the entire text should be read. Without reading word for word, look for evidence related to the thesis through the topic sentences of the paragraphs; if you find it, you should mark it immediately, otherwise it will take precious time to go back and look for specific evidence sentences after reading.
3. Lack of usable information
If you can’t find any useful information, skip it. This is more efficient, as a paper with a large number of references will take time to write if it is read in detail.
4. Summary
The key is to master the skill of using references effectively to retrieve evidence, and to avoid wasting time with few results.
