3 – Organizing the Citations
Before you write the literature review, organize your material.
As you read, include ideas and citations in the matrix below. You should actually make your own matrix in a MS Word document.
Enter your citations one at a time, as you go through each source.
Once your research is finished, re-organize the ideas so that the flow is coherent. Copy-paste entire lines so that the order of the “topics” makes sense.
Save time: Do not retype everything into your actual research paper. Copy the matrix, and paste to a new doc as “text only”. The grid will disappear. Reformulate into paragraphs.
|
Source |
Page |
Topic |
Idea / Finding
|
Quote or Paraphrase |
|
Smith, 1776 |
334 |
Theory |
The wealth of nations grows with division of labour, because productivity increases when tasks are split up. Specialization of labour also brings gains from trade. |
“(…) led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention” |
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Once your citations are ready, you can rewrite them into paragraphs.
See p. 257 for APAs style. See p. 261 for MLA style.
Here are some templates for APA style. There are many ways to cite the same source.
Version 1
According to Johnson (2013), the best thing since fried bread is “sliced bread.”
Version 2
According to a leading scientist, fried bread is great, but the best thing since that was invented is “sliced bread” (Johnson, 2013).
Version 3