The article is "Citation Obsession? Get Over It!" by Kurt Schick
It's authored by a writing instructor at James Madison University and talks about how at his institution they're finding that students' fretting over following citation style rules is negatively impacting their ability to teach information literacy skills.
Here's my favorite quotation:
This article resonated with me because I've seen students at the reference desk really stressed out that they're not following citation rules to the exact letter. I try to explain the purpose of the reference list to them--that other scholars always want the ability to follow up on the documents that you use to support your case -- and that as long as they put in as much information as they can to make it re-findable they should be okay. That the key is just to indicate that they are using someone else's ideas.Recent research by the Citation Project corroborates how severely teachers' citation psychosis has diminished students' information-literacy skills, in particular. Rebecca Moore Howard and Sandra Jamieson blame "plagiarism hysteria," which compels teachers to punish improper citation more than reward students' effective use of sources' words and ideas.
What do you think about this article's stance?
Photo credit: "Citation Needed" by futureatlas.com. CC
