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Designed by educators. Powered by technology. Tested by time.

For individual inquiry and collaborative research, NoodleTools:

Paves the way for original, high-quality work

NoodleTools gives students a systematic but flexible framework for navigating the tangled web of research. Students develop expert critical-thinking skills, gain confidence, and replace patchwriting and plagiarism with synthesis.

Grows with students, novice to expert

From a novice's research question to a graduate student's thesis, the three levels of NoodleTools provide a mental model for research and a common language across faculty and disciplines.

Supports teaching in the moment

NoodleTools pulls back the curtain so that you can offer early, in-context feedback on students' work at predictable bottlenecks and ahead of the writing space.

Gives you access to experts

We are educators, citation specialists, primary source authorities, and academic researchers. That expertise is baked into our platform design and services.

Smart Tools. Smart Teaching. Smart Research.

Effective & proactive teaching

Set up and start teaching in minutes.

Track students' progress, provide in-context feedback.

No advertising. Student-friendly privacy policy.

Teach responsively

A student's research companion

Cite your sources and organize your notes.

Get help with MLA, APA and Chicago-style citations.

Collaborate in real-time from anywhere.

Discover a better way

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NoodleTools: Student research platform with MLA, APA and Chicago/Turabian bibliographies, notecards, outlining.

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Greenley Library, SUNY Farmingdale State College

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We are a globally renowned resource that provides assistance with English to students, teachers, professionals, and organizations across the world. Our goal is to assist clients in their development as writers - no matter their skill level.

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Purdue OWL® - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University

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We are a globally renowned resource that provides assistance with English to students, teachers, professionals, and organizations across the world. Our goal is to assist clients in their development as writers - no matter their skill level.

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Working with sources is an important skill that you'll need throughout your academic career.

It includes knowing how to find relevant sources, assessing their authority and credibility, and understanding how to integrate sources into your work with proper referencing.

This quick guide will help you get started!

Finding relevant sources

Sources commonly used in academic writing include academic journals, scholarly books, websites, newspapers, and encyclopedias. There are three main places to look for such sources:

Research databases: Databases can be general or subject-specific. To get started, check out this list of databases by academic discipline. Another good starting point is Google Scholar.

Your institution's library: Use your library's database to narrow down your search using keywords to find relevant articles, books, and newspapers matching your topic.

Other online resources: Consult popular online sources like websites, blogs, or Wikipedia to find background information. Be sure to carefully evaluate the credibility of those online sources.

When using academic databases or search engines, you can use Boolean operators to refine your results.

Evaluating sources

In academic writing, your sources should be credible, up to date, and relevant to your research topic. Useful approaches to evaluating sources include the CRAAP test and lateral reading.

CRAAP test

CRAAP is an abbreviation that reminds you of a set of questions to ask yourself when evaluating information.

Currency: Does the source reflect recent research?

Relevance: Is the source related to your research topic?

Authority: Is it a respected publication? Is the author an expert in their field?

Accuracy: Does the source support its arguments and conclusions with evidence?

Purpose: What is the author's intention?

Lateral reading

Lateral reading means comparing your source to other sources. This allows you to:

Verify evidence

Contextualize information

Find potential weaknesses

If a source is using methods or drawing conclusions that are incompatible with other research in its field, it may not be reliable.

Integrating sources into your work

Once you have found information that you want to include in your paper, signal phrases can help you to introduce it. Here are a few examples:

Function

Example sentence

Signal words and phrases

Neutral: You present the author's position neutrally, without any special emphasis.

According to recent research, food services are responsible for one-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

According to, analyzes, asks, describes, discusses, explains, in the words of, notes, observes, points out, reports, writes

Supportive: A position is taken in agreement with what came before.

Recent research has confirmed Einstein's theory of general relativity by observing light from behind a black hole.

Agrees, confirms, endorses, reinforces, promotes, supports

Argumentative: A position is taken for or against something, with the implication that the debate is ongoing.

Allen Ginsberg denies the importance of artistic revision ...

Argues, contends, denies, insists, maintains

Following the signal phrase, you can choose to quote, paraphrase or summarize the source.

This means including the exact words of another source in your paper. The quoted text must be enclosed in quotation marks or (for longer quotes) presented as a block quote. Quote a source when the meaning is difficult to convey in different words or when you want to analyze the language itself.

Paraphrasing: This means putting another person's ideas into your own words. It allows you to integrate sources more smoothly into your text, maintaining a consistent voice. It also shows that you have understood the meaning of the source.

Summarizing: This means giving an overview of the essential points of a source. Summaries should be much shorter than the original text. You should describe the key points in your own words and not quote from the original text.

Citing sources

Whenever you quote, paraphrase, or summarize a source, you must include a citation crediting the original author.

Citing your sources is important because it:

Allows you to avoid plagiarism

Establishes the credentials of your sources

Backs up your arguments with evidence

Allows your reader to verify the legitimacy of your conclusions

The most common citation styles are APA, MLA, and Chicago style. Each citation style has specific rules for formatting citations.

Tools and resources

Scribbr offers tons of tools and resources to make working with sources easier and faster. Take a look at our top picks:

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A quick guide to working with sources Working with sources is an important skill that you'll need throughout your academic career. It includes knowing how

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More than 100 reference examples and their corresponding in-text citations are presented in the seventh edition Publication Manual. Examples of the most common works that writers cite are provided on this page; additional examples are available in the Publication Manual.

To find the reference example you need, first select a category (e.g., periodicals) and then choose the appropriate type of work (e.g., journal article) and follow the relevant example.

When selecting a category, use the webpages and websites category only when a work does not fit better within another category. For example, a report from a government website would use the reports category, whereas a page on a government website that is not a report or other work would use the webpages and websites category.

Also note that print and electronic references are largely the same. For example, to cite both print books and ebooks, use the books and reference works category and then choose the appropriate type of work (i.e., book) and follow the relevant example (e.g., whole authored book).

Examples on these pages illustrate the details of reference formats. We make every attempt to show examples that are in keeping with APA Style's guiding principles of inclusivity and bias-free language. These examples are presented out of context only to demonstrate formatting issues (e.g., which elements to italicize, where punctuation is needed, placement of parentheses). References, including these examples, are not inherently endorsements for the ideas or content of the works themselves. An author may cite a work to support a statement or an idea, to critique that work, or for many other reasons. For more examples, see our sample papers.

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Provides examples of references for periodicals; books and reference works; edited book chapters and entries in reference works; reports and gray literature; conference presentations and proceedings; dissertations and theses; unpublished and informally published works; data sets; audiovisual media; social media; and webpages and websites.