Integrating information from sources

There are three main ways to bring information from a source into your work.

• Paraphrase: express a specific idea or piece of information from a source in your own words without changing its meaning
• Summarise: give a shorter overview of the main ideas or findings from a larger part of a source, leaving out most of the detail
• Quote: use the exact words from a source when the wording itself is important

Paraphrasing and summarising usually make it easier to combine source material with your own explanation. Quote selectively when the exact wording matters.

See Paraphrasing and Quoting for detailed guidance and examples.

Whichever method you use, cite the source. See Citing for guidance on when and how to cite.

If your assessment permits generative AI and you use it to help find or understand sources, check the original sources yourself and follow the instructions for your assessment. See Acknowledging AI use.

Evidence should not simply be added to your work and left for the reader or audience to interpret. Show how it relates to the point you are making.

A useful approach is to:

1. Make your point. State what you are trying to establish or argue.

2. Introduce relevant source material. Use evidence that supports, illustrates, develops or challenges your point.

3. Explain or evaluate it. Say what the evidence means and why it is relevant. Where appropriate, consider its strengths, limitations or alternative interpretations.

4. Connect it to your point. Make clear how the evidence supports, develops or challenges your reasoning.

You may recognise a similar pattern from structures such as PEEL (Point, Evidence, Explanation, Link). Use it flexibly: the aim is to connect evidence with your reasoning, not to force every paragraph into the same formula.

Example

Imagine that a source reports fewer late submissions after a flexible-deadline policy was introduced. The citation details are shown as a placeholder:

There is no fixed proportion of source material or number of quotations that suits every assessment. Use enough evidence to support your points, while keeping your own explanation, evaluation and reasoning clear.

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The position of source information in a sentence affects what the reader notices. In author-date referencing styles such as Harvard and APA, it also affects whether the citation is parenthetical or narrative.

Emphasising the information

Here, the source details appear in a parenthetical citation. This approach can be useful when you want to foreground a finding, combine several sources around an issue, or keep the focus on the topic rather than an individual researcher.

Emphasising the author

Here, the author is named in the sentence and the citation is narrative. This approach can be useful when you want to discuss a particular author's argument, compare different authors, evaluate an interpretation, or show how thinking has developed.

Using OSCOLA

OSCOLA usually places source details in footnotes, so narrative and parenthetical do not describe its citation format in the same way. You can still choose whether to foreground an author, judgment or other authority, or to foreground the information.

See the Referencing guide and Cite Them Right Online for OSCOLA footnote and pinpoint conventions.

See Citing for further guidance on narrative and parenthetical citations.

When you make an author or source part of your sentence, a reporting verb can show what they have done and help you represent their position accurately.

For example:

• Ahmed reports that ...
• Ahmed argues that ...
• Ahmed suggests that ...
• Ahmed demonstrates that ...

These verbs do not mean the same thing. The verb you choose affects how strongly you represent the claim and how you position yourself in relation to it. A reporting verb does not replace the citation.

See Reporting verbs for guidance on choosing and using them accurately.

Academic work often requires you to do more than discuss one source at a time. You may need to bring sources together to show that:

• different studies reach similar conclusions
• authors disagree about an issue
• evidence is mixed or uncertain
• one study develops or challenges an earlier idea
• several sources together support a broader point

This is often called synthesis.

Rather than writing about each source in a separate sentence or paragraph, organise your work around the point or issue you are discussing and use the relevant sources together as evidence. This keeps your own reasoning at the centre.

Synthesis is relevant throughout university study. How much is expected, and how complex it needs to be, will depend on the assessment, level and discipline.

When reviewing your work, ask yourself:

• Is it clear what point I am making?
• Does each source have a purpose in supporting, developing or challenging that point?
• Have I explained why the evidence is relevant rather than simply inserting it?
• Have I chosen appropriately between paraphrasing, quoting and summarising?
• Have I made it clear where information from sources comes from?
• Have I brought related sources together where appropriate?
• Is my own reasoning still clear alongside the sources I have used?
• If I used generative AI, have I checked the original sources and followed my assessment brief?
• If I am presenting, is it clear where the source material comes from and why it matters?