hi everyone,
Just wanted to ask your opinions on this --

I am working on a paper, and I was wondering if citations should be added in IMMEDIATELY after writing sentences, OR is it more time-effective if I just continue writing, and only look for the references to cite after I have finished? For example if I have finished 4 paragraphs, then I go and look for references, or should I cite them as I write each sentence?

Any tips on how I can work faster?

thanks
love satchi

I do both of these things. I think if I'm writing something I'm familiar with then I just write and add references later, but if it's something that I will forget where I got it from then I will add references as write. If I really want to get ideas down quickly I might just write a short hand reference like (Bloggs) just so I remember where I got it from, then update with the real thing later.

I've done both. I do find adding them later takes much more time, but as ToL says, sometimes you just have to get your ideas down quickly.

I used to mark places where references should be and insert them after writing the whole thing, convinced that this makes everything easier and faster. But sometimes I was searching for the source far too long to consider this easy. I switched to the method mentioned by Tree - I note the author's name and page number and then I turn it into proper reference.

thanks everyone! the thing with me is forgetting which reference fits what. It took me almost the whole morning to search for one particular reference, I think it is also because I am not familiar with the field of which I am writing, that seems to make it worse.

Do you read/glance through every paper cited? There are some papers I cannot access, so in honesty I haven't gone past the abstract

thanks again
love satchi

If I am sure what they contain but I can't get access to them then I just cite them. I do this when I know I know they are the key papers because they are cited by everyone else. Sometimes I cite them even if all I can get is the paper title!

hi Tree thanks
love satchi

Add citations straight away. Ideally use something like Mendeley or Zotero to find the right one, or if not leave a comment in word of what paper you want to cite.

Doing it at the end gives a worse result, and takes a LOT more time, trust me on this!

hi sisyphus thanks a lot. I haven't used Mendeley or Zotero before, will look it up.
love satchi

Hi there!

Usually I write citations immediately, and I guess it is due to my whole process of reading and writing since I usually have all the citations at hand.

I had a huge problem last year - I was writing a text and had left it unfinished for a month or so. I had inserted several paragraphs from other authors, wanting to rewrite them and cite them properly. However, my hard disk died in the meantime, and luckily I had most of the stuff (my text and the literature) on cloud, but few of those articles were not on cloud. Anyway, when I got back to finishing my paper those non-cited but inserted paragraphs were from the articles that were lost with the hard drive, and I have missed them entirely when I checked my paper. I've sent it for publication, and was duly noted by the editors that there was suspicion of plagiarism, but luckily I explained the situation, corrected my mistakes and everything was fine at the end.

After that experience I am very much inclined to finish citations when I create them. :)