Incorporating Scholarship into your Writing

Academic writers have several options when incorporating scholarship into their own writing. On a very basic level, this choice is firstly between referring to a statement (e.g. fact or claim) or referring to a source (e.g. scholar, or specific studies). On a language level, what you are referring to will dictate whether you are writing an 'integral citation' or a 'non-integral citation'.

 

The choice between integral and non-integral citations exists regardless of which referencing style (e.g., Harvard style) you are using. As you can see, the integral citation places a focus on the scholar or study, whereas the the 'non-integral citation' places emphasis on the information whereas to refer to a source they may use an "integral" citation. In which situations, though, is it more appropriate to use one over the other?

Non-integral Citations
Example: Electronic communication methods allow parents to communicate with teachers at mutually convenient times (Ho et al., 2013).

In the example from Blau, I. and Hameiri above, we see a non-integral citation. It is so called because the cited author in this case (Ho, et al.) does not make up part of the grammar of the sentence. By placing the emphasis on Ho's information over the scholar/source itself, the suggestions is that this information is widely accepted within their field of study, and it is not important who said it. As such, non-integral citations tend to be used when a writer wishes to refer to facts, strongly-supported claims, frameworks, models, common conventions and other reliable information that exists in the literature.

The majority of citations used in the social sciences and natural sciences tend to be non-integral.

Integral Citations
Example: Ho et al. (2013) reported that electronic methods of communication allow parents and teachers to communicate at times that are convenient to both.

In the example by Bordalba and Bochaca, the writers have chosen not to represent the content from Ho et al. (2013) as being necessarily factual. The writers use an "integral" citation, which puts the name of the authors in the position of grammatical subject within the sentence they are writing.  By doing so, they present Ho et al.'s work as one possible finding, or interpretation, rather than as an uncontested fact. Such citations can be particularly useful when:

  • Questioning the work of a researcher (e.g., criticise their methodology)
  • Incorporating new, or interesting, interpretations into your own work
  • Focusing on an important source (e.g., a seminal. paper), perhaps for several sentences, to highlight the importance contribution of a particular author or publication

Integral citations are used sparingly in the Medical Science and MPLS divisions, and are more common in text-based studies in the social sciences and humanities.

 

How does citation use work in practice?

Whilst the examples above show the central functions of integral and non-integral citations, it should be noted that there is much variety in citation use, and there are often discipline and genre-specific conventions. We recommend readers perform a careful analysis of conventions from their reading of published papers and student work to identify the citation use appropriate to their area of study. For more, please see: Learning How to Write in My Subject Area