Latin American History

Organizing your research can help make the writing and citing process easier. Use tips from this page to guide you in this step.

Why do we cite? Several reasons! 

1. It makes us look good. Seriously, it's ethical and responsible to help readers differentiate our ideas from those we are using from others.
2. It helps us point our readers to our sources where they can more deeply engage with the scholarly conversation.
3. It helps us to learn how to communicate formally within our discipline/major.

Long description of "Organizing your research" for web accessibility

Official Style Manuals

There are many different types of academic and professional writing styles. The four guidebooks below represent some of the major ones. Use these guides to learn how professional researchers and writers prepare their manuscripts for publication or sharing.

Online Style Resources

Although these resources are not official, they are still credible and very useful! If one of these websites doesn't answer your question, check out the official style guide or contact a librarian for help!

UO Research Guides

These helpful guided from UO Libraries provide information on various citation styles.

Citation chaining (or chasing) is the name for a process in which you use an information source to find other work that is cited within the first source (backwards chaining) or cites to the first source (forward chaining). 

Below is a YouTube video on how citation chaining works in Google Scholar. Keep in mind that you should not have to pay for an article while you are a UO student. Contact your Subject Librarian for help locating materials. In this video, look for a "fluff word" that the researcher uses when searching.

Pause to Reflect

First of all, congratulations on making it this far! You may still have some loose ends to tie up, and that is OK. Take a moment to think back through your research process. Did you learn any helpful tips along the way? Are there new strategies that you can use for future projects or papers?

Do you still need more information? You can go back to previous steps at any time to revisit your research question or look for more or different sources of information.

If you think you missed something, please feel free to reach out to a Subject Librarian:

At UO, professors are encouraged to have a policy about the use of generative AI (GenAI) in their course. GenAI policies are usually included in the course syllabus,but may also be specific to individual assignments. Consult the policy for each of your courses separately because they may be different. 

It is your responsibility to maintain academic honesty by understanding your professor's policy around generative AI use, following it, and asking for additional information if the policy is unclear or has not been communicated sufficiently. You are must also disclose GenAI usage and cite content produced by GenAI tools. You are also responsible if an AI tool falsifies information that you use in your work. 

Additional Resources