The usual research

While working with sources, you usually need to search databases, browse through journals, or request an interlibrary loan. Sometimes you also need to obtain literature from the university library in Erlangen or Nuremberg. If you need support with literature research or acquisition, our library will gladly assist you.

Also refer to our articles Effective research: Tips and tools for beginners and Starting your research.

Exceptions for citing secondary sources

If your efforts do not succeed, or if obtaining the literature would involve an unreasonable amount of effort, you may exceptionally refer to knowledge gained from secondary sources with the note “quoted in” (abbreviated as “qtd. in”), or “as cited in”. In this case, you take the relevant quotation that you do not have access to from the publication that is available to you. It can look like this:

Example: Solution-oriented short-term therapy is based on the insight that “major therapies without a time limit usually drag on until the patient realizes that the treatment could last a lifetime, and gives it up” (Watzlawick et al., 2001, p. 137, qtd. in Berklin, 2010, p. 56).

In the reference list, only “Berklin, 2010” is included – in other words, only the work you have consulted. Under no circumstances should you quote Watzlawick without mentioning Berklin if you have not personally examined Watzlawick’s work.

You should only use this approach in an emergency, as the quote from the work you have may appear in a completely different context in the original.

Frequently asked questions

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Citable sources

For sources to be considered citable in academic work, they must meet the following criteria:

• They were written by authors who themselves work scientifically.
• They are up to date – this does not mean “new”, but “relevant today”.
• They are relevant to the topic.

In relevant and discipline-specific reference works, the state of research is usually well summarized, and the most important literature is listed. You can use these for further research, e.g., in library catalogs.

Reference works do not include common dictionaries or Stangl’s worksheets, but they do include, e.g., the Handbook of Social Work or the Dictionary of Adult Education.

Follow the library’s tips in the article Effective research: Tips and tools for getting started.

Research on the internet

Sometimes online searches provide the first access to a topic. However, a simple Google search does not replace systematic research for suitable academic literature.

You must research suitable academic literature independently, as the literature you use is, among others, a criterion for evaluating your work.

Wikipedia is not considered a citable source in the Faculty of SW or in other faculties, because the authors’ identity is not transparent and the content is not systematically reviewed.

Newspaper reports are also generally not citable, unless they are the only available source. If you want to, e.g., address public discourse about the “No-Pegida” demonstrations in Nuremberg, or quote from a Spiegel interview with Angela Merkel, use the respective magazine or newspaper as the source.

Other academic papers

Academic papers as well as bachelor’s and master’s theses are usually not citable, because you normally cannot verify whether the authors follow academic standards.

Student papers are rarely the best source – unless they contain original data and results that are not available elsewhere.

If you want to use such a paper in an exceptional case, check whether it is an excellent academic work that is publicly accessible. Of course, some information from student papers can serve as a basis for your further research, such as e.g., references.

Frequently asked questions

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Citable sources

Citable are all sources that are permanently and publicly accessible.

Lecture notes are generally not considered scientific publications, as they are not publicly accessible. They are therefore not citable. The same applies to internal documents from companies that are subject to confidentiality.

Worth citing

Not worth citing are therefore daily newspapers and tabloid magazines, user manuals, operating instructions, company brochures, any other internal company documents, as well as conversations.

Academic journals generally represent an excellent source worth citing, as they present and discuss the current state of research.

Sources that are not worth citing may not be used as evidence for a fact or to justify a course of action. A citation based on such a source is therefore inadmissible.

In some cases, however, using a source that is not worth citing can be helpful to illustrate something (e.g. images from the internet) or unavoidable to explain a technical background (e.g. manuals).

Even the use of such sources must be correctly identified and listed in the bibliography.

In these cases, always create a PDF document for each of these sources (scan or print as PDF) and submit these documents on the digital storage medium when handing in your thesis in a dedicated folder. This also applies to user manuals or similar documents. You should copy these in full to the CD.

Some faculty members of the EFI faculty insist on this type of documentation for all non-citable sources.

Frequently asked questions

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