Whether you’re a student new to research or an experienced scholar, keeping track of your references will be an essential part of your work. Good research builds on past efforts, answering old questions and leading to new questions for future efforts. References are critical in writing papers and presenting new information. Citing them clarifies which ideas are your own and which belong to someone else, avoiding plagiarism or misrepresentation of ideas. Stanford Professor Vincent Barletta has published many works in his career and wants you to understand the value of Paperpile, a reference management program for Chrome users.
Managing Your References
Keeping up with your sources is challenging enough on its own. Some of the common hurdles to proper citation include the following:
- Organization – It’s not uncommon to have many different sources for a single assignment. Some may be other papers, online articles, and other forms of media. While you may present your sources in a particular order in a bibliography, you may need a different order as you work on your assignment.
- Style – You may be required to present your sources according to a particular style, depending on the discipline or course. Some common styles include APA, MLA, Harvard, and ASCE.
- Time – Collecting and documenting your resources takes time. You may make errors if you’re under a deadline or have several assignments. This could be something as simple as referencing the wrong page number or mixing up your sources altogether.
While a professor like Dr. Vincent Barletta may be sympathetic to these challenges, failure to cite references can have grave consequences regarding credibility, trustworthiness, and academic performance. It’s up to you to find ways to avoid these issues in your work.
Understanding the Advantages of Paperpile
Paperpile is an essential tool for anyone that needs to gather and organize references for citing in their work, explains Vincent Barletta. It’s a reference manager for Google Docs and Microsoft Word, both of which are available for use with Chromebooks. With Paperpile, you have an innovative and powerful tool for actively managing your citations, generating bibliographies, extracting images, and formatting in accordance with a particular style. Consider the following benefits:
- Total reference management: Easily monitor all your sources, organizing them by title, author, date, or even your own tags. This makes it easy to keep track of your references while drafting your paper.
- Instant documentation: You can automatically update your citations or bibliographies as you work. Paperpile presents your reference according to your chosen specific style or format.
- Intelligent features: Paperpile makes citation suggestions and updates based on the type of paper. It isn’t geared towards scientific or STEM-related research. There’s a Paperpile solution for everyone.
Dr. Vincent Barletta appreciates that Paperpile provides cloud storage, an easy-to-use interface, and mobile device functionality to meet the needs of busy academics. You can try out Paperpile with a free 30-day trial for superior reference management and better performance.