How academically (sp?) okay/not okay is it to put things in a bibliography you didn't use?

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Just an undergraduate paper, and not plagerizing or anything, just sort of padding the bibliography. This isn't an academic offense or anything is it?

― La Monte (La Monte), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 17:52 (twenty years ago)

Did the works cited influence your 'thinking process'?

― Michael White (Hereward), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 17:57 (twenty years ago)

i've seen a "works consulted" list before...

― ryan (ryan), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 17:58 (twenty years ago)

I dare you to cite the film National Treasure. I dare you.

― Huk-L, Tuesday, 8 February 2005 17:59 (twenty years ago)

I didn't know they even published pop-up versions of Henry Miller.

― Michael White (Hereward), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 18:06 (twenty years ago)

Do it. Sure you'd get in trouble but the chances of getting caught are close to nil. Just be sure, by way of anticipating the unlikely event your instructor will be so impressed she'll want to talk outside sources with you, that there's something there to pad, and it's not all gratuitous.

― Professor Pushover, Tuesday, 8 February 2005 18:09 (twenty years ago)

a real reference from a real paper I handed in last semseter;

Various (message board thread) 2003 -2004, How Would You Make NME a Better Magazine?
How Would You Make NME a Better Magazine?

― elwisty (elwisty), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 18:51 (twenty years ago)

Awesome. Was it hotlinked in the paper?

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 18:52 (twenty years ago)

no i just gave the full address, the hotlinking is beyond my control

― elwisty (elwisty), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 18:56 (twenty years ago)

i don't really see the point in "padding the bibliography." your paper will be grated on its merits.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 19:07 (twenty years ago)

grated?

― Michael White (Hereward), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 19:07 (twenty years ago)

http://www.accuratecutlery.com/images/cheese-grater.gif

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 19:09 (twenty years ago)

I found your paper grated on me. For starters, the bibliography was too long.

― Michael White (Hereward), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 19:10 (twenty years ago)

>i don't really see the point in "padding the bibliography." your
>paper will be grated on its merits.
>-- Amateur(ist) (amateuris...), February 8th, 2005.

I padded it because I pulled it out of my ass at the last minute without really consulting anything beyond the textbook and primary source, and there are supposed to be some secondary sources.

― La Monte (La Monte), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 19:18 (twenty years ago)

If you pulled it out of your ass, you may want to pad it just for hygenic reasons.

― Michael White (Hereward), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 19:26 (twenty years ago)

Well, padding a good paper won't matter. Neither will padding a bad paper. So there. Make of that what you will.

― Guymauve (Guymauve), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 19:53 (twenty years ago)

I had a student freaking out yesterday because her instructor gave her an E on her paper. It turns out that she had paraphrased her entire paper from a journal article and thought that as long as she gave the proper citations at the end that it would be okay. She even used the same title as the journal article!

― Leon the Fatboy (Ex Leon), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 19:56 (twenty years ago)

what kind of grade is an E?! is that still a pass? (or did you mean F)

― La Monte (La Monte), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:02 (twenty years ago)

"E" is for "eh..."

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:04 (twenty years ago)

I did have one undergraduate course tutor who would check that everything listed in the bibliography had cropped up somewhere in the essay. He was a bit of an exception, though.

(myself, I used a computer program that automatically generated your references bibliography for you based on which sources you'd actually referenced in the essay. Which took a lot of the donkey-work out of essay writing, but also took out most bibliography-padding opportunities)

― caitlin (caitlin), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:05 (twenty years ago)

what kind of program is that??

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:06 (twenty years ago)

It's called BibTeX - it's an addon for TeX and LaTeX.

― caitlin (caitlin), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:14 (twenty years ago)

Got the essay back today that quoted ILM, tutor remarked;
... you went to some lengths to support your arguement through a wide variety of sources."

My tutor writes for Popmatters... http://www.popmatters.com/music/best2004/041228-warner.shtml

Are these two things in any way related?

― elwisty (elwisty), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:22 (twenty years ago)

How could you pass up the opportunity to quote your tutor in your paper????

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:24 (twenty years ago)

Hold up, has the concept of a bibliography recently mutated? There's a traditional sense in which a bibliography is just a survey of relevant works -- not a strict accounting of works actually cited. I mean, hell, the original form of the bibliography wasn't even attached to an independent work -- it was just a list of texts on a given topic! I suppose the Works Cited / Works Consulted division explains that properly, but really, there's nothing wrong with putting a book in a bibliography so long as it has some backgrounding relevance to the work submitted -- and you've studied it, of course, and are willing to theoretically vouch for the fact that it's of significance to what you've written.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:26 (twenty years ago)

i did. (in a previous essay. he gave us links to his work.

― elwisty (elwisty), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:26 (twenty years ago)

When I went to university - all of nine years ago now - a bibliography (as an appendix to an essay or dissertation) was just a list giving the publishing details of the works cited in the essay itself.

― caitlin (caitlin), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:37 (twenty years ago)

I suppose it's a bit different for a student work, as your prof theoretically does not need your selection of background works to a subject in which he/she is already more expert than you. On the other hand, students are ostensibly not meant to be writing with that in mind; plus if you write a paper for, say, a sociology class, about the sociology of X -- X being some culture or topic that your professor may well have no clue about -- I can't see what would be odd about offering a selection of relevant reading on X within or attached to the bibliography. Provided, of course, that you actually made recourse to these texts as background reading, whether or not you wound up citing any particulars. (See M.White's "influence your thinking process.")

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:42 (twenty years ago)

i think putting a list of works at the end of an undergraduate (or even graduate) paper serves a very different purpose from putting together a survey of the literature, as you're asked to do in preparation for a master's thesis or dissertation. even if both things are often referred to as a "bibliography." a paper is closest to a journal article, and journal articles tend to have lists of "works cited" and not veritable bibliographies.

i just think there's something a bit ridiculous about including an enormous list of books and articles for a paper in which all of them were obviously not consulted.

although of course the very exercise of researching the available literature on a subject is extremely useful, if you don't expect that the paper in question will be your last work on the subject.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:46 (twenty years ago)

i don't think it much matters either way, since as i noted above, the paper will be graded for the paper, not what comes after it. (unless the teacher is using a whacked-out set of grading criteria.)

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:47 (twenty years ago)

you might be able to tell that i'm bored at work.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:48 (twenty years ago)

Sorry, this is a massive x-post now but I did mean F.

― Leon the Fatboy (Ex Leon), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 20:51 (twenty years ago)

At Sydney Uni, FWIW, we considered it not really good academic form for students to cite works they didn't use - if that habit were carried over into postgrad and professional research, it would lead people on a bum steer when researching those cited but unused references.

― thee music mole, Tuesday, 8 February 2005 21:02 (twenty years ago)

When you say "use," do you mean "cite," or just "use?"

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 8 February 2005 21:04 (twenty years ago)

EVERYONE

YOU PUT ALL RELEVANT WORKS YOU "CONSULTED", WHETHER YOU CITED THEM IN THE PAPER OR NOT, IN THE BIBLIOGRAPHY

A "WORKS CITED" PAGE IS A LIST OF ONLY THE WORKS YOU HAVE ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY CITED IN THE ARTICLE.

THAT IS MLA STYLE.

CHICAGO STYLE IS DIFFERENT IN THAT IT COMBINES WORKS CITED WITH BIBLIOGRAPHY.

THAT BEING SAID, IF YOU HAVE NO FUCKING CITATIONS WHATSOEVER WITHIN YOUR PAPER, YOU'RE GOING TO GET A SHITTY GRADE FOR "OVERRELIANCE" ON ONE SOURCE SO WHY ARE YOU BOTHERING TO "PAD" YOUR BIBLIOGRAPHY IF YOU'RE ONLY GOING TO ACTUALLY CITE ONE SOURCE?

GET ONE STYLE MANUAL. YOU'RE IN COLLEGE.

SORRY FOR THE ALL CAPS BUT DUDE SERIOUSLY WE WERE REQUIRED TO BUY THE FUCKING STYLE MANUAL. DO YOUR OWN HOMEWORK.

― Allyzay Dallas Multi-Pass (allyzay), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 01:36 (twenty years ago)

yes!

― cutty (mcutt), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 01:40 (twenty years ago)

MLA STYLE

*snicker*

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 01:42 (twenty years ago)

in my first degree (BSc) we were only to cite publications we'd actually referred to in the essay in the bibliography. now i am doing an LLB and we are instructed to include ANY publications we have consulted, regardless of whether we have cited them in the essay or not. still called a bibliography though. so now when i start researching an assignment i start the bibliography straight away and just add each publication as i read it. although i usually try to read copious amounts and don't pull things out of my arse so no need for padding. still, surely every institution and discipline would have different guidelines for this. i.e., see allyzay's advice about a style guide.

― gem (trisk), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 01:47 (twenty years ago)

Was just about to start screaming about a bibliography not being a works cited page and then saw that ally had already done so with much more, ahem, style.

― mouse (mouse), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 02:14 (twenty years ago)

I footnoted National Treasure in my best paper from last semester. For serious.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 03:44 (twenty years ago)

Granted, It was along with Holy Blood, Holy Grail to illustrate the ongoing existence of myths about masonry from without.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 03:45 (twenty years ago)

imagine, a pop culture reference in an academic paper!!

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 03:50 (twenty years ago)

I handed in the paper I'd been working on for over a year about three weeks ago and I was in a mad rush and didn't remotely have time to list everything I'd read with editions and shit, it was pretty heartbreaking.

Style-manual bibliography shit should be relevant only when you're publishing stuff, who the hell cares what edition of something you don't cite you used? It is two hours unnescessary boring work and undergrads be doing stuff at the last minute non-shocker which means worse essays to accomodate stupid lists.

I should cite National Treasure.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 04:02 (twenty years ago)

ams, I was responding to huk-l above!

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 04:04 (twenty years ago)

aha! whoops. sorry.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 04:07 (twenty years ago)

gravel is so right. actually i did a pretty shit last minute job of the bibliography in my honours thesis (altough i correctly referenced right through the text as i was paranoid about plagiarism) and i still got an awesome mark.

― gem (trisk), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 04:09 (twenty years ago)

Ally, that was great.

― Leon the Fatboy (Ex Leon), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 04:12 (twenty years ago)

Obviously you don't just include things you've cited directly, but ethically you shouldn't include things you haven't even looked at.

― Miles Finch, Wednesday, 9 February 2005 09:29 (twenty years ago)

Gravel - as someone who reads these papers and believe that some undergrads can write good, well-researched essays, it's nice to have a bibliography in case you stumble across a source you'd like to follow up on. Think about the number of times you've heard a sample in a song and would like to know the source. Same deal.

At an ethical level, it's about understanding the basics of scholarly etiquette. In my experience, more and more students don't have a clue about what it means to write an academic paper (the stories I could tell). Sometimes this is out of ignorance, sometimes laziness, but when one knows what's expected yet doesn't play by the rules but thinks that with a little fudging they can make it look like they are, well, that's bad faith and they deserve whatever bad grade they get. Makes me cranky, it does.

― Guymauve (Guymauve), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 09:42 (twenty years ago)

I'm not sure how much face to face contact you have with your tutor when you receive your paper back, but if you've put a book on your bibliography that you haven't read, then be ready for the tutor to question you on it, particularly if it turns out that the author has a drastically different take on the subject than most other authors.

In some cases it can be incredibly easy for tutors to wonder whether or not you've read the book. Having too many things in the bibliography will ring alarm bells for tutors, as will having all of the really hard to get hold of texts.

Anyway, back to the original question, it's a lie, so morally it's not ok to pad your bibliography out, and if your tutor figured you out, you'd probably get marked down. Not that we all haven't done it at some point or another (even if it's just getting the book out of the library but only reading a couple of pages), but if you feel the need to do it, then you haven't researched your essay properly.

― Vicky (Vicky), Wednesday, 9 February 2005 10:13 (twenty years ago)

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