How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022

Checking against the original
How to cite the references
Preparing the text

Some authors (certainly not you) may be tempted to state a fact referenced in another paper and copy the bibliographic reference without looking at the source originally cited. Beware of doing so. Sometimes authors have inaccurately stated what the original source said. And sometimes references contain errors. Thus, such copying has perpetuated errors in the literature. Obtain the original source, check its content, and note the correct bibliographic information.

What if the paper you want isn’t immediately accessible online? If you have access to an academic or other library, it may well have the journal of interest. Even if the library lacks the journal, quite likely it can obtain the wanted paper through interlibrary loan. Some authors’ websites contain some of their papers; ditto for online repositories at their institutions. Papers normally list corresponding authors (remember those?); you generally can request from the corresponding author a copy of the paper for personal scholarly use. Thus, with a little perseverance, you can obtain almost any paper. If, despite your best efforts, you still cannot obtain a paper you need, the safest tack is to identify the fact as “as cited in” and list in your references the source where you found it.