When it comes time to use a source in your paper, it's not enough just to have "enough" sources on your topic. Rather, you need to consider how you'll use them. How are you going to use the information or ideas in this source to support the argument you're making?
One method that can help organize how you're using your sources is Joseph Bizup's BEAM framework. BEAM is an acronym standing for:
See the tab for each source type for details. As you look at each tab, remember: no source is inherently a B, E, A, or M source. These categories describe how sources can be used, and give guidance on how to incorporate sources in different ways in the process of making your argument.
These sources "set the scene" for your argument. Often they are encyclopedia articles or institutional reports that provide definitions or dates and statistics or figures taken to be generally accepted. However, they may also be scholarly articles that form a broad background for your essay but whose arguments you are not directly engaging. Unsurprisingly, these sources most often appear at the beginning of your essay, setting the stage for what's to come. Remember: what is "generally accepted" will vary depending on context, so it's important to remain cognizant of your audience and what they will or will not take for granted.
Example:
These are documents, images, field notes, and numerical data that are vital to the argument you're making. These generally consist of what are termed "primary sources": a first-hand account of an event, raw data recorded by a scientist, or contemporaneous reviews of a book that are being used as part of an historical argument.
Example (note how the quote from an exhibit source is immediately followed by analysis):
Argument sources are those of scholars, critics, or other writers with whom you're engaging, whether in agreement or through criticism. These sources whose ideas you're in dialogue with; they make up the "scholarly conversation" on a given topic. Examples include scholarly articles, cultural criticism, essays, or book-length monographs.
Example:
Method sources provide theories, frameworks, and methodologies that you're applying to the analysis of your exhibit or argument sources. These sources might not directly address the subject matter you're writing about, but they provide pertinent analytical lenses for you to use. Social theories, papers outlining experimental processes, and analytical frameworks are all examples of works that are often used as method sources.
Example:
Introductions serve different purposes depending on the genre of writing. Magazine articles or personal essays often start with a "hook" that sets the scene, creates tension, or engages the reader's thoughts and emotions. Academic essays tend to rely on a different kind of hook, one that situates that author's work in relation to the sources, ideas, and scholarship that have paved the way for their own work, or that they are responding to or critiquing.
Scholars John Swales and Christine Feak have mapped out a pattern such introductions tend to follow, one that you can use when writing your introduction and incorporating sources into it. An adaptation of Swales and Feak's map, which is based on three "moves," is shown below. Click on each tab for more detail and examples.
Adapted from Swales and Feak, Academic Writing for Graduate Students
The first move, Setting the Scene, is about laying out the broad strokes of your topic, its importance within the discipline you're working within (psychology, biology, business, etc.), and/or key pieces of research that form the background to your particular focus. As you may expect, this often entails drawing on the Background kinds of sources outlined in the BEAM method above.
Here's an example from the article "Exploring Curation as a Core Competency in Digital and Media Literacy Education" by Paul Mihailidis and James N. Cohen:
By pointing to broad statistics about digital media use, Mihailidis and Cohen provide the broad context in which they are working and point to the importance of focusing on the topic. The final sentence situates their focus as being in the educational field, as shown by the use of phrases like "...how students learn..." and "...pedagogical approaches..." (i.e., methods used in teaching). As readers, we now have a bit more grounding and know the general areas the authors will be discussing.
Having created a background to work with, you can then turn to the second move of Describing the Problem, where you zero in on the whats and whys of the topic that you're focusing on.
What this looks like can vary: you may discuss gaps in research or unanswered questions you want to address in your writing, or you may point to previous work your own work is building on, or you may suggest that there may be flaws in the existing research you've already outlined when Setting the Scene. You're not yet discussing precisely how you're going to address the problem you're defining, but you're preparing the ground for you to do so.
Expressed in BEAM terms, the sources you cite may be more specific Background sources, or they may be Argument sources that will be discussed in greater detail in the body of your paper.
Mihailidis and Cohen's example is again illustrative:
So, what kind of problem are they framing here? They positively cite Hobbs's work on the sets of skills students need to thrive in a digital world, then focus specifically on the skill of navigating the personalized way the internet allows people to aggregate content into uniquely curated collections of information. In this sense, they build on Hobbs's work but also identify a potential gap to be filled by focusing on curation as an important competency teachers need to be prepared to cover. We now know what Mihailidis and Cohen will be focusing on.
Having outlined the problem your paper is addressing, you can then turn to Entering the Conversation. This final move entails explaining the particulars of your paper, including (as applicable) your thesis and outline of your argument, your hypothesis and findings, and/or the general structure of the essay. Again, the standards of what is included will vary depending on the stylistic conventions of the discipline you're writing in; using previous work as a model can be a helpful guide.
Let's return one last time to Mihailidis and Cohen:
Mihailidis and Cohen now lay out that they will intervene in this scholarly conversation by discussing the specific example of one piece of online software and the ways it can be used as an instructional tool. In doing so, they outline the structure of the paper as well as point to the larger goals behind their choice to focus on this subject, which we would expect to find them discussing in the paper's conclusion.
The HNU Library offers extensive guides for both MLA (Modern Language Association) and APA (American Psychological Association) citation styles. Links to these guides are available below:
And psst...remember how we mentioned RefWorks in the Exploratory Research section? Now might be a great time to get set up with it if you aren't already. It'll streamline your citation process and ensure you have proper formatting. Check out our detailed tutorial here.