https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/One letter a month for working adults in online programs: one practical method, one deadline trap, one thing worth knowing before your term does it to you.en-ushttps://www.citehall.com/newsletter/an-appendix-that-earns-its-place/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/an-appendix-that-earns-its-place/Dr. Samuel AdebayoAppendices are where unread material goes to inflate a document. What belongs there is anything a reader would need to check your work, and nothing else.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/building-a-search-string-that-works/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/building-a-search-string-that-works/Dr. Marisol QuintanillaA search built from your claim rather than your title, using the words the literature uses, assembled so it can be widened, narrowed and run again months later.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/citing-a-clinical-guideline/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/citing-a-clinical-guideline/Hannah WickstromGuidelines are cited wrongly more often than any other source type, usually to the wrong author entirely, and the version you downloaded may already be superseded.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/grey-literature-and-when-it-counts/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/grey-literature-and-when-it-counts/Dr. Thandiwe MokoenaReports, standards and registry data are not peer-reviewed and are frequently the right citation. What decides it is the job you are asking the source to do.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/how-old-is-too-old-for-a-citation/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/how-old-is-too-old-for-a-citation/Dr. Sigrid NyholmThe five-year rule is a shorthand for something more useful: whether anything has changed since, which depends entirely on what the source is being asked to do.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/levels-of-evidence-explained/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/levels-of-evidence-explained/Dr. Sigrid NyholmEvidence hierarchies rank designs by how well they answer one kind of question, which is why the top of the pyramid is sometimes the wrong place to look.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/paraphrase-versus-patchwriting/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/paraphrase-versus-patchwriting/Clara FairbairnOne question separates a real paraphrase from a source with its words swapped, and the method producing the first is faster than the method producing the second.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/primary-versus-secondary-sources/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/primary-versus-secondary-sources/Dr. Sigrid NyholmThe difference matters less than the question of what each can support, and a rubric asking for primary sources is usually asking for something quite specific.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/quoting-a-source-you-found-inside-another/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/quoting-a-source-you-found-inside-another/Clara FairbairnSecondary citation is permitted in every style and it advertises that you did not read the original. Here is when it is acceptable and how to avoid needing it.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/reading-a-forest-plot/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/reading-a-forest-plot/Warren CobbettThe diamond at the bottom is the least interesting part. What tells you whether to trust a meta-analysis is the spread above it and the line down the middle.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/reading-a-methods-section/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/reading-a-methods-section/Warren CobbettSix things to check in a methods section, in the order that tells you fastest whether a study can support the claim you want to attach to it.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/retracted-papers-and-how-to-check/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/retracted-papers-and-how-to-check/Dr. Sigrid NyholmRetracted work keeps circulating for years after withdrawal. Checking takes under a minute per source and it is the one citation error a marker never forgives.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/saving-a-search-so-it-runs-again/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/saving-a-search-so-it-runs-again/Dr. Marisol QuintanillaA documented search can be re-run when a committee asks what is new, translated to another database, and pasted into a methods section. It takes seconds to record.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/the-reference-a-marker-always-checks/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/the-reference-a-marker-always-checks/Clara FairbairnMarkers do not verify whole lists. They check two or three, chosen predictably, and what they find decides how carefully they read everything else.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/the-table-that-replaces-three-paragraphs/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/the-table-that-replaces-three-paragraphs/Dr. Samuel AdebayoSome comparisons are unreadable as prose and obvious as a table. Knowing which is which saves words, improves comprehension and is usually worth marks.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/what-a-confidence-interval-actually-says/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/what-a-confidence-interval-actually-says/Warren CobbettThe interval carries more usable information than the p value beside it, and reading it properly changes how you describe a finding in your own writing.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/what-makes-a-source-citable/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/what-makes-a-source-citable/Clara FairbairnFour checks deciding whether something belongs in a reference list, applied in the order that fails fastest, so a bad source costs you a minute rather than a draft.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/what-peer-review-does-not-guarantee/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/what-peer-review-does-not-guarantee/Dr. Sigrid NyholmPeer review checks that a study is reportable, not that it is right. Knowing what it does and does not do changes how much weight a citation can carry.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/when-a-doi-does-not-resolve/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/when-a-doi-does-not-resolve/Dr. Marisol QuintanillaA digital object identifier leading nowhere means one of four things. Telling them apart takes a minute and decides whether that source stays in your list.https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/why-your-library-proxy-matters/https://www.citehall.com/newsletter/why-your-library-proxy-matters/Dr. Marisol QuintanillaHalf of what students believe is paywalled is available through their own library, and the difference is usually a route rather than a subscription.