Patchworking: A Quilt of Everyone's Ideas But Your Own

You have gathered an impressive amount of material for your research paper.

You checked out a stack of books from the library, photocopied and downloaded a number of relevant articles, and bookmarked relevant web sites. You start to draft your paper, pulling pertinent quotes from articles and cutting and pasting important sections from the web sites. 

When you read over what you have written, you realize that you have cobbled together a series of quotations or paraphrased sections from the sources you consulted.  This is known as “patchworking.”  Why is this a bad thing?

• For one, you have not included any of your own thoughts and opinions in the paper.  Your ideas are important!  While it is important to reference other scholars’ writings on this topic, your opinions are important to your professor.

• With patchworking, it is easy to neglect the proper citation of your sources.  Remember if you are referencing another’s words or ideas, you must cite it.

The best advice is to trust your opinions.   This will negate the need for over-reliance on sources.