Citing Published and Unpublished Sources in NVivo
Citing Bibliographic Sources
There is an integration in NVivo with various web-based bibliography tools (apps, with cloud-based versions). These include Citavi, Mendeley, EndNote, Zotero, and RefWorks. When using the integration and accessing published resources, such as through the databases in the K-State Libraries, one can not only download the whole article but all metadata riding with that source.
There is currently no native and automated way to cite published sources in NVivo from this tool alone. That leaves the researcher with the option to write up his or her own References list or bibliographical listing... Or, if he or she uses a third-party bibliographic tool, then there are some ways to capture that information (but there is still a required manual process of linking a particular citation with a particular published source ingested into the NVivo project).
In the visualization below, the "Conference Paper" Source Classification Sheet built into NVivo includes a range of data fields: Author, Year, Title, Editor, Conference Name, Conference Location, and so on, in the Detail View. This information may be ingested from a website or repository, or it may be input manually, or a combination of these prior methods.
Third-Party Web-Based Bibliographic Tools
However, those who may have third-party integrated reference tools may be able to use those to access source citations for some sources. These tools include EndNote, Mendeley, RefWorks, and Zotero. (Of these, only Zotero and Mendeley are free.) There is no 100% accurate citation through automated methods. This means that authors invariably have to go back over the extracted citations to correct for errors: missing data, mis-cited information, and others.
The following screenshot shows how to import a set of files (with annotations) from Mendeley to the NVivo project.
There is a helpful video about the import from Mendeley, which enables the importing of the whole original PDF articles (with metadata) into NVivo.
Preferred Citation Method at the Formal Repository
Sometimes, various individual sources have preferred citation methods (that are copyable and paste-able) on the publisher site, but this requires going to the official source website. [Also, most sites only provide citations in the American Psychological Association (APA) method in the social sciences. Some may also have a Modern Language Association (MLA) version. Anything else--the Harvard, Chicago, or unique journal styles--will have to still be done manually.]
Publisher Oversight
Sometimes, academic book and journal publishers will provide support to enable the correction of source citations. They will provide professional editors to peruse the manuscript (mss.) to correct the citations both in-text and in the bibliographic listing.
In-Text Citations
Finally, source citation formatting only applies to the bibliographic listing. These do not apply to the in-text citations--all of which vary based on the source citation method.
Comprehensive Information Collection
Optimally, a researcher will capture as much citation information as possible for each source...and will have the information handy when he or she is citing sources in-text and writing up the source citations listing (with or without the help of technology). Citations are important for a number of reasons: trackability of sources, professional respect to other researchers, follow-on research, convention, and other reasons.
Unpublished Gray Literature, Found Sources
Of course, each of the citation methods (APA, MLA, Chicago style, Harvard, and others) have ways to integrate not only formal published sources but a range of other less formal sources, including gray literature and found sources. The minute differences between the various citation methods will have to be followed for accuracy anyway. If any of these sources are included--including primary sources based on researcher research--there will have to be a fair amount of important but tedious attention to such citations (both in-text and in the bibliographic list).
A Google Scholar Citation Option
Finally, it is possible to use Google Scholar to access citations of sources. Place the search terms in the search window, and you will find that there is a quote icon underneath the text describing the source. Click on that quotation mark to access a variety of citation formats for that source. Double check the automated citation, and revise for correctness as necessary.
No matter what tools are used, human oversight and double-checking are necessary.
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