Help:How to Use AquaPedia for Research

From AquaPedia Case Study Database
Revision as of 13:43, 28 July 2014 by Amanda (Talk | contribs)

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AquaPedia cases can often be seen as a hub-like source for learning about a specific water case study or learning about related types of water problems. Because AquaPedia is collaboratively edited and community built, you may find it useful to seek out the material referenced within cases for further research.

All cases and articles include reference sections that detail any citations from the page. You can use these references to find primary and secondary sources suitable for citing in academic or other work.

Cases and Articles can also be appended with annotated links to other resources. Please follow those links to find resources that may be more appropriate for citation.

Normal academic usage of encyclopedias is for getting the general facts of a problem and to gather keywords, references and bibliographical pointers, but not often cited as a source in itself. We suggest that AquaPedia case studies and most articles should be viewed in a similar manner.

ASI articles, within case studies, however, do have specific contributing authors and the material is protected -- it may represent a specific point of view or the research of one or a few people. Those articles may provide materials you wish to directly cite.


If you want to cite an article...

  • A wiki is not paper, so you will need to use an electronic-citation format instead.
  • The exact format will depend upon the citation guide that you are following, but here are a few general principles to consider:
  • You should not cite any particular author or authors for an article, in general AquaPedia is collaboratively written. However, if you do need to find the list of authors of a particular article, you can check the page history.
  • The exception is for ASI articles, which have contributing author(s) listed.
  • You should use the citation tool, described below to ensure that you have accurate information for the version of the page you are citing. A page can be updated and changed, which means the information you are citing could be removed or appended.

Citation Tool

It may not always be appropriate to cite AquaPedia. It may be more appropriate to visit the references and links to primary and secondary sources cited within an AquaPedia page. Please use judgment. However, the software will generate a citation for you. This information can then be reformatted into the appropriate citation style for your use.

The easiest way: From any case or article, click the link under the"Advanced" menu (left side of page) that says: "Cite this page."

Or, you can visit Special:Cite and copy and paste a page title into the form.

Caveat: If you are citing an ASI, you can manually add the authors name(s) listed in the article to the citation. Unfortunately, the citation tool cannot extract their names.