Is there any option to cite 2 papers by Zotero?

Sajid Nadeem

Hi,

Just to clarify my discussion title, Here's what I want to do.

McClelland (1971, cited in Mullins, 2005) suggest three motivational drivers:
achievement; affiliation; power, which influence an individual’s work behaviour.

Please correct me if I am wrong. I think citing McClelland (1971) and Mulllins (2005) both in my research means I read both papers and I, on my own am integrating their findings like this. I believe this maybe unethical and the example above is the correct way to cite in this case.

So is their any way to cite papers like this with the paper you read and the paper the author cited, together?

Comments Appreciated.

Cheers !

adamsmith

The standard way to do this would be to _not_ list McClelland in the bibliography (since you haven't actually consulted that work).
For Zotero purpose, you'd just write McClelland in the text, cite Mullins 2005, and put "1971, cited in " into the prefix field.

Sajid Nadeem

Ok. So If I write McClelland in the text and do not include it in reference list, wouldn't that be considered as incomplete referencing as readers wont know the work i am referring to?

DWL-SDCA

I realize that it is commonly done but I believe that a person should never cite what someone else says an author says. I recommend going to the original source and citing that (but actually read the original). In your case how do you know that Mullins properly quoted McClelland? You can certainly cite what Mullins said about McClelland but you should also verify that his (her?) interpretation is correct. You may find that it is not correct. In that case, you include your own comment about Mullins misinterpretation.

There are a few spectacular examples where what he said someone said wasn't really what was said.

From my thesis: Moores' Law (more or less). Calvin Moores, credited with coining the term information retrieval, gave a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Documentation Institute at Lehigh University in 1959. His presentation included these words, "An information retrieval system will tend not to to be used whenever it is more painful or troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it." Moores' law has been misrepresented many times as referring to an information system's usability, and by Eugene Garfield , the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information and the Science Citation Index, to the quality of the information the system contains. In Garfield's case, a copy of the full text of Moores presentation cum essay was published as the next item in the same issue of The Scientist [1997; 11(6)]. Although these authors' ideas are probably accurate and they are certainly important they are not what Moores actually said. Which was, "Where an information system tends not to be used, a more capable system may tend to be used even less." Moore acknowledges that his point of view is a "pessimistic and even a cynical conclusion."

There are similar problems with the vast number of times the Ortega Hypothesis is cited. The philosopher José Ortega y Gasset was concerned with how scientific specialization could slow scientific progress. What is known as the Ortega Hypothesis is actually quite the opposite of what he said (too long to go into here).

My point is simply that when authors do not go to the original document they take great risk. I could give many additional examples where very credible people get it wrong and where too-trusting (or lazy) authors quoting others perpetuate the error. Ortega y Gassett said the he was always with his original text and translations in the language of the places where he visited so that when people congratulated him for his astute observation he can show them that he didn't say that. I believe that if it is worth citing, it is worth going to the original (unless you want to cite someone's astute or erroneous comment on the original.

adamsmith

Yeah, DWL's position is pretty commonly accepted, but I do think there's some room for exceptions. The most common one is that as an undergrad, the expectations for you to track down sources for a term paper aren't going to be that high. No one expects you to travel to an archive or for the most part even get a hard-to-obtain book from interlibrary loan (though do note that google books can be a godsend for checking citations).

(Also, in some rarer cases, the fact that Mullins cited McClellan in a specific way might itself be relevant.)

Either way though, the source that you did not consult should not be in your reference list/bibliography, since you did not, in fact, reference (i.e. consult) it.

Here's e.g. the relevant passage from the APA Manual of style:

Use secondary sources sparingly, for instance, when the original work is out of print, unavailable through usual sources, or not available in English. Give the secondary source in the reference list; in text, name the original work and give a citation for the secondary source. For example, if Allport's work is cited in Nicholson and you did not read Allport's work, list the Nicholson reference in the reference list. In the text, use the following citation: Allport's diary (as cited in Nicholson, 2003).

DWL-SDCA

I did not mean to disagree with adamsmith concerning the citation of secondary sources and their absence in the bibliography. I fully agree. However, I want to stress that, as adamsmith suggests that simply mentioning McClellan and a year without the name of McClellan's document, isn't quite enough.

Perhaps:
Mullins (2005) citing the 1971 Psychology Today article 'Why Men Do What They Do' by David C McClellan and T George Harris, supports the idea that three key motivational drivers ( achievement; affiliation; power) influence an individual’s work behaviour...

Here only the Mullins cite is from Zotero and appears in the Bibliography.