How Your Citation Placement Can Signal an Effective Introduction

Manuscripts tell stories about research, and each section of a manuscript tells a key part of that story. In the Introduction section, you set the stage of the story. You want to lead your readers from general to specific details that frame the gap in knowledge or question you addressed in the study.

For the Introduction section, some authors will write a literature review that summarizes what is known about the topic (ie, the core of knowledge). But in an effective Introduction, you need to do more than give a synopsis. You need to convince readers of why the problem is important. In other words, you want to show readers what is not known (ie, the gap in knowledge) and why that information is important to understand. This framing is what distinguishes an Introduction from a literature review.

How do you know when you are writing a literature review or Introduction? Look at where you place your citations in sentences.

Citation placement drives the story

When your citations are at the beginning of your sentences [eg, “Miller (2015) found X”], you may be writing a literature review. On the other hand, when your citations are at the end of your sentences [eg, “X occurs (Miller 2015)”], you are likely writing an Introduction. The former tells a story about Miller, and the latter tells a story about X and how X works.

If you place your citations at the beginning of the sentence, you are likely doing a data dump without synthesizing the data and integrating it into the story of your study. This approach makes sense for an outline or first draft, as you are pulling information together and analyzing its relevance to your study. But often, the information that is important to your story is not who found the data, but what data was found. When you want to tell us a story about the research rather than the researcher, rewrite the sentences to focus the story on the findings.

Sometimes you will want the story to focus on the researcher. In these cases, place the citations at the beginning of the sentence. For example, if you are discussing a debate between two researchers, you will want to distinguish their individual opinions: “Although Miller (2015) found X, Taylor (2017) found Y.” If you are discussing different views supported by multiple papers, you might write: “The nature of X is still unclear, as some reports suggest Y (Miller 2015, Smith 2019) and others suggest Z (Taylor 2017, Williams 2018).”

The essence of setting the stage

The Introduction sets the stage for your manuscript. It must show readers why answering your research question (or filling the gap in knowledge) will make progress in addressing the overall problem. To help persuade readers of why your study is important, focus your story on the findings by placing citations at the end of your sentences. When you want to shift the focus to researchers, place citations at the beginning of sentences.