This might be a really dumb question :$ ... but what do you do if you only have the abstract of a paper and can't get hold of the whole paper? Is it ok to quote from it anyway, provided you have enough information? Or would this be a big no-no?

:-)

Hi Moonblue...well to be honest if I can't hold of a paper and there is enough info in the abstract, I have been known to use the information anyway and just list it as a normal reference. Alternatively sometimes you can find another paper that talks about the paper you want in more detail, so that can be a good way to find information, and sometimes if you can't get hold of a paper you can just email the author and they will send you a copy if they are nice! I know you are not really meant to reference papers you haven't actually read, but I don't know anyone who hasn't done this (we did a poll of our team one lunchtime, sadly enough!), and I'm sure plenty of other published researcher do the same! KB

Thanks, Keenbean. :-) That's what I thought - not quite the done thing but everybody does it... As you suggest, I do have some more info from other papers.

On a similar, if even dodgier note, can you reference things you've read from google books (from the couple of pages that are available) even if you don't then get hold of the book itself? :$

I've done that in my thesis :p but then I've managed to find just the pages I need in there, and wouldn't have read any more in the physical version.

I'd be very loathe to reference something I've just seen the abstract for though.

can you get the full paper from iner-library loans, British library (or similar) etc?

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You can reference anything you want including the guy in the pub.

However someone might ask you to justify/explain your souces at some point.

I suppose it depends on what exactly you are using the source for and how much you need to know about it.

Make sure you write and know, in enough depth, what you have got to write and know.

I suppose judging this can be hard depending on the circumstances.

If you know exactly what the criteria for evaluation are and what questions you are likely to be asked this will always help but it seems this information is often not forthcoming until it is too late, at least until the next time anyway.

If you have enough information maybe you could just summarise the whole argument of the article using the abstract then just reference the article as if you've read it.

This may be risky though if there came a time you were asked to defend this point by someone else who had already read the whole article.

On second thoughts just get the article if you really need it.

It ain't worth the risk.

hi, I agree with the others.
Just be careful if you are going to meet someone who's read the paper, be prepared :-)

Thanks for all your comments. :-) I might try and get some of the most important papers through the library document supply services, but I don't get too many as it'll get quite expensive! I think for most of the papers I have enough information though. :-)