in this case which one would be the correct way to reference an article? [duplicate]

Question

I have come across articles that follow a structure similar to the example below:

Article X: "The disease D has been found to be practically intractable in native communities [reference to article Y]."

In this case, when referencing this information in my text, should I cite article X, article Y, or both? Is it appropriate to structure the citation like this:

"According to article X (ref) and as studied in article Y (ref), the disease D..."?

Also if I have the following scenario:

Article A mentions Article B, Article B mentions Article C, Article C mentions Article D, and so on.

Should I only reference the primary or original article, which is Article A, or should I reference Article A and the original one?

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

You need to cite what you use. Beyond that, the rules are a bit murkier. If the article you cite provides a way to follow the chain of advancement back to the origin then you have done enough, ethically, but you might want to do more for the convenience of readers interested in the topic. It is often useful to cite the first work, though Euclid is seldom cited anymore in math. You might at least want to mention the name of the originator of a stream of advancement.

If you explicitly use ideas from any works in a chain of reference, then you need to cite those. Otherwise some will wonder whether you are plagiarizing.

And in some work, such as a thesis, in which page limits aren't usually an issue, you might want to cite everything in the chain, since you have (we hope) followed that as part of your literature search.

But if your work depends fundamentally on the work of someone, a citation is appropriate even if you depend explicitly on later works only. Judgement call, but be generous rather than stingy in citation to avoid any disagreements with your work.