Throughout your academic career, you will be required to write papers for which you will need to do research in books, journals, electronic media, and other sources. One of the challenges of good scholarship is to take what has already been done, said, or argued, and incorporate it into your work in an original way. To some students, this task may seem unnecessarily redundant: a student writing a paper on the benefits of stem cell research may ask, “If the positive aspects of this research have already been argued, why do I need to do it again?” The answer is that:

• by doing research on your subject, you become more familiar with existing scholarly work, which in turn can provide models for your own writing
• your way of presenting the information and arguing it will be different from that of others and is therefore valuable; and
• as more recent information on your subject becomes available, you have the opportunity to bring this information into your report or argument, adding new dimensions to the discussion.

Sometimes the goals of academic writing may seem contradictory.

Academic writing is a challenge. It demands that you build on work done by others but create something original from it. By acknowledging where you have used the ideas, work, or words of others, you maintain your academic integrity and uphold the standards of the Institute and of the discipline in which you work.

(Adapted from: Overview and Contradictions. Purdue University OWL Online Writing Lab. Retrieved July 5, 2012 from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/.)