ABSTRACT
Reading is important, because it helps direct research purposefully, providing others’ work to build on, indicating which avenues to avoid, showing where contributions are needed. We are fuelled by our scrutiny, critique, and use of others’ work. If we don’t know what others have done, we stand a good chance of wasting our time by “re-inventing the wheel”, unknowingly re-creating work that makes no contribution to knowledge. Whether we use others’ work to provide situation and context for our own, or, more closely, as a study to replicate or generalize from, we owe the researchers whose work we use a duty of care, and should practice basic academic skills of reference and report. Naturally, this means giving proper credit. It also entails ensuring that we use others’ ideas and work as the originators intended, and not for what we would like them to be or for what we would like them to say.
