Synthesizing Cited Literature

So you found a really great peer-reviewed resource and you want to incorporate ideas from this source into a paper you are writing. Congrats! There are few ways to do this.

The aim of this guide is to help you move from the basics (paraphrasing and summarizing) to synthesizing ideas from multiple sources to write at the scholarly level!

Paraphrasing and Summarizing: Tell us what’s important and keep it brief!

When paraphrasing and summarizing we learned to identify key elements of a text and condense important information into our own words. We are not adding new ideas or arguments, just briefly stating what we read in our own language.

What’s the main objective of summarizing?

Distill a text down into the most critical take away ideas in a succinct fashion

When do we use summarization in our writing?

• Case study and literature reviews
• Popular science articles or blog posts
• Educational videos

In a summary, you succinctly share key points from an individual source in your own words, then move on and do the same for the next source.

Synthesis: Put many ideas together to see them in a new way!

In scholarly and academic writing we aim to synthesize or combine ideas from multiple sources to support our argument and create new ways of thinking around an issue based on past knowledge.

What’s the main objective of synthesizing?

Using past knowledge to support new argument or hypothesis to move thinking in a specific field of research forward

When do we use synthesis in our writing?

• Scientific and academic reports
• Government reports or white papers
• Grant writing

In synthesis, you need to combine information and ideas from multiple sources, adding your own analysis to generate a new, bigger idea.

Further Resources

• Reading strategies: Differences between summarizing and synthesizing
• University of Arizona Writing Center
• Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Synthesizing Sources

Example

Here are three ideas pulled from three separate but topically related peer-reviewed sources written in summary form:

1. Relevant point from Source 1: >80% of terrestrial plant species depend on animal-mediated pollination services for reproduction (Ollerton et al. 2011)
2. Relevant point from Source 2: The genetic diversity of pollen transported by pollinators is negatively affected by forest fragmentation (Breed et al. 2015)
3. Relevant point from Source 3: Climate change will negatively impact pollination services by altering flowering times in plant species (Memmott et al. 2007)

Now here are these three relevant points synthesized into one sentence, incorporating the writer’s analysis to generate a new, bigger idea [4]:

Seeing that >80% of terrestrial plant species depend on pollinators for reproduction [1], and that habitat fragmentation [2] and climate change [3] both negatively impact pollination services, animal-pollinated plants may be particularly vulnerable to anthropogenically-induced global change [4] (Memmott et al. 2007, Ollerton et al. 2011, Breed et al. 2015)