As mentioned above, attaching importance to the citation of historical materials is an important feature of writing historical papers, and it is also one of the important standards to measure the quality of a historical academic paper. At the same time, there is still a normative problem in the citation of historical materials. The specific requirements of this specification are:
(1) Try to use first-hand information, rely on first-hand information to speak, and use less second-hand and third-hand information. This standard requirement is actually an important guarantee for the quality of the paper. Because relatively speaking, first-hand information is more real than second-hand and third-hand information. Of course, we should also look at this dialectically. Even the first-hand information is the research results of predecessors and subjective, so there is also a problem of analysis and screening.
(2) The cited materials must indicate the source in detail. There are two kinds of cited materials: directly quoting the original text of the document and reporting the meaning of the document or other people's academic views. In either case, the source must be specified. On the one hand, the article is more convincing by using historical materials with sources as arguments; On the other hand, indicating the source is also a respect for predecessors' research results, which belongs to literary ethics and can also avoid plagiarism. Don't let the whole article make sense, citing a lot of opinions or specific expressions of predecessors and contemporaries, but without a quotation mark or source.
2. Normative issues of paper expression.
(1) Historical language problem. Ancient historians in China generally believe that historical documents can express their meaning and their words can reach the Tao, that is, the so-called simple works. It is certainly right to pay attention to the difference between literature and history. Historical language cannot be exaggerated and described at will like literary language, but historical facts must be respected. However, the understanding of this cannot be absolute. Historical narrative can be described in detail. For example, when Sima Qian wrote The Hongmen Banquet, he used the technique of detail description to make the historical text more vivid to read, and people would never think that Sima Qian was making it up. In particular, write historical figures and specific events, describe some event scenes, and portray the psychology of characters. It is completely possible on the premise of logic, which enhances the readability and influence of historical documents.
(2) the format of the paper. Generally speaking, historical academic papers emphasize the examination of facts, which must be based on arguments, narratives and expositions, that is, the combination of history and theory. If an article has only arguments, no arguments, or insufficient arguments, then its arguments are untenable. Similarly, if you can't put forward arguments and have your own opinions and ideas, you can't be an academic paper. At the same time, the style of academic papers is diverse, including general research papers, notes, reviews, book reviews, dynamic comments and other different forms of papers, of course, there are some specific and different norms. For example, reading notes, mainly to write your own little experience or understanding, without a long speech, but with substance; Notes is similar to Notes, but more flexible; Book review is to grasp the basic spirit, academic value and status of the original work, so as to make an appropriate evaluation; Dynamic review is mainly to sort out the development of an academic problem.
(3) The problem of symbol specification. In addition to the accuracy of basic sentence symbols (punctuation marks), it is particularly worth mentioning the marking of numbers in the text. According to the current publishing standards, Arabic numerals are generally used in the text to indicate the number and year of the year; For the chronology of ancient emperors, it is necessary to use numerical symbols of Chinese characters, and at the same time, the corresponding chronology written in Arabic numerals should be indicated in brackets immediately after it.
(4) Problems described in references. Most of the references in academic journals are based on national standards, but some journals have their own references, which should be carried out according to the specific requirements of contributing journals.
The article is reproduced from Cloud magazine, and there is a detailed introduction about the paper format in the forum. You can have a look if you are interested.