I am reading a paper which discussing the change in a specific idea in a field of science over time. I would like to basically summarize the points in the paper but in a smaller fashion by taking some quotes and explaining how they relate to my situation.
For instance, in the paper I am reading the author said "in 2002, Stanley and Miikkulainen [SM02b] argued that the topology of a neural network also affects their functionality" where the tag [SM02b] is a reference to a entry in the author's bibliography.
Is it sufficient to only cite the author of the paper, or do I need to cite both the author of the paper and the author of the paper the author cited in the paper?
Answer
This will all become much clearer if you shift your perspective away from paraphrasing and towards giving a context for your own work. Start by pretending that the other paper doesn't exist, and asking: "What does the reader of my work need to know about this concept?"
When you know that, and you know what level of detail you want to go into, then you can look to the other paper (and other things as well, I hope!) as a source of information to help you build your discussion of the context of your work.
A useful phrase at this point is: "A thorough discussion of [subject] can be found in [review paper]." Then you can explain your view of the material, which the reader will understand is heavily influenced by the nice review paper you've just cited. In digesting the review to produce your own explanation, you will need to choose what you think are the important points for understanding the context of your work, and the key references supporting those points will be the ones that you should cite: as these references are the ones that were important for your understanding, so too should they be for your readers.
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