When high schools teach about citation, they tend to emphasize avoiding plagiarism, and so it is common for people to arrive in college thinking giving credit where credit is due is the only reason people cite their sources. On the contrary, citations are the way to integrate evidence into your writing and the way you demonstrate to your reader that you are qualified to write on the topic.
Whether you are writing a research paper and trying to convince your professor of your argument, or writing a report to your boss and trying to convince them, most kinds of expository writing attempt to make the case for some idea or action, and a huge part of that job is providing evidence and demonstrating your own authority to speak on the topic. Citations help you do both.
To be rhetorically successful, citations need to:
Together, these features of citations make you appear to your reader to know what you're talking about and ground your arguments in a literature they already trust and are familiar with.
Someday soon automated text generators like ChatGPT might cite their own sources or provide some kind of metric for the reliability of the information they give. But here in 2024, they are not capable of this, and so the only way of knowing if the information they provide is reliable is to check it yourself. For a research project, you will also need to find a citable source for any information you use, so a program like ChatGPT won't save you any time.
Bots like this can be useful in research only for aspects of research that don't require on accurate information: initial brainstorming, topic and source exploration, and developing a vocabulary of search terms.
For example, in a supply chain project you might need to find out about the various steps of iron ore processing. If you ask ChatGPT "How is iron ore processed?" it will give you an answer that may or may not be accurate and which your professor will not allow you to cite. But that answer will likely include terms used to describe aspects of iron ore processing that you may not have known before, which you can then use as part of targeted searches of databases, government websites, or other reliable sources that your professor considers appropriate.
If, instead, you ask ChatGPT "Who has reliable information about the processing of iron ore?" it will give you specific suggestions for mining companies that might provide this information, government agencies that cover mineral processing and the regulation of steel production, and possibly even the names of some scholarly journals on the topic. The list will not be complete, and some items may be erroneous, but it can get you started.
Using ChatGPT for research is very similar to using Wikipedia, in that sometimes the information is good, sometimes it is useless, and you always need to verify it elsewhere before using it in any kind of assignment. For the moment, however, the structure and requirements of wikipedia articles makes it easier to trace the information they contain and "read upstream."
