Take for an example of a sentence which I found from the article by Lesinski et al. published in Physical Review C. This is purely to illustrate the message that I want to bring across and it will apply for any other field.
In their early study, Stancu, Brink, and Flocard [37], who added the tensor force perturbatively to the SIII parametrization, pointed out that some spin-orbit splittings in magic nuclei can be improved with a tensor force.
Now supposed you are working on a similar topic and you want to write something on the role of spin-orbit splittings in heavy magic nuclei. You paraphase the sentence for example to:
Stancu, Brink and Flocard showed that one can get a better agreement of spin-orbit splittings in heavy magic nuclei if nuclear tensor force is included.
Now who should I cite for this sentence?
Should I cite this paper by Lesinski et al. since I learnt of the role of nuclear tensor on spin-orbit splitting here?
Or should I cite the paper by Stancu and collaborators even though the article is way back in 1977?
As the title of this essay implies, one should always cite the original papers whenever possible. For they are the one who performed the study and whom the credit should be given.
