Reproductive writing - writing from sources

The subject of this paper is 'reproductive writing', a term covering all forms of writing that involve other texts. Different kinds of reproductive writing are discussed with the main focus on text production in which the writer uses other texts in academic, writing for the development of his or her own ideas as well as for references to the scientific literature. Receptive, reproductive, and productive processes all interact in reproductive writing. Situational and individual constraints on this type of text production are discussed in terms of the results of a survey of scientific writers from a variety of disciplines at German universities. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.