What (grammatical) tense to use when doing reference in a paper?

Question

For example, A published a paper with title B in 2000.

Then, in my paper:

A says / said that [C works / worked out perfectly].

and

B illustrates / illustrated that [C works / worked out perfectly].

As the content between [] is derived from the original paper, the tense may vary.

The pair of the simple present tense (in the source) and the simple past tense (in my current paper) is used as an example.

Sky Red · Accepted Answer

The 5th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA)  has this to say on page 33:

For literature review and
description of procedure (if of past
events): use the past tense ("Jiang showed")
or present perfect ("Jiang has
shown").
For describing results: use the past tense
    (e.g., "weight increased
    marginally").
For discussing results and
    presenting conclusions: use the present
    tense (e.g., "The results of this
    study suggest").

According to the APA, using the present tense for (3) includes the readers in "deliberating the matter at hand" (Publication manual, APA, p. 33). In other words, readers feel as if they are part of the final process of arriving at the all-important conclusion.

More on tenses can be found on pp. 41-44. Areas discussed include:

preferring the active voice over the
       passive (e.g., "Jiang designed the
       experiment" NOT "The experiment was designed by Jiang").

Note, however, that the passive is acceptable
in some situations; the APA gives
expository writing as an example and
in instances where you intend to
emphasise the "object or recipient
of the action" (APA, p. 42). You might also want to use the passive to soften the    impact of sentence after sentence written in the active
voice.
using the past tense for "specific, definite"
               (APA, p. 42) situations in the past
               (e.g., "Jiang (2010) presented similar findings.").
using the present perfect tense for expressing
the same situations in the point
above that are neither specific nor
definite (APA p.43)(no example of this from me) or for describing "an action beginning in the past and continuing to the present" (APA, p. 43), (e.g., "Since the publication of the experiment, researchers have attempted to disprove its results").
using the subjunctive (best that you read
it for yourself, in fact, you should
try to get hold of a copy of the
APA's manual and go over the various sections. That would be
better than anything I could summarize here for you.)

APA's website is www.apastyle.org

Disclaimer: All examples are mine.

Hope this helps

F'x · Answer

Going quickly through my scientific papers database shows occurrences of both present and past tense. Actually, I find both "A reports that", "A reported that" and "A has reported that". I’ve been thinking about it, and what I would do myself is:

For a recent paper that I’m directly referring to, or comparing with, I would use “has reported”.
For an older paper, e.g. if more recent works have been published on the topic, I would use “reported”.
I mostly avoid the present tense when discussing the author is the subject (because he might have changed his mind about it), but I use the present tense when the work is the subject. For example, I would write “Zhiang stated in his 2001 monograph that ...”, but “Zhiang’s 2001 monograph states that ...”.

Of course, I welcome criticism on this, or alternative propositions. Especially so because writing scientific papers in English is part of my job, so I'd be glad to improve myself!

Tasilo von Heydebrandt und der · Answer

I agree with the substance of the last answer, except to say that you MUST use the past tense (as in "Smith found that x") if Smith is deceased, even if the paper is in the very recent past.

What (grammatical) tense to use when doing reference in a paper?

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