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CITATIONS: WHY?
- The tradition of scholarly discourse (as well as legal traditions regarding 'intellectual property') requires you to correctly cite all information that you are using (that is not 'common knowledge') that has come from someone else
- Failure (either accidental or deliberate) to correctly cite information obtained from others is known as plagiarism
- Plagiarism while in school can lead to failing grades on assignments, for an entire course, and even to expulsion from the institution
CITATIONS: HOW?
- Make use of the citation support offered by most academic databases
- Many (but not all) of our databases will generate citations of search results for you to copy/paste
- Google Scholar offers citations under each search result
- Find and use a good Style Guide to check your citations (both the in-text / parenthetical citations and Bibliography/References at the end) prior to handing in your assignments
- Just because a database or Google Scholar (or even Zotero) gave you a citation doesn't mean it's 100% correct, or complete
- You are responsible for double-checking your citations, using a Style Guide, such as:
- If you will be collecting and managing many citations, we strongly recommend that you find and use bibliographic management software
- We recommend Zotero (a free, open-source bibliographic management software)
- Allows you to collect/organize/store your citations and PDFs
- Includes cloud-based back-up
- Includes a browser add-on that allows you to add resources to your Zotero library while online
- Includes a word processor add-on that allows you to add in-text citations and references with one click
- See our Zotero Help Guide
