Library Information Literacy and Research Tutorials

What is a Citation?

A citation is the documentation you provide about where you got specific information or ideas. You need to include enough documentation about each source so that a reader can find these sources on their own. (This means that, in academic writing, we need to include more than just the link!) Usually you incorporate this information as in-text citations (or hyperlinks on web sources), footnotes, or endnotes.

You will often be asked to compile a list of citations for the sources you've used at the end of a research paper or other assignment. Depending on the citation style you use, this list is called a "Bibliography," "Works Cited," or "References" page. 

What is a Citation Style?

Your instructor may ask you to use a particular citation style, such as MLA, APA, or Chicago. Citation styles provide guidelines that help you present citation information with consistent formatting and punctuation. If you need to look up guidelines for a particular citation style, our Citation Help page can direct you to various print and online style manuals. We also recommend the Purdue OWL for helpful guidelines and examples. Since different disciplines tend to favor some citation styles over others, check with your instructor to see if there is a style you should use in their class.

When Should I Cite?

Any time you reuse, reference, or make a call out to someone else's ideas or work you need to add a citation. Usually this includes any time you include direct quotations, paraphrase an idea, or summarize someone else's work! 

• Quote: When you reuse phrases or sentences exactly as they appear in the original source document. Use quotation marks or set quotes off using block quotations.
• Paraphrase: When you restate an idea from the original source document using your own words.
• Summarize: When you provide a brief version of what you learned from the source document.

Why Should I Cite?

Citing your sources is a fundamental research skill and a crucial step in avoiding plagiarism. Citing your sources also helps demonstrate that you understand the scholarly conversations and conventions within your discipline. By including citations, you:

• Acknowledge and credit the work that has helped influence your thinking or informed your research
• Provide evidence to back up and strengthen your arguments
• Enable your audience to track down and examine the sources you used for themselves and deepen their own understanding

Watch the following video for a short introduction to citation:

“Citation: A (Very) Brief Introduction” by North Carolina State University Libraries is published under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-SA US license.

What is Plagiarism?

As described in our Academic Catalog, plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty involving "the act of using ideas, words, or work from another source (including content creating tools) and presenting it as one's own without giving credit to the source creator(s)." Sources that are "works of original expression" and that you should cite can include books, articles, poetry, newspapers, speeches, movies, videos clips, protected pieces of art, illustrations, musical compositions, and a variety of online content.

Plagiarism can be intentional (when you knowingly try to pass off someone's else's work as your own) or unintentional (when you accidentally plagiarize, often because you are unsure of when or how things need to be cited). You can face negative consequences in college for plagiarism, even if the plagiarism was unintentional. So make sure you understand your instructors' expectations. (Is there a particular citation style you should use in their class? What is their stance on student use of generative AI?) Hopefully plagiarism will never be an issue for you, but your instructor or a librarian can help you understand how to avoid plagiarism or, if needed, what you can do differently to avoid plagiarizing in the future. 

Avoiding Plagiarism

Avoiding plagiarism is easy - just give credit to others' ideas by citing everything you use! As a developing scholar, practice taking accurate and detailed notes when you are gathering information on your topic and incorporating this information into your assignment. Some tips for your notetaking include

• making a "working bibliography" or list of the sources you have found so far in your search for information
• indicating an author's exact words by using quotation marks around them (so it's easy for you to tell when something is a direct quotation)
• carefully citing each author and source in the text of your paper.  Each reference in the text of your research paper should link to a full citation in the Works Cited list at the end of the research paper.

A Note on ChatGPT and Generative AI

If you plan to use ChatGPT or similar on an assignment, check with your instructor first about their expectations! This technology has only recently become widely available, and there's still a lot of discussion around when, how, and to what extent it should be used by students during their research and writing processes. Some instructors are fine with students using it, others are only comfortable with students using it for specific purposes, and some consider any use of it an act of academic dishonesty or plagiarism. If your instructor lets you use ChatGPT, you should also ask them if they want you to cite it, share your prompts, or otherwise acknowledge its use.

Each citation is composed from a set of bibliographic elements, which are specific categories of information for things like an author's name, a work's title, or a journal article's publisher. Citation styles (e.g., MLA, APA, Chicago) might look a bit different from each other or have different rules about things like ordering the bibliographic elements within a citation, but the basic bibliographic elements you need to include within a citation stay the same across citation styles. 

Common Bibliographic Elements

These are common categories of information that go into most (but not all) citations. (Certain types of sources will not need to include all of these bibliographic elements. For example, print books probably don't have a DOI or URL, and web content may not have formal publication or pagination information, and you may need to treat the content publisher as the creator, too, if a named author isn't listed.)

• Creator: Authors, editors, composers, translators, or another person or group who has made some sort of creative contribution to the work. (You can include more than one!)
• Title: The FULL title of a work, including everything before and after a colon (i.e., the work's title and subtitle).
• Publisher: The name of the organization, company, or group that published the work.
• Place of Publication: The place where the work was originally published (typically the name of a city). 
• Year of Publication: The year when the work was published. 
• Edition: Some works (e.g., textbooks, popular or "classic" books) are republished in different editions over time. 
• Pagination: The specific page number(s) where the information or ideas in question came from within a work.
• Online Location (choose one):
  • DOI (Digital Object Identifier): A string of numbers, letters, and symbols used to permanently identify an article or document and link to it on the web. 
  • URL: The web address for a specific online web page where the information source was found. 

Creating Citations Manually

Creating citations on your own is your most time- and labor-intensive option, but it helps you practice finding specific bibliographic elements and sometimes you will want or need to create citations on your own. You create or "build" a citation by pulling together the bibliographic elements found in or with your source, and then you organize and format these elements according to a particular citation style.

Citation Generators

The library catalog, many library databases, and resources like Google Scholar have built-in citation generators. These citation generators create a citation for a source in the citation style of your choice. Note that computer-generated citations may contain errors - check them against a style guide to make sure the citations are complete and don't include any formatting errors.

Citation generators appear in different locations on different platforms - ask a librarian if you are having trouble finding one! 

• In the library catalog: Look for the Cite button in the listing for your book or article. It's often in the upper right-hand corner of the listing. When you click on the Cite button, a pop-up box will let you select a citation style before it generates a citation for you to copy and paste into your draft bibliography.

• In Academic Search Premier or other EBSCO databases: Article records include a Cite option on the top right corner of the page. The Cite button displays a pop-up window listing computer-generated citations for the article in several citation styles. Scroll through the list to find the style you want and then copy and paste the citation into your draft bibliography.

Citation Managers (Zotero)

Citation managers like Zotero help you save, organize, and format your citations in one place. They're especially useful if you're using lots of sources for a big assignment or you want to track or manage citations for several assignments. Review our Zotero tutorial for detailed installation and setup instructions.  

Below are examples of where you can find the bibliographic elements of citations in common types of sources you might use in your research. It is important to be aware that different publications will put the information in different places! Look at the PDF examples to get a better idea of where to look in your sources to find key bibliographic elements.

Books and eBooks

If you are looking at the record details for a print book or eBook in the library catalog:

• Title information is always found at the top of the record page.
• Many other bibliographic elements are provided in the top section of the record, including Creator (Author and/or Editor), Publisher, Place of Publication, and Publication Year information. You may need to scroll down and click on the View Description heading to view all of the details.

If you are looking at the actual book (again, either in print or as an eBook):

• The title page near the start of the book includes the bibliographic elements for Title, Creator, and Publisher.
• The copyright page (or "verso page," which is on the other side of the title page in print books or is the page immediately after the title page in eBooks) is where you can find Publisher, Place of Publication, Publication Year, and Edition information.

These bibliographic elements are highlighted in the example of a book's title page and copyright pages below.

In an edited book with multiple authors, be sure check the table of contents for the Author, Chapter Title, and Pagination (page numbers) of the chapter. The book editor or editors will usually be on the book's title page instead of authors. 

In the PDF example of an edited book below, these bibliographic elements are highlighted on the title, verso, and table of contents pages. 

Articles from a Database

Bibliographic elements of a journal article will appear in different locations according to the journal in which the article was published and/or the database in which you found the article. 

In EBSCO databases, such as Academic Search Premier, most bibliographic elements will be listed on the article record page you see when you first click on a title from the results list. In the example article record below, find the Article Title, Authors, Journal Title, Journal Volume and Issue, Publication Date, and Pagination (pages in the journal where the article is). 

Bibliographic elements can also be found in the full text article PDF, usually along the top or bottom of the page. Where exactly the information will be located on the pages is the choice of the publisher, so pay careful attention to the margins of your article.

In the example below, the bibliographic elements for the journal volume and issue numbers and the publication year are at the top of the first page of the article. The first page also has the article title and the authors. On the second page the bibliographic elements for journal title, publication year, journal volume and issue numbers, and pagination are in the top left margin.

Bibliographic elements are essential to identify before assembling them into a citation following the format of a specific style.

The Copyright Law of the United States provides legal protection for intellectual property. An information source does not have to be registered with the Copyright Office to be covered by copyright; it is copyrighted as soon as it is created. When an information source is copyrighted, you should cite it if you quote or paraphrase it in your assignment.

In your search for information, you should assume that all materials you find are copyrighted, unless a source specifies that it is licensed under Creative Commons, which might allow specific types of use, or is in the public domain, meaning it can be used freely by anyone. The doctrine of fair use allows copyrighted works to be used for purposes such as criticism, parody, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research. Fair use generally applies to nonprofit, educational purposes that do not affect the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Section 107 of the Copyright Law describes four factors to consider in deciding when fair use applies. For further information see the Copyright Act and other important documents relating to the law and its interpretation.

Watch the following video to better understand copyright and fair use:

Source: Common Sense Education. "Creativity, Copyright, and Fair Use." Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 4 September 2020. 23 August 2023.

Creative Commons offers creators an opportunity to license new work to share in varying levels, rather than the traditional "All rights reserved" copyright. Watch the following video for a description of the various licenses under Creative Commons:

Source: University of Guelph McLaughlin Library. "What Are Creative Commons Licenses?" Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 21 September 2018. 21 August 2024.