how to cite information in a research paper

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Citations provide information to help your audience locate the sources you consulted when writing a paper or preparing a presentation. Some of your instructors will specify which citation format you should use; others will tell you to choose your own citation format as long as you use it consistently. The most common citation formats are MLA (Modern Language Association) style, which is primarily used for papers in the humanities; APA (American Psychological Association) style, which is primarily used for papers in the social sciences; and Chicago style (The Chicago Manual of Style), which is used for both humanities and social science papers.

Some of your courses at Harvard will require you to use other citation formats. Some science courses may require you to use the citation style of the American Medical Association (AMA). AMA style is considered a standard citation format for academic writing in the sciences and is used in many textbooks and medical journals. The AMA Manual of Style is available online . The American Chemical Society publishes its own style guide , which you may be asked to use in chemistry courses. The Harvard Department of Economics provides students with a departmental style guide, which you can find  here . If you are not sure which format to use for a specific course, consult your instructor.

Both APA and MLA styles require you to credit your sources in two ways. First, you must include a parenthetical citation in the text of your paper that indicates the source of a particular quotation, paraphrased statement or idea, or fact; second, you must include a list of references at the end of your paper that enables readers to locate the sources you have used. You can read more about MLA style here and APA style here .

Chicago style also requires you to credit your sources both in the text and at the end of your paper. Chicago offers guidance on two types of in-text citations–notes or parenthetical citations. You can read more about Chicago style here .

If you have questions about which citation style to use, you should always check with your instructor.

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Home / Guides / Citation Guides / How to Cite Sources

How to Cite Sources

Here is a complete list for how to cite sources. Most of these guides present citation guidance and examples in MLA, APA, and Chicago.

If you’re looking for general information on MLA or APA citations , the EasyBib Writing Center was designed for you! It has articles on what’s needed in an MLA in-text citation , how to format an APA paper, what an MLA annotated bibliography is, making an MLA works cited page, and much more!

MLA Format Citation Examples

The Modern Language Association created the MLA Style, currently in its 9th edition, to provide researchers with guidelines for writing and documenting scholarly borrowings.  Most often used in the humanities, MLA style (or MLA format ) has been adopted and used by numerous other disciplines, in multiple parts of the world.

MLA provides standard rules to follow so that most research papers are formatted in a similar manner. This makes it easier for readers to comprehend the information. The MLA in-text citation guidelines, MLA works cited standards, and MLA annotated bibliography instructions provide scholars with the information they need to properly cite sources in their research papers, articles, and assignments.

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APA Format Citation Examples

The American Psychological Association created the APA citation style in 1929 as a way to help psychologists, anthropologists, and even business managers establish one common way to cite sources and present content.

APA is used when citing sources for academic articles such as journals, and is intended to help readers better comprehend content, and to avoid language bias wherever possible. The APA style (or APA format ) is now in its 7th edition, and provides citation style guides for virtually any type of resource.

Chicago Style Citation Examples

The Chicago/Turabian style of citing sources is generally used when citing sources for humanities papers, and is best known for its requirement that writers place bibliographic citations at the bottom of a page (in Chicago-format footnotes ) or at the end of a paper (endnotes).

The Turabian and Chicago citation styles are almost identical, but the Turabian style is geared towards student published papers such as theses and dissertations, while the Chicago style provides guidelines for all types of publications. This is why you’ll commonly see Chicago style and Turabian style presented together. The Chicago Manual of Style is currently in its 17th edition, and Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations is in its 8th edition.

Citing Specific Sources or Events

• Declaration of Independence
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6 Interesting Citation Facts

The world of citations may seem cut and dry, but there’s more to them than just specific capitalization rules, MLA in-text citations , and other formatting specifications. Citations have been helping researches document their sources for hundreds of years, and are a great way to learn more about a particular subject area.

Ever wonder what sets all the different styles apart, or how they came to be in the first place? Read on for some interesting facts about citations!

1. There are Over 7,000 Different Citation Styles

You may be familiar with MLA and APA citation styles, but there are actually thousands of citation styles used for all different academic disciplines all across the world. Deciding which one to use can be difficult, so be sure to ask you instructor which one you should be using for your next paper.

2. Some Citation Styles are Named After People

While a majority of citation styles are named for the specific organizations that publish them (i.e. APA is published by the American Psychological Association, and MLA format is named for the Modern Language Association), some are actually named after individuals. The most well-known example of this is perhaps Turabian style, named for Kate L. Turabian, an American educator and writer. She developed this style as a condensed version of the Chicago Manual of Style in order to present a more concise set of rules to students.

3. There are Some Really Specific and Uniquely Named Citation Styles

How specific can citation styles get? The answer is very. For example, the “Flavour and Fragrance Journal” style is based on a bimonthly, peer-reviewed scientific journal published since 1985 by John Wiley & Sons. It publishes original research articles, reviews and special reports on all aspects of flavor and fragrance. Another example is “Nordic Pulp and Paper Research,” a style used by an international scientific magazine covering science and technology for the areas of wood or bio-mass constituents.

4. More citations were created on  EasyBib.com  in the first quarter of 2018 than there are people in California.

The US Census Bureau estimates that approximately 39.5 million people live in the state of California. Meanwhile, about 43 million citations were made on EasyBib from January to March of 2018. That’s a lot of citations.

5. “Citations” is a Word With a Long History

The word “citations” can be traced back literally thousands of years to the Latin word “citare” meaning “to summon, urge, call; put in sudden motion, call forward; rouse, excite.” The word then took on its more modern meaning and relevance to writing papers in the 1600s, where it became known as the “act of citing or quoting a passage from a book, etc.”

6. Citation Styles are Always Changing

The concept of citations always stays the same. It is a means of preventing plagiarism and demonstrating where you relied on outside sources. The specific style rules, however, can and do change regularly. For example, in 2018 alone, 46 new citation styles were introduced , and 106 updates were made to exiting styles. At EasyBib, we are always on the lookout for ways to improve our styles and opportunities to add new ones to our list.

Why Citations Matter

Here are the ways accurate citations can help your students achieve academic success, and how you can answer the dreaded question, “why should I cite my sources?”

They Give Credit to the Right People

Citing their sources makes sure that the reader can differentiate the student’s original thoughts from those of other researchers. Not only does this make sure that the sources they use receive proper credit for their work, it ensures that the student receives deserved recognition for their unique contributions to the topic. Whether the student is citing in MLA format , APA format , or any other style, citations serve as a natural way to place a student’s work in the broader context of the subject area, and serve as an easy way to gauge their commitment to the project.

They Provide Hard Evidence of Ideas

Having many citations from a wide variety of sources related to their idea means that the student is working on a well-researched and respected subject. Citing sources that back up their claim creates room for fact-checking and further research . And, if they can cite a few sources that have the converse opinion or idea, and then demonstrate to the reader why they believe that that viewpoint is wrong by again citing credible sources, the student is well on their way to winning over the reader and cementing their point of view.

They Promote Originality and Prevent Plagiarism

The point of research projects is not to regurgitate information that can already be found elsewhere. We have Google for that! What the student’s project should aim to do is promote an original idea or a spin on an existing idea, and use reliable sources to promote that idea. Copying or directly referencing a source without proper citation can lead to not only a poor grade, but accusations of academic dishonesty. By citing their sources regularly and accurately, students can easily avoid the trap of plagiarism , and promote further research on their topic.

They Create Better Researchers

By researching sources to back up and promote their ideas, students are becoming better researchers without even knowing it! Each time a new source is read or researched, the student is becoming more engaged with the project and is developing a deeper understanding of the subject area. Proper citations demonstrate a breadth of the student’s reading and dedication to the project itself. By creating citations, students are compelled to make connections between their sources and discern research patterns. Each time they complete this process, they are helping themselves become better researchers and writers overall.

When is the Right Time to Start Making Citations?

Make in-text/parenthetical citations as you need them.

As you are writing your paper, be sure to include references within the text that correspond with references in a works cited or bibliography. These are usually called in-text citations or parenthetical citations in MLA and APA formats. The most effective time to complete these is directly after you have made your reference to another source. For instance, after writing the line from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities : “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…,” you would include a citation like this (depending on your chosen citation style):

(Dickens 11).

This signals to the reader that you have referenced an outside source. What’s great about this system is that the in-text citations serve as a natural list for all of the citations you have made in your paper, which will make completing the works cited page a whole lot easier. After you are done writing, all that will be left for you to do is scan your paper for these references, and then build a works cited page that includes a citation for each one.

Need help creating an MLA works cited page ? Try the MLA format generator on EasyBib.com! We also have a guide on how to format an APA reference page .

2. Understand the General Formatting Rules of Your Citation Style Before You Start Writing

While reading up on paper formatting may not sound exciting, being aware of how your paper should look early on in the paper writing process is super important. Citation styles can dictate more than just the appearance of the citations themselves, but rather can impact the layout of your paper as a whole, with specific guidelines concerning margin width, title treatment, and even font size and spacing. Knowing how to organize your paper before you start writing will ensure that you do not receive a low grade for something as trivial as forgetting a hanging indent.

Don’t know where to start? Here’s a formatting guide on APA format .

3. Double-check All of Your Outside Sources for Relevance and Trustworthiness First

Collecting outside sources that support your research and specific topic is a critical step in writing an effective paper. But before you run to the library and grab the first 20 books you can lay your hands on, keep in mind that selecting a source to include in your paper should not be taken lightly. Before you proceed with using it to backup your ideas, run a quick Internet search for it and see if other scholars in your field have written about it as well. Check to see if there are book reviews about it or peer accolades. If you spot something that seems off to you, you may want to consider leaving it out of your work. Doing this before your start making citations can save you a ton of time in the long run.

Finished with your paper? It may be time to run it through a grammar and plagiarism checker , like the one offered by EasyBib Plus. If you’re just looking to brush up on the basics, our grammar guides  are ready anytime you are.

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How to Cite a Research Paper

Last Updated: March 29, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was reviewed by Gerald Posner and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD . Gerald Posner is an Author & Journalist based in Miami, Florida. With over 35 years of experience, he specializes in investigative journalism, nonfiction books, and editorials. He holds a law degree from UC College of the Law, San Francisco, and a BA in Political Science from the University of California-Berkeley. He’s the author of thirteen books, including several New York Times bestsellers, the winner of the Florida Book Award for General Nonfiction, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. He was also shortlisted for the Best Business Book of 2020 by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 420,232 times.

When writing a paper for a research project, you may need to cite a research paper you used as a reference. The basic information included in your citation will be the same across all styles. However, the format in which that information is presented is somewhat different depending on whether you're using American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA), Chicago, or American Medical Association (AMA) style.

Referencing a Research Paper

• In APA style, cite the paper: Last Name, First Initial. (Year). Title. Publisher.
• In Chicago style, cite the paper: Last Name, First Name. “Title.” Publisher, Year.
• In MLA style, cite the paper: Last Name, First Name. “Title.” Publisher. Year.

Citation Help

• For example: "Kringle, K., & Frost, J."

• For example: "Kringle, K., & Frost, J. (2012)."
• If the date, or any other information, are not available, use the guide at https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/05/missing-pieces.html .

• For example: "Kringle, K., & Frost, J. (2012). Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer."
• If you found the research paper in a database maintained by a university, corporation, or other organization, include any index number assigned to the paper in parentheses after the title. For example: "Kringle, K., & Frost, J. (2012). Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer. (Report No. 1234)."

• For example: "Kringle, K., & Frost, J. (2012). Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer. (Report No. 1234). Retrieved from Alaska University Library Archives, December 24, 2017."

• For example: "(Kringle & Frost, 2012)."
• If there was no date on the research paper, use the abbreviation n.d. : "(Kringle & Frost, n.d.)."

• For example: "Kringle, Kris, and Jack Frost."

• For example: "Kringle, Kris, and Jack Frost. "Red Noses, Warm Hearts: The Glowing Phenomenon among North Pole Reindeer." Master's thesis."

• For example: "Kringle, Kris, and Jack Frost. "Red Noses, Warm Hearts: The Glowing Phenomenon among North Pole Reindeer." Master's thesis, Alaska University, 2012."

• For example: "Kringle, Kris, and Jack Frost. "Red Noses, Warm Hearts: The Glowing Phenomenon among North Pole Reindeer." Master's thesis, Alaska University, 2012. Accessed at https://www.northpolemedical.com/raising_rudolf."

• Footnotes are essentially the same as the full citation, although the first and last names of the authors aren't inverted.
• For parenthetical citations, Chicago uses the Author-Date format. For example: "(Kringle and Frost 2012)."

• For example: "Kringle, Kris, and Frost, Jack."

• For example: "Kringle, Kris, and Frost, Jack. "Red Noses, Warm Hearts: The Glowing Phenomenon Among North Pole Reindeer.""

• For example, suppose you found the paper in a collection of paper housed in university archives. Your citation might be: "Kringle, Kris, and Frost, Jack. "Red Noses, Warm Hearts: The Glowing Phenomenon Among North Pole Reindeer." Master's Theses 2000-2010. University of Alaska Library Archives. Accessed December 24, 2017."

• For example: "(Kringle & Frost, p. 33)."

• For example: "Kringle K, Frost J."

• For example: "Kringle K, Frost J. Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer."

• For example: "Kringle K, Frost J. Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer. Nat Med. 2012; 18(9): 1429-1433."

• For example, if you're citing a paper presented at a conference, you'd write: "Kringle K, Frost J. Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer. Oral presentation at Arctic Health Association Annual Summit; December, 2017; Nome, Alaska."
• To cite a paper you read online, you'd write: "Kringle K, Frost J. Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer. https://www.northpolemedical.com/raising_rudolf"

• For example: "According to Kringle and Frost, these red noses indicate a subspecies of reindeer native to Alaska and Canada that have migrated to the North Pole and mingled with North Pole reindeer. 1 "

Community Q&A

• If you used a manual as a source in your research paper, you'll need to learn how to cite the manual also. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If you use any figures in your research paper, you'll also need to know the proper way to cite them in MLA, APA, AMA, or Chicago. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://askus.library.wwu.edu/faq/116659
• ↑ https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/apaquickguide/intext
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.html
• ↑ https://libanswers.snhu.edu/faq/48009
• ↑ https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_in_text_citations_the_basics.html
• ↑ https://morningside.libguides.com/MLA8/location
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/ama_style/index.html

About This Article

To cite a paper APA style, start with the author's last name and first initial, and the year of publication. Then, list the title of the paper, where you found it, and the date that you accessed it. In a paper, use a parenthetical reference with the last name of the author and the publication year. For an MLA citation, list the author's last name and then first name and the title of the paper in quotations. Include where you accessed the paper and the date you retrieved it. In your paper, use a parenthetical reference with the author's last name and the page number. Keep reading for tips on Chicago and AMA citations and exceptions to the citation rules! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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APA Formatting and Style Guide (7th Edition)

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Resources on using in-text citations in APA style

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Citing sources: Overview

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Use these tools to help you organize and cite your references:

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If you have questions after consulting this guide about how to cite, please contact your advisor/professor or the writing and communication center .

Why citing is important

It's important to cite sources you used in your research for several reasons:

• To show your reader you've done proper research by listing sources you used to get your information
• To be a responsible scholar by giving credit to other researchers and acknowledging their ideas
• To avoid plagiarism by quoting words and ideas used by other authors
• To allow your reader to track down the sources you used by citing them accurately in your paper by way of footnotes, a bibliography or reference list

About citations

Citing a source means that you show, within the body of your text, that you took words, ideas, figures, images, etc. from another place.

Citations are a short way to uniquely identify a published work (e.g. book, article, chapter, web site).  They are found in bibliographies and reference lists and are also collected in article and book databases.

Citations consist of standard elements, and contain all the information necessary to identify and track down publications, including:

• author name(s)
• titles of books, articles, and journals
• date of publication
• page numbers
• volume and issue numbers (for articles)

Citations may look different, depending on what is being cited and which style was used to create them. Choose an appropriate style guide for your needs.  Here is an example of an article citation using four different citation styles.  Notice the common elements as mentioned above:

Author - R. Langer

Article Title - New Methods of Drug Delivery

Source Title - Science

Volume and issue - Vol 249, issue 4976

Publication Date - 1990

Page numbers - 1527-1533

American Chemical Society (ACS) style:

Langer, R. New Methods of Drug Delivery. Science 1990 , 249 , 1527-1533.

IEEE Style:

R. Langer, " New Methods of Drug Delivery," Science , vol. 249 , pp. 1527-1533 , SEP 28, 1990 .

American Psychological Association   (APA) style:

Langer, R. (1990) . New methods of drug delivery. Science , 249 (4976), 1527-1533.

Modern Language Association (MLA) style:

Langer, R. " New Methods of Drug Delivery." Science 249.4976 (1990) : 1527-33.

What to cite

You must cite:

• Facts, figures, ideas, or other information that is not common knowledge

Publications that must be cited include:  books, book chapters, articles, web pages, theses, etc.

Another person's exact words should be quoted and cited to show proper credit 

When in doubt, be safe and cite your source!

Avoiding plagiarism

Plagiarism occurs when you borrow another's words (or ideas) and do not acknowledge that you have done so. In this culture, we consider our words and ideas intellectual property; like a car or any other possession, we believe our words belong to us and cannot be used without our permission.

Plagiarism is a very serious offense. If it is found that you have plagiarized -- deliberately or inadvertently -- you may face serious consequences. In some instances, plagiarism has meant that students have had to leave the institutions where they were studying.

The best way to avoid plagiarism is to cite your sources - both within the body of your paper and in a bibliography of sources you used at the end of your paper.

Some useful links about plagiarism:

• MIT Academic Integrity Overview on citing sources and avoiding plagiarism at MIT.
• Avoiding Plagiarism From the MIT Writing and Communication Center.
• Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It From Indiana University's Writing Tutorial Services.
• Plagiarism- Overview A resource from Purdue University.
• Next: Citation style guides >>
• Last Updated: Jan 16, 2024 7:02 AM
• URL: https://libguides.mit.edu/citing

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A citation is a formal reference to a published or unpublished source that you consulted and obtained information from while writing your research paper. It refers to a source of information that supports a factual statement, proposition, argument, or assertion or any quoted text obtained from a book, article, web site, or any other type of material . In-text citations are embedded within the body of your paper and use a shorthand notation style that refers to a complete description of the item at the end of the paper. Materials cited at the end of a paper may be listed under the heading References, Sources, Works Cited, or Bibliography. Rules on how to properly cite a source depends on the writing style manual your professor wants you to use for the class [e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, etc.]. Note that some disciplines have their own citation rules [e.g., law; medicine].

Citations: Overview. OASIS Writing Center, Walden University; Research and Citation. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Citing Sources. University Writing Center, Texas A&M University.

Citing Your Sources

Reasons for Citing Sources in Your Research Paper

English scientist, Sir Isaac Newton, once wrote, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”* Citations support learning how to "see further" through processes of intellectual discovery, critical thinking, and applying a deliberate method of navigating through the scholarly landscape by tracking how cited works are propagated by scholars over time and the subsequent ways this leads to the devarication of new knowledge.

Listed below are specific reasons why citing sources is an important part of doing good research.

• Shows the reader where to find more information . Citations help readers expand their understanding and knowledge about the issues being investigated. One of the most effective strategies for locating authoritative, relevant sources about a research problem is to review materials cited in studies published by other authors. In this way, the sources you cite help the reader identify where to go to examine the topic in more depth and detail.
• Increases your credibility as an author . Citations to the words, ideas, and arguments of scholars demonstrates that you have conducted a thorough review of the literature and, therefore, you are reporting your research results or proposing recommended courses of action from an informed and critically engaged perspective. Your citations offer evidence that you effectively contemplated, evaluated, and synthesized sources of information in relation to your conceptualization of the research problem.
• Illustrates the non-linear and contested nature of knowledge creation . The sources you cite show the reader how you characterized the dynamics of prior knowledge creation relevant to the research problem and how you managed to identify the contested relationships between problems and solutions proposed among scholars. Citations don't just list materials used in your study, they tell a story about how prior knowledge-making emerged from a constant state of creation, renewal, and transformation.
• Reinforces your arguments . Sources cited in your paper provide the evidence that readers need to determine that you properly addressed the “So What?” question. This refers to whether you considered the relevance and significance of the research problem, its implications applied to creating new knowledge, and its importance for improving practice. In this way, citations draw attention to and support the legitimacy and originality of your own ideas and assertions.
• Demonstrates that you "listened" to relevant conversations among scholars before joining in . Your citations tell the reader where you developed an understanding of the debates among scholars. They show how you educated yourself about ongoing conversations taking place within relevant communities of researchers before inserting your own ideas and arguments. In peer-reviewed scholarship, most of these conversations emerge within books, research reports, journal articles, and other cited works.
• Delineates alternative approaches to explaining the research problem . If you disagree with prior research assumptions or you believe that a topic has been understudied or you find that there is a gap in how scholars have understood a problem, your citations serve as the source materials from which to analyze and present an alternative viewpoint or to assert that a different course of action should be pursued. In short, the materials you cite serve as the means by which to argue persuasively against long-standing assumptions promulgated in prior studies.
• Helps the reader understand contextual aspects of your research . Cited sources help readers understand the specific circumstances, conditions, and settings of the problem being investigated and, by extension, how your arguments can be fully understood and assessed. Citations place your line of reasoning within a specific contextualized framework based on how others have studied the problem and how you interpreted their findings in support of your overall research objectives.
• Frames the development of concepts and ideas within the literature . No topic in the social and behavioral sciences rests in isolation from research that has taken place in the past. Your citations help the reader understand the growth and transformation of the theoretical assumptions, key concepts, and systematic inquiries that emerged prior to your engagement with the research problem.
• Underscores sources that were most important to you . Your citations represent a set of choices made about what you determined to be the most important sources for understanding the topic. They not only list what you discovered, but why it matters and how the materials you chose to cite fit within the broader context of your research design and arguments. As part of an overall assessment of the study’s validity and reliability , the choices you make also helps the reader determine what sources of research may have been excluded.
• Provides evidence of interdisciplinary thinking . An important principle of good research is to extend your review of the literature beyond the predominant disciplinary space where scholars have previously examined a topic. Citations provide evidence that you have integrated epistemological arguments, observations, and/or methodological strategies of other disciplines into your paper, thereby demonstrating that you understand the complex, interconnected nature of contemporary research topics.
• Forms the basis for bibliometric analysis of research . Bibliometric analysis is a quantitative method used, for example, to identify and predict emerging trends in research, document patterns of collaboration among scholars, explore the intellectual structure of a specific domain of research, map the development of research within and across disciplines, or identify gaps in knowledge within the literature. Bibliometric data can also be used to visually map relationships among published studies. Citations to books, journal articles, research reports, and other publications represent the raw data used in bibliometric research.
• Reveals possible adherence to the principles of citational justice. Citational justice refers to equity in the inclusion of sources published by authors who are members of marginalized or underrepresented groups that are often under-cited because of their background, community of origin, identity, or location. In so doing, this movement “challenges entrenched hierarchies and biases in knowledge production.” ** Within this context, the sources cited in your paper can help the reader obtain a more inclusive divergency of voices and perspectives about how a research problem can be understood, contextualized, and investigated.
• Supports critical thinking and independent learning . Evaluating the authenticity, reliability, validity, and originality of prior research is an act of interpretation and introspective reasoning applied to assessing whether a source of information will contribute to understanding the problem in ways that are persuasive and align with your overall research objectives. Reviewing and citing prior studies represents a deliberate act of critically scrutinizing each source as part of your overall assessment of how scholars have confronted the research problem.
• Honors the achievements of others . As Susan Blum recently noted, *** citations not only identify sources used, they acknowledge the achievements of scholars within the larger network of research about the topic. Citing sources is a normative act of professionalism within academe and a way to highlight and recognize the work of scholars who likely do not obtain any tangible benefits or monetary value from their research endeavors. Your citations help to validate the work of others.

*Vernon. Jamie L. "On the Shoulder of Giants." American Scientist 105 (July-August 2017): 194.

**Dadze Arthur, Abena and Mary S. Mangai. "The Journal and the Quest for Epistemic Justice." Public Administration and Development 44 (2024): 11.

***Blum, Susan D. "In Defense of the Morality of Citation.” Inside Higher Ed , January 29, 2024.

Aksnes, Dag W., Liv Langfeldt, and Paul Wouters. "Citations, Citation Indicators, and Research Quality: An Overview of Basic Concepts and Theories." Sage Open 9 (January-March 2019): https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019829575; Blum, Susan Debra. My Word!: Plagiarism and College Culture . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009; Bretag, Tracey., editor. Handbook of Academic Integrity . Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2020; Ballenger, Bruce P. The Curious Researcher: A Guide to Writing Research Papers . 7th edition. Boston, MA: Pearson, 2012; D'Angelo, Barbara J. "Using Source Analysis to Promote Critical Thinking." Research Strategies 18 (Winter 2001): 303-309; Kwon, Diana. “The Rise of Citational Justice.” Nature 603 (March 24, 2022): 568-572; Donthu, Naveen et al. “How to Conduct a Bibliometric Analysis: An Overview and Guidelines.” Journal of Business Research 133 (2021): 285-296; Mauer, Barry and John Venecek. “Scholarship as Conversation.” Strategies for Conducting Literary Research, University of Central Florida, 2021; Öztürk, Oguzhan, Ridvan Kocaman, and Dominik K. Kanbach. "How to Design Bibliometric Research: An Overview and a Framework Proposal." Review of Managerial Science (2024): 1-29; Why Cite? Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, Yale University; Citing Information. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Harvard Guide to Using Sources. Harvard College Writing Program. Harvard University; Newton, Philip. "Academic Integrity: A Quantitative Study of Confidence and Understanding in Students at the Start of Their Higher Education."  Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 41 (2016): 482-497; Referencing More Effectively. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Using Sources. Yale College Writing Center. Yale University; Vosburgh, Richard M. "Closing the Academic-practitioner Gap: Research Must Answer the “SO WHAT” Question." H uman Resource Management Review 32 (March 2022): 100633; When and Why to Cite Sources. Information Literacy Playlists, SUNY, Albany Libraries.

Structure and Writing Style

Referencing your sources means systematically showing what information or ideas you acquired from another author’s work, and identifying where that information come from . You must cite research in order to do research, but at the same time, you need to delineate what are your original thoughts and ideas and what are the thoughts and ideas of others. Citations establish the demarcation between each set of statements. Procedures used to cite sources vary among different fields of study. If not outlined in your course syllabus or writing assignment, always speak with your professor about what writing style for citing sources should be used for the class because it is important to fully understand the citation rules that should be used in your paper and to apply them consistently. If your professor defers and tells you to "choose whatever you want, just be consistent," then choose the citation style you are most familiar with or that is appropriate to your major [e.g., use Chicago style if you are majoring in history; use APA if its an education course; use MLA if it is a general writing course].

For examples of common citation styles, GO HERE .

GENERAL GUIDELINES

1. Are there any reasons I should avoid referencing other people's work? No. If placed in the proper context, r eferencing other people's research is never an indication that your work is substandard or lacks originality. In fact, the opposite is true. If you write your paper without adequate references to previous studies, you are signaling to the reader that you are not familiar with the literature on the topic, thereby, undermining the validity of your study and your credibility as a researcher. Including references in academic writing is one of the most important ways to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of how the research problem has been addressed. It is the intellectual packaging around which you present your thoughts, ideas, and arguments to the reader.

2. What should I do if I find out that my great idea has already been studied by another researcher? It can be frustrating to come up with what you believe is a great topic for your paper only to discover that it's already been thoroughly studied. However, do not become frustrated by this. You can acknowledge the prior research by writing in the text of your paper [see also Smith, 2002], then citing the complete source in your list of references. Use the discovery of prior studies as an opportunity to demonstrate the significance of the problem being investigated and, if applicable, as a means of delineating your analysis from those of others [e.g., the prior study is ten years old and doesn't take into account new variables]. Strategies for responding to prior research can include: stating how your study updates previous understandings about the topic, offering a new or different perspective, applying a different or innovative method of gathering and interpreting data, and/or describing a new set of insights, guidelines, recommendations, best practices, or working solutions.

3. What should I do if I want to use an adapted version of someone else's work? You still must cite the original work. For example, you use a table of statistics from a journal article published in 1996 by author Smith, but you have altered or added new data to it. Reference the revised chart, such as, [adapted from Smith, 1996], then cite the original source in your list of references. You can also use other terms in order to specify the exact relationship between the original source and the version you have presented, such as, "based on data from Smith [1996]...," or "summarized from Smith [1996]...." Citing the original source helps the reader locate where the information was first presented and under what context it was used as well as to evaluate how effectively you adapted it to your own research.

4. What should I do if several authors have published very similar information or ideas? You can indicate that the topic, idea, concept, or information can be found in the works of others by stating something similar to the following example: "Though many scholars have applied rational choice theory to understanding economic relations among nations [Smith, 1989; Jones, 1991; Johnson, 1994; Anderson, 2003; Smith, 2014], little attention has been given to applying the theory to examining the influence of non-governmental organizations in a globalized economy." If you only reference one author or only the most recent study, then your readers may assume that only one author has published on this topic, or more likely, they will conclude that you have not conducted a thorough review of the literature. Referencing all relevant authors of prior studies gives your readers a clear idea of the breadth of analysis you conducted in preparing to study the research problem. If there has been a significant number of prior studies on the topic [i.e., ten or more], describe the most comprehensive and recent works because they will presumably discuss and reference the older studies. However, note in your review of the literature that there has been significant scholarship devoted to the topic so the reader knows that you are aware of the numerous prior studies.

5. What if I find exactly what I want to say in the writing of another researcher? In the social sciences, the rationale in duplicating prior research is generally governed by the passage of time, changing circumstances or conditions, or the emergence of variables that necessitate new investigations . If someone else has recently conducted a thorough investigation of precisely the same research problem that you intend to study, then you likely will have to revise your topic, or at the very least, review this literature to identify something new to say about the problem. However, if it is someone else's particularly succinct expression, but it fits perfectly with what you are trying to say, then you can quote from the author directly, referencing the source. Identifying an author who has made the exact same point that you want to make can be an opportunity to validate, as well as reinforce the significance of, the research problem you are investigating. The key is to build on that idea in new and innovative ways. If you are not sure how to do this, consult with a librarian .

6. Should I cite a source even if it was published long ago? Any source used in writing your paper should be cited, regardless of when it was written. However, in building a case for understanding prior research about your topic, it is generally true that you should focus on citing more recently published studies because they presumably have built upon the research of older studies. When referencing prior studies, use the research problem as your guide when considering what to cite. If a study from forty years ago investigated the same topic, it probably should be examined and considered in your list of references because the research may have been foundational or groundbreaking at the time, even if its findings are no longer relevant to current conditions or reflect current thinking [one way to determine if a study is foundational or groundbreaking is to examine how often it has been cited in recent studies using the "Cited by" feature of Google Scholar ]. However, if an older study only relates to the research problem tangentially or it has not been cited in recent studies, then it may be more appropriate to list it under further readings .

7. Can I cite unusual and non-scholarly sources in my research paper? The majority of the citations in a research paper should be to scholarly [a.k.a., academic; peer-reviewed] studies that rely on an objective and logical analysis of the research problem based on empirical evidence that reliably supports your arguments. However, any type of source can be considered valid if it brings relevant understanding and clarity to the topic. This can include, for example, non-textual elements such as photographs, maps, or illustrations. A source can include materials from special or archival collections, such as, personal papers, manuscripts, business memorandums, the official records of an organization, or digitized collections. Citations can also be to unusual items, such as, an audio recording, a transcript from a television news program, a unique set of data, or a social media post. The challenge is knowing how to cite unusual and non-scholarly sources because they often do not fit within consistent citation rules of books or journal articles. Given this, consult with a librarian if you are unsure how to cite a source.

NOTE:   In any academic writing, you are required to identify which ideas, facts, thoughts, concepts, or declarative statements are yours and which are derived from the research of others. The only exception to this rule is information that is considered to be a commonly known fact [e.g., "George Washington was the first president of the United States"] or a statement that is self-evident [e.g., "Australia is a country in the Global South"]. Appreciate, however, that any "commonly known fact" or self-evidencing statement is culturally constructed and shaped by specific social and aesthetical biases . If you have any doubt about whether or not a fact is considered to be widely understood knowledge, provide a supporting citation, or, ask your professor for clarification about whether the statement should be cited.

ANOTHER NOTE:   What is a foundational or groundbreaking study? In general, this refers to a study that investigated a research problem which , up to that point, had never been clearly defined or explained. If you trace a research topic back in time using citations as your guide, you will often discover an original study or set of studies that was the first to identify, explain the significance, and thoroughly investigate a problem. It is considered f oundational or groundbreaking because it pushed the boundaries of existing knowledge and influenced how researchers thought about the problem in new or innovative ways. Evidence of  foundational or groundbreaking research is the number of times a study has been subsequently cited, and continues to be cited, since it was first published.

Ballenger, Bruce P. The Curious Researcher: A Guide to Writing Research Papers . 7th edition. Boston, MA: Pearson, 2012; Blum, Susan Debra. My Word!: Plagiarism and College Culture . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009; Bretag, Tracey., editor. Handbook of Academic Integrity . Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2020; Carlock, Janine. Developing Information Literacy Skills: A Guide to Finding, Evaluating, and Citing Sources . Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020; Harvard Guide to Using Sources. Harvard College Writing Program. Harvard University; How to Cite Other Sources in Your Paper. The Structure, Format, Content, and Style of a Journal-Style Scientific Paper. Department of Biology. Bates College; Lunsford, Andrea A. and Robert Connors; The St. Martin's Handbook . New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989; Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace . 3rd edition. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2015; Research and Citation Resources. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing Tutorial Services, Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. Indiana University; Why Cite? Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, Yale Univeraity.

Other Citation Research Guides

The following USC Libraries research guide can help you properly cite sources in your research paper:

• Citation Guide

The following USC Libraries research guide offers basic information on using images and media in research:

Listed below are particularly well-done and comprehensive websites that provide specific examples of how to cite sources under different style guidelines.

• Purdue University Online Writing Lab
• Southern Cross University Harvard Referencing Style
• University of Wisconsin Writing Center

This is a useful guide concerning how to properly cite images in your research paper.

• Colgate Visual Resources Library, Citing Images

This guide provides good information on the act of citation analysis, whereby you count the number of times a published work is cited by other works in order to measure the impact of a publication or author.

Measuring Your Impact: Impact Factor, Citation Analysis, and other Metrics: Citation Analysis [Sandy De Groote, University of Illinois, Chicago]

Automatic Citation Generators

The links below lead to systems where you can type in your information and have a citation compiled for you. Note that these systems are not foolproof so it is important that you verify that the citation is correct and check your spelling, capitalization, etc. However, they can be useful in creating basic types of citations, particularly for online sources.

• BibMe -- APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian styles
• DocsCite -- for citing government publications in APA or MLA formats
• EasyBib -- APA, MLA, and Chicago styles
• Son of Citation Machine -- APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian styles

NOTE:   Many companies that create the research databases the USC Libraries subscribe to, such as ProQuest , include built-in citation generators that help take the guesswork out of how to properly cite a work. When available, you should always utilize these features because they not only generate a citation to the source [e.g., a journal article], but include information about where you accessed the source [e.g., the database].

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University Library

Start your research.

• Research Process
• Find Background Info
• Find Sources through the Library
• Evaluate Your Info
• Cite Your Sources
• Evaluate, Write & Cite

• is the right thing to do  to give credit to those who had the idea
• shows that you have read and understand  what experts have had to say about your topic
• helps people find the sources  that you used in case they want to read more about the topic
• provides   evidence  for your arguments
• is professional and  standard practice   for students and scholars

What is a Citation?

A citation identifies for the reader the original source for an idea, information, or image that is referred to in a work.

• In the body of a paper, the  in-text citation  acknowledges the source of information used.
• At the end of a paper, the citations are compiled on a  References  or  Works Cited  list. A basic citation includes the author, title, and publication information of the source. 

From:  Lemieux  Library,  University  of Seattle 

Why Should You Cite?

Quoting Are you quoting two or more consecutive words from a source? Then the original source should be cited and the words or phrase placed in quotes. 

Paraphrasing If an idea or information comes from another source,  even if you put it in your own words , you still need to credit the source.  General vs. Unfamiliar Knowledge You do not need to cite material which is accepted common knowledge. If in doubt whether your information is common knowledge or not, cite it. Formats We usually think of books and articles. However, if you use material from web sites, films, music, graphs, tables, etc. you'll also need to cite these as well.

Plagiarism is presenting the words or ideas of someone else as your own without proper acknowledgment of the source. When you work on a research paper and use supporting material from works by others, it's okay to quote people and use their ideas, but you do need to correctly credit them. Even when you summarize or paraphrase information found in books, articles, or Web pages, you must acknowledge the original author.

Citation Style Help

Helpful links:

• MLA ,  Works Cited : A Quick Guide (a template of core elements)
• CSE  (Council of Science Editors)

For additional writing resources specific to styles listed here visit the  Purdue OWL Writing Lab

Citation and Bibliography Resources

• How to Write an Annotated Bibliography
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Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License except where otherwise noted.

Land Acknowledgement

The land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma.

The land acknowledgement used at UC Santa Cruz was developed in partnership with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band Chairman and the Amah Mutsun Relearning Program at the UCSC Arboretum .

We've launched our redesigned Learning Commons website. Our former site remains available until 12/16/2022.

APA Citations 7th Edition

• Why, When, and How to Cite
• General Tips & Sample Reference List
• Cite Books, Edited Book Chapters, and Entries From Reference Books
• Cite Journal, Magazine, Newspaper, and Blog Articles
• Cite Audiovisual, Audio, and Visual Works
• Cite Social Media and Webpages; and Guidance on Websites
• In-Text Citations
• Additional Help

Why to Cite

There are many reasons to cite your sources:

• to give credit to authors or artists whose work you have used
• to allow people who are reviewing your work to check your sources
• to show readers how you came up with your arguments or ideas
• to provide scholars with other sources for their research
• to avoid plagiarism

For more information about the dangers of plagiarism see the APA Blog .

For a quick overview of why  and when  to cite, view this short video, Cite a Source: How and Why You Should Do It .

Test your understanding of plagiarism by taking this short Plagiarism Quiz .

What you don't know CAN hurt you!

When to Cite

Cite a source when:

• you copy information exactly from it; t his includes primary sources, such as when you have interviewed someone or are referring to a work of art or image that you are referencing
• you paraphrase, summarize or use your own words to describe ideas from a work
• you cite statistics, data or other numerical information that was compiled by someone other than yourself.

​ NOTE: The exception to the rule is that you do not have to cite a source when you are using what is considered "common knowledge," such as a date in history, basic biographical facts about a prominent person, or the dates and circumstances of major historical events (e.g. there are 12 months in a year, the planets revolve around the sun, the American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, etc.). If the facts are in dispute, it is best to cite sources.

How to Cite

The essential components of APA citation style are the reference list and related in-text citations. These two components work together to allow readers to find the exact sources used by the writer, as well as where in the paper these sources were used.

The reference list is the master list of all sources used, and is located after the body of the paper. Each source has its own entry on the list and is written in a highly stylized format. The four basic elements of a reference are:

Author. (Date). Title. Source.

For example, here is a citation for an article from a magazine which contains the four basic elements along with additional elements needed to accurately describe a magazine article:

Chesney, R., & Citron, D. (2019, January/February). Deepfakes and the new disinformation war: The coming age of post-truth geopolitics. Foreign Affairs , 98 (1), 147–155.

When sources are used in the body of the paper, in-text citations are the link back to the exact entry for the source appearing on the reference list. For example, when the above source is quoted in the body of the paper it includes an embedded in-text citation:

Chesney (2019) speculates that "as deepfake technology develops and spreads, the current disinformation wars may soon look like the propaganda equivalent of the era of swords and shields."

Kinds of Sources

How to cite a source in the reference list is determined by the kind of source it is. APA citation style organizes sources into reference groups , then categories , and then types . The essential groups /categories / types covered in this guide are:

The one remaining group APA recognizes, "data sets, software, and tests," is not covered in this guide.

For more in-depth information on APA groups / categories / types, with examples, visit this APA Style Blog page .

NOTE: When selecting a group / category / type for a source, what group / category / type a source falls into is of more importance than how it happened to be accessed. For example, if you wanted to cite an article from a journal, when selecting a category/group/type the deciding factor would be that it was an article from a journal, not that you read it in print, or in a library research database, or on a website.  

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• MAY 16, 2024

How To Cite a Research Paper in 2024: Citation Styles Guide

by Imed Bouchrika, Phd

Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist

If you are looking for the best advice on how to write a research paper , the first thing you would find is to cite your sources. In academic research, it is standardized by many institutions. And, publication venues such as conferences and journals are somehow strict about their formats. Hence, it is best for students with PhD degrees and aspiring researchers to know how to cite a research paper and other sources in their works. Citing your sources properly is also important for many reasons. One of the most important ones is that you can easily establish to your reviewers and readers the context around and relevancy of your work.

But, creating a reference section for your paper or dissertation can be a tedious task. As such, this article should serve as your guide on how to reference a research paper in popular formats: APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, and the IEEE style. A list of digital tools that can make citation easier and a quick tutorial will also be provided. This way, you can concentrate more on the content of your paper rather than what many consider a cumbersome task.

How To Cite a Research Paper Table of Contents

The rationale behind citations, apa style citation guide, mla style citation guide, chicago/turabian style citation guide, ieee style citation guide.

The main reason for citing references properly is to avoid intellectual dishonesty (Bast & Samuels, 2008). Presenting ideas of other scholars without proper research paper citation goes against scientific ethics (Gross, 2016). While this is not the highest of ethical requirements, it is simply basic decency. This is because we humans have a strong sense of ownership, not just of our physical properties but also of our intellectual works and achievements. We have a strong drive to know who or where exactly pieces of information came from and how ideas develop. Thus it is important to know how to give reference in a research paper.

In research, this is very apparent in literature where scholars discuss and debate who first created a research methodology , an idea, or made a discovery (e.g., Newton versus Leibniz for calculus and Le Verrier versus Adams for Neptune).

A free plagiarism checker for students does not make the cut. You must properly reference a source even if you have reworded the idea you lifted from it. Properly referencing a source is not only important that the right people get the proper recognition for their ideas. It is also crucial to the whole research publication and consumption process for the following reasons:

• To Avoid Plagiarism Citations allow researchers to properly quote the work of others. It helps them acknowledge where the information came from.
• Respect for Intellectual Property Rights Research work can include industry information legally protected by intellectual property rights. These include trademarks, patents, industrial designs, and geographical indications. Creative works for entertainment are also included, ranging from films to architectural designs.
• To Provide Evidence  Citing studies and data properly allows you to provide evidence for key points of your work. This is especially important when making a case for a position you take.
• To Give Details on Source Documents Citations make it easier for reviewers to check for data and even the line of arguments. Also, it helps direct the readers to original sources where they can find more detailed information about the point you cited and the subject matter.

Overall, referencing helps research communities place a work in its proper context to better judge its potential impact on its field.

There are many different fields and disciplines in the research world. And, they have different styles and standards for what proper referencing is. Rules also vary from the types of sources you cite, including but not limited to research papers, technical reports, books, patents, court cases, conference journals, conference papers,  podcasts, YouTube videos, and social media posts . But, most styles have common elements on how to write references in a research paper.

Basic Citation Elements

• Source or venue name (e.g. name of the journal  it was published or conference where it was presented)
• Volume and edition
• Date or year of publication
• Page numbers
• City and country
• Publisher or university for theses
• URL for online sources
• Retrieval date for online sources with dynamic content subjected to change

Aside from the above mentioned, it’s important to note that there are two aspects to consider on how to write a citation in a research paper: in-text and the reference list section. In-text citations are included in the body of your work. These are also repeated but in more detail in the reference list usually situated after your article. Different levels of styles have different ways to cite works. However, they usually include the critical information listed above.

Furthermore, the choice of citation styles or formats largely depends on your discipline, your institution, and other venues for publication (e.g., journals and conferences). So, it is best to check your target venue for submission for its preferred citation style. It is also good to note that some have specific style preferences, apart from the popular formats (e.g. APA, MLA, Chicago, and IEEE). Hence, it is best to check the author’s instructions page on their websites and articles that have already been published for reference.

Appropriate Level of Citation: Undercitation, Overcitation, and Unethical Citations

Just like most things, citation in research should be done in a reasonable amount. You must avoid undercitation and overcitation. The former is when you miss out to cite a source while the latter is when you put unnecessary citations that can be too distracting (Appropriate Level of Citation, n.d.). By citing all utilized sources used and giving proper credit to actual authors, scholarly writers do not only prevent plagiarism but also show that they have conducted extensive research, are well-informed about the study subject, and their research is reliable (Truluck & Richardson, 2013).

In this section on how to make citations in research, we will discuss when you must cite a source and how to avoid overcitation.

When to Cite a Source

The components in a citation or reference entry are devised to allow the reader to identify or locate the specific source that is cited (Lanning, 2016). Whenever you use another individual’s work, you really must cite a source. Forgetting to or intentionally not doing so can lead to a serious dent on your reputation. Thus, remember to cite properly when you:

• Quote the exact words of authors
• Paraphrase or state the ideas of others in your own words
• Refer to data or data sets
• Reprint a long text passage or a copyrighted test item
• Reprint or adopt a figure or a table, including free images and diagrams from the internet even when free or licensed via Creative Commons

When writers fail to cite their sources, they commit undercitation, as the APA (n.d.) calls it. This leads to plagiarism. This is really frowned upon not just in the academic research community. It is also a no-no in every type of publication, from films to music. So, it is best to be really thorough in collecting and referencing your sources. Learning how to cite papers is simple. But, you also have to be careful not to be too thorough. Too much care or fear of undercitation can lead to overdoing them.

Putting more citations than required is called overcitation. This is also frowned upon but to a somewhat lesser extent. The reasoning here is that when you place inappropriate amounts of citations, it can be quite distracting for readers. This is especially true when dealing with in-text citations. Readers and reviewers will find it difficult to follow the thoughts and arguments in your paper if they are constantly getting interrupted by unnecessary in-text citations. It can really become annoying. The key to writing a coherent research paper lies in knowing how to cite a study and when to add in-text citations.

Overcitation usually happens when writers repeat the same citation in every sentence even though the topic and source have not changed at all. To avoid overdoing citations when paraphrasing, remember to place a citation for a key point in a paragraph only in the first sentence where it is relevant. Do not repeat the citation when the source of the material remains clear and the same.

Moreover, overcitation can also be very unethical especially when a writer cites a source as evidence even when the source does not really count as one. This unethical practice usually happens when a writer cites a study or dataset to support a claim but when reviewers and readers go through the source, they would find it not to be valid evidence for the writer’s claim. Sometimes, this can happen unintentionally, especially when a writer misunderstands what was cited or the implications of the information cited. But, there can be instances when there is malicious intent to boost the credits of a claim by beefing up cited works. This must be avoided at all costs.

Furthermore, it is highly discouraged for writers to cite themselves especially when their works are unrelated. It may be quite tempting to cite your work or your colleagues’ to boost your profiles or publications. But, this should be avoided to keep the integrity of the current work. Reviewers and other researchers are able to recognize self-promotion when they see it. Keep in the context of the work and keep unrelated stuff and self-promotion out of it.

In the next few sections, we’ll provide basic guides on how to cite various sources using four popular citation formats: (1) APA, (2) MLA, (3) Chicago/Turabian, and (4) IEEE.

APA stands for American Psychological Association. The APA style for citation is popular among behavioral and social science journals. However, it is not limited to such disciplines. The style originated in 1929, created by a group of psychologists, anthropologists, and business managers to improve reading comprehension (University of Pittsburgh, 2020). The citation style has undergone many changes throughout the years.

The latest version is the APA 7th edition published in October 2019. This section draws from the APA official Style and Grammar Guidelines (American Psychological Association, n.d.).

The guidelines on how to add references in a research paper, including in-text citation, formatting of the reference list, or bibliography section are explained in this section.

APA In-Text Citation

In-text citations let users know which ideas are attributed to whom. The APA citation style has two major elements for in-text citation: the author and the date. Also, they come in two forms: parenthetical and narrative (APA, 2019).

Parenthetical Citations

For parenthetical citations, both author and date appear separated by a comma. A parenthetical citation may appear within or at the end of a sentence.

• …98% of participants (Smith, 2014) .

Should other texts appear within the parenthetical citation, one should use commas around the year.

• …however old the findings may be (see Bishop, 1996, for further explanation).

If both text and citation are included in parentheses, use a semicolon to separate them. Never use parentheses within parentheses.

• …(e.g., experimental anomalies in clinical trials; Chan, 2015).

Narrative Citations

In narrative citations, the author’s last name appears in the running text while the date appears in parentheses after it. The author’s name can be placed in any part of the sentence that makes sense.

• Yang (2004) suggested that…

In cases where both the author and date element appear in the running text, do not use parentheses.

• In 2004, Yang concluded that…

Citations by the Number of Authors

For a single author 

• Coleman (2019) stated that early…
• …hominids hunted large game (Coleman, 2019).

For two authors

• Smith and Johnson (2020) avoided the term…
• …paradigm because of its use in ordinary language (Smith & Johnson, 2020).

For three to five authors

• Use the last name of the first author and “et al." even for the first citation: …especially when observers are involved (James et al., 2017).
• …especially when observers are involved (James et al., 2017).

For six or more authors

• Cite only the name of the first author, use et al., and the year: …for complex adaptive systems (Chambers et al., 2019).
• …for complex adaptive systems (Chambers et al., 2019).
• Chambers et al. (2010) put forward a model…

If the author information is not available, you can use the source title to replace the author element. When there is no date included in the source, cite the first few words of the article inside quotation marks using a headline-style capitalization with the year after the comma in your in-text citation in the form:

• (“No Author, No Date," n.d.).

APA Reference List Entries Format

For the reference lists located at the end of the research paper, you need to cite four major elements:

• Author : includes the individual author names format and group author names format
• Date : includes the date format and how to include retrieval dates
• Title : includes the title format and how to include bracketed descriptions
• Source : includes the source format and how to include database information

Below are the APA style rules for each of them.

APA Individual Author Names Format

When citing individual author’s names, write the surname first. This is followed by a comma then the author’s initials.

• Kimathi, J. M.

If there is more than one author, place a comma to separate an author’s initials from subsequent author names. This is also applicable even when there are only two authors. Also, use an ampersand “&" before the final author’s name and put one space between initials.

• Kimathi, J. M., & Yuen, C. W.

Include both surnames and initials or up to and including 20 authors. Again, in this case, use an ampersand before the last author’s name.

• Kimathi, J. M., Yuen, C. W., & Glenn, F. V.

If there are 21 authors or more, include the first 19 authors’ names, then insert an ellipsis before adding the final author’s name. Note that you should not use an ampersand in this case.

• Kimathi, J. M., Yuen, C.W., Glenn, F.V., James, C. T., Bahn, F. F., Childress, Y. B., Uy, J. F., Fong, U. T., Rivera, C. N., Karl, J. E., Chan, K. O., Yu, B. N., Jones, C. V., Williams, J. J., Adebayo, M. N., Tong, G. H., Prince, A. L., Santos, F. L., Garcia, J. H., . . . , Vernon, A. R.

Moreover, it is important to write the author’s name as it appears in published works. This does not only include two-part surnames and hyphenated surnames but also the author’s preferred capitalization.

• Rodriguez-Lopez, C., & Bixler Zavala, O. M.
• cherry, B. or de Souza, N. C.

Group Author Names Format

Usually, group authors come in the form of task forces, non-profit organizations, and government agencies. When only the name of the group is used on the cover or title page of a publication, treat it as having a group author. This is even the case when individuals are credited elsewhere in the work itself like the acknowledgment section. However, if there are individual names in the cover or title page, treat the work as having multiple individual authors.

For the reference list entry, you should spell out the full name of the group then add a period after it.

• Correct : American Psychological Association.
• Incorrect : APA
• Incorrect : American Psychological Association (APA)

You can use the abbreviation of the group in the text (e.g. APA for the American Psychological Association).

Use the most specific agency as the author when there are various layers of government agencies listed. Parent agencies not appearing in the group author name should be found in the source element as the publisher of the work.

• Minority Business Development Agency. (2015).  The state of minority business enterprises: An overview of the 2007 survey of business owners . U.S. Department of Commerce. https://www.mbda.gov/page/state-minority-business-enterprises-overview-2007-survey-business-owners-0

Date Format

For most publications, you only use the year. Put the year of publication inside parentheses followed by a period.

For others that require day, month, and/or season along with the year, place the month and date or season after the year. Separate them with a comma.

• (2019, February 5).
•  (2020, January).
• (2014, Spring).

If the work you are citing has been accepted for publication yet is still to be published, use “in press" instead of the year. However, for in-progress works, unpublished papers, and informally published documents, never use “submitted for publication" or “in progress." Instead, give the year the work was produced instead. Also, if you are citing a work that is an advanced online publication, use the year of the advanced online publication.

For dates with an approximate date of publication use “ca." for “circa" before the year.

If you want to cite publications that are designed to change over time, you would need to provide the retrieval date for the document. Use this following format:

• Retrieved June 11, 2020, from https://…

If there is no date available, again, use “n.d." The entry can take the form of:

• No Work Available. (n.d.) In  Jerry’s House Help Agency . Retrieved from http://jerry…

Title Format

There are two main kinds of titles. Firstly, titles can be the name of the standalone work like books and research papers. In this case, the title of the work should appear in the title element of the reference. Secondly, they can be a part of a bigger work, such as edited chapters, podcast episodes, and even songs. In this case, the title of the article or chapter or part of the work should appear in the title element. The title of the bigger work should appear in the source element.

For standalone works, italicize the title. Also, use sentence case.

• End of the rope: The gleeful ending of movie credits .

When citing parts of a bigger work like an edited chapter or journal articles, capitalize the title using sentence case. Do not, however, italicize the title or place it between quotation marks.

• A critical analysis of movie credits: From fonts to scroll speeds

If there are different editions, volumes, or report numbers, include these after the title enclosed in parentheses. Do not use a period to separate the title and the parenthetical. If both volume information and edition are included, use a comma as a separator and put the edition number first.

• Necromancy and witchcraft (6th ed.).
• Casting spells: For little boys and girls (3rd ed., Vol. 6).

When the numbered volume has its own title, both of them should be included as part of the main title instead of the parenthetical information. Also, the title element should be finished with a period whenever the title does not end with a question mark or exclamation point. In cases where titles do, use the appropriate punctuation marks.

• Birdwatching handbook for the visually-impaired enthusiast:    Vol. 2.  Seeing through sounds .
• Why birds sing their songs?

When citing works outside the peer-reviewed academic literature, give a description of the work in square brackets after the title but before the period. You should capitalize the first letter but do not italicize the description. Do this for YouTube videos, audiobooks, manuscripts in preparation, theses, and others. Moreover, bracketed descriptions can also be used for social media references.

• Economic stimulation simulation (Version 1.0.5) [Computer software].
• Curling updates. (2020, January 15).  Get to know the rising stars in Canada. Will one of them be the Michael Jordan of curling?  [Image attached] [Status update]. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/xxx.xxx.x.xxxx…

Source Format

Different sources require different formatting conventions. There are usually six types of source references commonly cited: journal articles, conference papers, authored book or whole edited book, edited book chapter, webpage on a website with authors different from the site name, and webpage on a website where authors name is the same with the site.

For journal articles, there are five components: periodical title, volume, issue, page range, and DOI or URL. So, for the article with the title “The Basic Problem of the Theory of Levels of Reality" by Roberto Poli published in 2001, you write the reference as:

• Poli, R. (2001). The basic problem of the theory of levels of reality.  Axiomathes ,  12 (3), 261-283.  https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015845217681

Above, “Axiomathes" is the name of the journal, “12" is the volume number, “3" is the issue number, and “261-283" is the page range.

When citing a paper or session in a conference that is not formally published in the proceedings, the format is:

• Author, F. M. (Year, Month).  Title of contribution . [Type of contribution]. Conference Name, City. DOI or URL when applicable. Example : Johns, Y. (2018, January).  An analysis of Klingon syntax.  [Poster presentation], Fictional Language Conference 2018, Auckland, New Zealand. https://bit.ly/xxxxx
• Example : Johns, Y. (2018, January).  An analysis of Klingon syntax.  [Poster presentation], Fictional Language Conference 2018, Auckland, New Zealand. https://bit.ly/xxxxx

When citing an authored book or whole edited book, provide the name of the publisher and the DOI or URL. The format is:

• Author, F. N. (Year).  Title of book.  Publisher. DOI or URL if available. George, R. F. (2009). Quicks and other tells.  Rubbarb. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/x.xxxxxx
• George, R. F. (2009). Quicks and other tells.  Rubbarb. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/x.xxxxxx

And, when citing a book chapter for edited books, you cite each chapter separately. When citing more than one chapter, you cite each chapter as a different source. The format is:

• Author, F. N. (Year). Chapter title. In Editor(s) name(s) (Ed.), Book title  (page range). Publisher. DOI or URL if applicable. Example : Spurlock, C. (2005). Dire consequences of plagiarism. In J. Morgan & C. Spurlock (Eds.),  The greatest blunders in publishing (pp. 65-72). Hop Press.   https://doi.org/xx.xxx/xxxx
• Example : Spurlock, C. (2005). Dire consequences of plagiarism. In J. Morgan & C. Spurlock (Eds.),  The greatest blunders in publishing (pp. 65-72). Hop Press.   https://doi.org/xx.xxx/xxxx

For webpages that have different authors’ names from the site name, provide the website name and the URL for the source element. For webpages whose authors’ names are the same as the site, only provide the URL.

• Bikram News. https://www.bikramnews.com/xxx-xxx/xxx
• https://www.sinkholeobserver.com/xx/x

Database Information

In APA style references, DOIs and URLs are used. DOI is short for digital object identifiers. These are alphanumeric strings identifying unique content while providing a persistent link to their locations. You can find these in database records and reference lists.

DOIs come in the form of: “https://doi.org/xxxxx" where “xxxxx" is the DOI number. On the other hand, URL is short for uniform resource locators. These are basically the links you find on the address bar of your browser. So, when do you include DOIs and URLs? Here are the APA guidelines.

• When a work has a DOI, include a DOI regardless of whether you used the online or print version.
• If you are using a print work without a DOI, do not include a URL or DOI.
• When citing an online work that has both DOI and a URL, only include the DOI.
• If an online work has no DOI but has a URL, include the URL in the reference when citing websites without DOIs, not including academic research databases. Make sure the URL works for your readers.
• When citing works in academic research databases without DOIs, do not include a URL or database information. The reference should be the same as the ones in print versions. This is because the work is already widely available.
• If citing works from databases publishing exclusive original propriety material (e.g. UpToDate database), or for works of limited circulation (e.g. monographs in the ERIC database), provide the name of the database and the URL of the work. In cases where the URL needs a login to access, give the URL of the home page or the log-in page instead of the direct URL of the work.

In the APA style, you do not include other alphanumeric identifiers, such as the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) and the International Standard Book Number (ISBN). Also, when using DOIs and URLs, present them as hyperlinks. This means they begin with “http:" or “https:".  And, it is acceptable to display the link in blue font and underlined like in the default setting in your word-processing software or you can use plain text.

Examples of APA Reference List

In this section, an example of a reference list containing different types of sources that you could use as a quick guide.

• Ridley, M. (1994).  The red queen: Sex and the evolution of human nature . Penguin UK.

Chapter of an Edited Book

• Spurlock, C. (2005). Dire consequences of plagiarism. In J. Morgan & C. Spurlock (Eds.),  The greatest blunders in publishing (pp. 65-72). Hop Press.   https://doi.org/xx.xxx/xxxx

Journal Article

• Benoit, J. N., Barrowman, J. A., Harper, S. L., Kvietys, P. R., & Granger, D. (1984). Role of humoral factors in the intestinal hyperemia associated with chronic portal hypertension.  American Journal of Physiology-Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology ,  247 (5), G486-G493.

Conference Paper/Presentation

• Dodson, J. (2005, April).  Faith and medicine  [Conference session]. Medical Sociology 2005, Austin, Texas.
• Coyne, J. (2020, June 29).  WaPo editor emits bigoted and hateful tweets, but will she be disciplined as others have been?  Why Evolution Is True. Retrieved June 30, 2020, from  https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/29/wapo-editor-emits-hateful-tweets-but-will-she-be-disciplined-in-the-same-way-as-others/

Thesis/Dissertation

• Dough, K. (2009).  The future rationale of post-modernist art  [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Academy of Art University. San Francisco, California.

MLA is short for the Modern Language Association based in the U.S. The MLA style is used worldwide and is popularly used in the humanities. The latest version is the 8th edition published in 2016. And, just like APA, it has in-text citation and reference list rules. However, when you use the MLA format, you use the title “Works-Cited List" for your reference list. In this section, the rules for both in-text citation and the works-cited list will be discussed.

MLA In-Text Citation

The MLA in-text citations have two elements: the author’s surname and the page or page-range where the reference is found. MLA style in-text citations also come in two forms: parenthetical and narrative. Also, they are usually inserted immediately after a quote or parenthetical or in a natural pause. In-text references are used to reference works that you quote or paraphrase from. The latest version is the MLA 8th edition (Mendeley, 2019).

• Parenthetical : (Handel 354)
• Narrative : Handel suggested that…(354).

If there are more two to three authors, they should be cited in the following format.

• (Kwan, Yang, and Connor 238)

For more than three authors, you only include the surname of the first author followed by “et al." such as:

• (Kwan et al. 238)

If there are no authors, you should italicize the whole title for books. For articles, you enclose the title in quotations. Also, you can use a shortened title within quotation marks instead of the author’s name.

• For books :  The Birdwatching Handbook   shows “…" (123)   or ( The Birdwatching Handbook 123)
• For articles : “Theoretical Foundations of Birdwatching" states “…" or (“Theoretical Foundations of Birdwatching" 123).

For authors with multiple cited works, include a shortened version of the title within the citation.

• (Kwan, Theoretical Foundations of Birdwatching 123)

In cases where authors have the same surnames, you should include an initial to differentiate.

• (Y. Kwan 123) and (J. Kwan 9)

If there are no page numbers, then include the number pattern included in the book like chapters or paragraphs. If there are no numbered sections, then only the name should be included.

• No page number, with chapters : (Kwan, ch. 9)
• No number pattern : (James)

When citing a quote or a parenthetical, use “qtd." before the author’s name.

• (qtd. In Kwan 123)

Also, when citing audio-visual sources, use a timestamp instead of a page number. The format should be in “hh:mm:ss".

• (Johnson 01:15:22)

MLA Works-Cited List

The MLA style uses a “Works-Cited List" instead of a reference list on a new page after the document. This list contains all the sources referenced in the document containing different elements, depending on the source type. Moreover, it is also ordered alphabetically by the name of the first author or title (when the author is unknown). Also, when alphabetizing, you should ignore the articles “a," “an," and “the."

Furthermore, if there are multiple works by a single author, you should order these by date. If the works were published in the same year, order them alphabetically by the title. Also, the first reference must contain the full name of the author. Subsequent references should have author name replaced by “- -."

Format-wise, entries must be double spaced and the second and subsequent lines of the source are indented by half an inch from the margin.  Also, different types of sources cited require different formats for citation.

MLA Style Citation for Books, Chapters (or Essays) in a Book, and E-Books

The basic structure for citing books is:

• MLA books citation format : Last name, first name.  Title.   Title of container,  Contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Year of publication.
• Example : Wilson, Edward O.  Sociobiology: The new synthesis . Harvard University Press, 2000. Note: Author name.  Title.  Publisher, Year of Publication.
• Note: Author name.  Title.  Publisher, Year of Publication.

When there are two authors, the first author’s name should be written surname first while the second author’s name should be written in its normal order. There should be an “and" between both names.

• Books citation with two authors : John, Karl and Boris Jaspers.  Creating great titles. 3rd ed, Generic Publishing House, 2009. Note: Author names.  Title . Version, Publisher, Year of Publication.
• Note: Author names.  Title . Version, Publisher, Year of Publication.

For three or more authors, provide the first author’s name surname first then followed by “et al."

• Books with three or more authors : Joseph, Gary, et al.  Changing shirts.  Generic Publishing House, 2011.

When you want to cite a chapter or an essay in a book, follow this basic format.

• Book content citation format : Author name(s). “Chapter Title".  Title of Book,  Contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Year of Publication, Page number/range. Example : John, Derek. “Geriatric Fashion".  Fashion for Everyone , Generic Publishing House, 2009, pp. 68 72. Note: The chapter title is inside quotations and is not italicized. The page number(s) preceded by “p." or “pp."
• Example : John, Derek. “Geriatric Fashion".  Fashion for Everyone , Generic Publishing House, 2009, pp. 68 72. Note: The chapter title is inside quotations and is not italicized. The page number(s) preceded by “p." or “pp."
• Note: The chapter title is inside quotations and is not italicized. The page number(s) preceded by “p." or “pp."

For e-books, the basic format is as follows:

• E-book citation format : Last name, first name. Title . Title of container, Contributors, edition, e-book, Number, Publisher, Year of publication. Example : Joseph, Gary.  More shirts to wear than most. 3rd ed, e-book, Generic Publishing House, 2000.
• Example : Joseph, Gary.  More shirts to wear than most. 3rd ed, e-book, Generic Publishing House, 2000.

MLA Style Citation for Journals, Newspaper/Magazines, and Online Publications

Citing journals, newspapers, magazines, and online articles have the same basic format in MLA:

• Articles citation format : Author name(s). “Article Title".  Title of container,  contributors, version, numbers, date of publication, location.  Title of database , DOI or URL.

Here are a few examples:

• Journal article : Kind, Bradford. “A Critical Analysis of Analyses". Hypothetical Journal , vol. 2, no. 16, Winter 2019, pp. 108-111.
• Newspaper/Magazine : Kind, Bradford. “Never Get Tired of Analyzing".  The Hypothetical , February edition, vol. 15, no. 6, 10 March 2016, pp. 18-21.
• Online article : Kind, Bradford. “The End of Analysis".  The Hypothetical Online , vol. 19, no. 10, Summer 2019, pp. 356-364. Journal Database, https://www.thehyponline.com/xxx/xxxxx/xx

To cite a webpage, use this basic format:

• Webpage citation format : Last name of author, first name. “Title of page/document".  Title of overall webpage,  date, URL. Example : Hsieh, Henry F., and Jane Krause. “The Fishing Roots of Phishing". Obvious Observer . 13 Oct. 2004: https://www.obviousobserver.com/xxxx/xx/x.
• Example : Hsieh, Henry F., and Jane Krause. “The Fishing Roots of Phishing". Obvious Observer . 13 Oct. 2004: https://www.obviousobserver.com/xxxx/xx/x.

MLA Citation for Non-Print Materials: Images, Music, Film, and TV Series

When citing the image, follow the following format:

• Image citation format : Creator’s surname, other names. “Title of Image". Website Title . Contributors, reproduction, number, date, URL. Example :  House, Jerry. “The Tea Pot."  House of Jerry , RP0177, 120-1, www.houseofjerry.com/xx/xxxx/x
• Example :  House, Jerry. “The Tea Pot."  House of Jerry , RP0177, 120-1, www.houseofjerry.com/xx/xxxx/x

For music, citations come in the form of:

• Music citation format : Author name(s). “Track Title".  Album Title,  other contributors, version, Record Label, Year of Publication. Example : Cordova. “Backwater Town".  Places to Forget , Park Records, 2004.
• Example : Cordova. “Backwater Town".  Places to Forget , Park Records, 2004.

Films/movies can be cited using two different formats. You put the movie title first when you focused more on the film rather than the director. Otherwise, when you focus more on the director, provide the director’s name first.

• Film/Movie format (film-focused) : “Movie Title". Directed by director name, Contributors,  Distributor,  year of release. Medium. Example : “Backwater Town". Directed by Janis Cordova, Indie Struggles, 2011. DVD.
• Example : “Backwater Town". Directed by Janis Cordova, Indie Struggles, 2011. DVD.
• Film/Movie format (director-focused) : “Director name, director. “Movie Title". Contributors, Distributor , year of release. Medium. Example : Cordova, Janis, director. “Backwater Town". Performances by Dee Dee Corset and Ramona Hardy, Indie Struggles Studio, 1998. DVD. Note: If the movie is found online, use a URL instead of declaring the medium. Also, the medium itself is not a requirement for MLA citation. It is highly encouraged as it can be useful to the reader.
• Example : Cordova, Janis, director. “Backwater Town". Performances by Dee Dee Corset and Ramona Hardy, Indie Struggles Studio, 1998. DVD. Note: If the movie is found online, use a URL instead of declaring the medium. Also, the medium itself is not a requirement for MLA citation. It is highly encouraged as it can be useful to the reader.
• Note: If the movie is found online, use a URL instead of declaring the medium. Also, the medium itself is not a requirement for MLA citation. It is highly encouraged as it can be useful to the reader.

To cite TV or a web series, you should include the episode and season number.

• TV/web series format : “Episode Title".  Program Title , created by Creator Name, contributors, season #, episode #. Network, Year of Publication. Example : “The Big Cringe". The Life of Agatha Roland , written by Jeremy Lee and Sara McManus, directed by Trace Young, season 1, episode 3, Big Drama Show Network, 2019.  
• Example : “The Big Cringe". The Life of Agatha Roland , written by Jeremy Lee and Sara McManus, directed by Trace Young, season 1, episode 3, Big Drama Show Network, 2019.  

Chicago and Turabian are interchangeable. The latter is a much simpler style aimed at students whose works are not intended for publishing. However, both are considered to be the official Chicago style (Hansen, 2011). The Chicago style has two citation style conventions: the notes and bibliography style and the author-date style. Both of these appear in  The Chicago Manual of Style .   The latest version is the 8th edition (University of Chicago Press, 2017a).

The notes and bibliography style is popular in the humanities, literature, and the arts. It uses a footnotes or endnotes system. Each note has a corresponding superscript number in the text. On the other hand, the author-date style cites sources briefly in the text by the author’s last name and the year of publication of the work. Each citation in both conventions has matches in a separate reference list at the end of the document.

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We will discuss the two conventions below including some examples.

Notes and Bibliography Style

For this convention, you use a raised number or superscript. These are usually placed at the end of sentences (University of Chicago Press, 2017b). This is used to let readers know that a sentence contains information from a different source. Each superscript corresponds to an item on the footnotes (notes located at the bottom of a page) or endnotes (notes located at the end of a paper, chapter, or book).

The full footnote citation for a book takes the form of:

• Full Footnote Citation : First Name Surname,  Title of Work  (Location: Publisher, Year of Publication), page number. Example : Jerry Slay, Just Whining About  (California: Garden Variety Publishing House, 2005), 27.
• Example : Jerry Slay, Just Whining About  (California: Garden Variety Publishing House, 2005), 27.

If you cite a work multiple times, you can use a shortened version such as:

• Shortened Footnote Citation:  Author’s Surname, Shortened Title , page/pages. Example : Slay.  Wining About , 34-39.
• Example : Slay.  Wining About , 34-39.

For the bibliography section, entries should be in alphabetical order. They come in the form of:

• Bibliography   Entry : Surname, Preferred Name(s).  Title of Work . Location: Publisher, Year of Publication. Example : Slay, Jerry.  Just Whining About . California: Garden Variety Publishing House, 2005.
• Example : Slay, Jerry.  Just Whining About . California: Garden Variety Publishing House, 2005.

The citation formats for different sources are identical in both the notes and bibliography style and the author-date style. The only difference is the in-text citation. The latter provides in-text mentions of the last name of the author and publication date instead of a corresponding superscript.

Author-Date Style: In-Text Citations and Citing Different Sources on the Reference List

In-text citations provide the author’s last name, the year of publication, and the page or page range. Only use a comma to separate the publication year and the page. Do not use a comma in between the author’s last name and publication date (University of Chicago Press, 2017c).

• In-text citations : (Author’s Surname Year of Publication, Page/Pages) Example : (Boyle 2013, 99-102)
• Example : (Boyle 2013, 99-102)

Citing a book in the reference list has the same format as citing a book on the other convention’s bibliography entry discussed in the previous subsection. For citing a chapter or some part of an edited book, cite specific pages in the text and include the page range for the chapter or part in the reference list.

• In-text citation a chapter/part of a work : (Surname Year of Publication, Page/Pages) Example : (Kim 2004, 34-55)
• Example : (Kim 2004, 34-55)
• Reference list citation : Surname, Preferred Name(s). Year of Publication. “Chapter or Part of Book." In Title of the Larger Work , edited by Editor(s) name(s), Page(s). Location: Publisher. Example : Kim, Hannibal. 2004. “Common Tropes in Dark Comedy." In  The Re-Analysis of Film Analyses , edited by Lex Henley, 68-79. Ontario: Maple Publishing.
• Example : Kim, Hannibal. 2004. “Common Tropes in Dark Comedy." In  The Re-Analysis of Film Analyses , edited by Lex Henley, 68-79. Ontario: Maple Publishing.

When there are multiple authors provide the last name first for the first author and list the subsequent authors using their first names first. Also, separate the names using commas and at the end of the authors element place a period.

• Reference list citation (multiple authors) example : John, George, Kristine Jeffries, Ma Chok Bee. 2018. “

When citing an edited book as a whole, provide the editor(s) name first.

• In-text citation of a whole edited book : (Henley 2004, 68-79)
• Reference list citation : Henley, Lex, ed. 2004.  The Re-Analysis of Film Analyses . Ontario: Maple Publishing.

If you are citing a translated book, follow this format:

• In-text citation of translated book : (Author’s Surname Year of Publication, Page/Pages) Example : (Adebayo 2004, 23)
• Example : (Adebayo 2004, 23)
• Reference list citation : Surname, Preferred Name(s). Year of Publication.  Title of Work . Translated by Translator’s Preferred Name(s) Surname. Location: Publisher. Example : Darchinian, Karo. 2007.  Popcorn Addicts: World Tour . Translated by Gerry Yeates. Yerevan: Acute Taste Publishing House.
• Example : Darchinian, Karo. 2007.  Popcorn Addicts: World Tour . Translated by Gerry Yeates. Yerevan: Acute Taste Publishing House.

When citing an e-book, the in-text citation takes the same form as others. However, for the reference list entry, you should include a URL or the name of the database. For other types of e-books, provide a format like Kindle, among others.

• E-book reference list citation : Surname Preferred Name(s). Year of Publication.  Title of Work . Location: Publisher. Format/URL/Name of Database. Example : Herbert, Robert. 2010. Most Famous Herberts . New York: Backalley House. Kindle.
• Example : Herbert, Robert. 2010. Most Famous Herberts . New York: Backalley House. Kindle.

When citing a book review, indicate that it is a review and of what material after the title.

• Book review reference list citation example:  McDonald, Harland. 1998. “The Success of Copycats: Replicating Success." Review of  The Fast Food Cold War : The Colonel v.s. The Golden Arches , by Ronald Sanders. The City Post, January 7, 1998.

If you are citing a thesis or dissertation, the basic format you should follow is:

• Thesis/dissertation reference list citation : Surname, Preferred Name(s). Year of Publication. “Title of Work." master’s thesis or diss., School, Location. Name of Database or Retrieved from URL Example : Prince, Tracy. 2017. “Distributed Leadership in Little League Sports Teams." PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles. Open Thesis Database.
• Example : Prince, Tracy. 2017. “Distributed Leadership in Little League Sports Teams." PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles. Open Thesis Database.

For journal articles, you should include the page range of the whole article you are citing. Also, you should cite specific page numbers in the text. If you are using online articles, use a URL or the database name in the reference list entry. However, a DOI is preferred over a URL.

• Journal article reference list citation:  Author Name(s). Year of Publication. “Title of Work." Name of Publication  Issue #, Article # (edition or month): page/pages. DOI. Example : Burns, Brigham. 2007. “The State of Artificial Intelligence in Trucking."  Truckers Journal 6, no. 13 (June): 78 -92. https://doi.org/xx.xxxx/xxxxxx.
• Example : Burns, Brigham. 2007. “The State of Artificial Intelligence in Trucking."  Truckers Journal 6, no. 13 (June): 78 -92. https://doi.org/xx.xxxx/xxxxxx.

When there are four or more authors, list up to ten in the reference list. For the citation in the text, only provide the surname of the first author followed by “et al.". If there are more than ten authors, just list the first seven in the reference list and add “et al.".

The rules for citing news or magazine articles are the same. It is the same with blog sites and news sites as well. Under the reference list, it is highly recommended that you repeat the year in sources that you also cite with a month and day. Moreover, you should cite the page numbers, if any, in the text. But, leave these out in the reference list entries. And, if you are citing an online article, provide the name of the database or the URL.

• News or magazine article citation : Author names.  Year of Publication. “Title of Work."  Name of Publication , Month Day, Year. Name of Database/URL Example : Brando, Jack. 2017. “The Case for Unilateral Foreign Policies."  Conspiracy of Truths , June 11, 2017. https://www.conspiracyoftruths…
• Example : Brando, Jack. 2017. “The Case for Unilateral Foreign Policies."  Conspiracy of Truths , June 11, 2017. https://www.conspiracyoftruths…

When citing website content, do include the access date especially if the webpage is designed to get upated or changed. Also, use “n.d." for no date if the site does not list a date of publication, revision, or posting. Here are some examples:

•   Website citation with publication date :  Yoohaa. 2018. “User Agreement." Privacy & Terms. Last modified October 19, 2017. https://www.yoohaa.com…
• Website citation with no publication date and with access date : Bikram News. n.d. “The History of Traveling Bikrams." Accessed January 20, 2020. http://www.bikramnews.com/x/…

For audiovisual content, the citation format is quite similar to the others here. However, one should provide contributors, content type, and timestamp or clip length. Here is an example:

• Music video citation example :   Lil Tay Tay. 2018. “Lil Big Mess." Directed by James Saturn and Krunch Man. December 23, 2018. Music video, 6:25. https://www.youtube.com/xx.x…

When citing social media content, providing the quoted text is already enough in your document. For more formal citation, you should consider providing a link and a reference list entry. When you do, in place of a title, quote the post with up to the first 160 characters.

• Social media reference list citation: Author Name (@handle). Year of Publication. “Place a quote up to the first 160 characters of the post… ." Social media site, Month Day, Year. URL. Example : Yu, John. (@YuThaManJJ). 2019. “The protests turned violent here as military forces started coming in." Instagram photo, October 2, 2019. https://www.instagram.com/xxx…
• Example : Yu, John. (@YuThaManJJ). 2019. “The protests turned violent here as military forces started coming in." Instagram photo, October 2, 2019. https://www.instagram.com/xxx…

Moreover, comments are cited in reference to the original post. And, you should include the date and time of the comment in the in-text citation in the form:

• In-text citation of social media comments : (Author name first, Month Day, Year, h:mm a.m./p.m., comment on Post Author or Post Title Year of Publication) Example : James Ash, January 8, 2015, 12:51 a.m., comment on Friday Night Update 2015)
• Example : James Ash, January 8, 2015, 12:51 a.m., comment on Friday Night Update 2015)

The IEEE citation style is mainly used for reports in electronics, engineering, computer science, telecommunications, and information technology. IEEE is the official style of the eponymous Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. There are three main parts of an IEEE-style reference. They are:

• Author’s name : listed as the first initial of first name and full last name (e.g., J. Dunn).
• Title of the work : it can be a journal article, conference paper, patent, etc. Also, it should be in quotation marks.
• Title of journal or book : the title of the larger work you referenced in italics. (e.g.  Computer Science for Beginners) .

Just like other popular citation styles, the format and inclusion of punctuations, page numbers, dates, and other information vary according to the types of references cited. Also, the IEEE style has both in-text and reference list citations.

IEEE In-Text Citation

In the IEEE style, each citation is noted in the text using simple sequential numbers enclosed in square brackets:  “[number]". Also, they should be in the same line as the text and appear before any punctuation with a space before the bracket. Each bracketed number corresponds to a specific work and citations are numbered in the order of their appearances. In cases where the same source is cited, the same number is used in other citation instances. Moreover, no distinction is made between print and electronic sources. Distinguishing information is included in the references list (IEEE, n.d.).

• IEEE in-text citation examples : Citing ideas : …have found computation to be extensive [1]. Citing authors : Laland [2] suggested that… Citing examples : For a good example, see [3]. Note: No need to write “…see reference [3]." Just write “…see [3]." Citing multiple sources : Narrative: Several simulations [4, 5, 6, 7] resulted…Sentence end: “…have found the problem intractable [4], [5], [6]." or  “…have found the problem intractable [4] [6]."
• Citing ideas : …have found computation to be extensive [1].
• Citing authors : Laland [2] suggested that…
• Citing examples : For a good example, see [3]. Note: No need to write “…see reference [3]." Just write “…see [3]."
• Note: No need to write “…see reference [3]." Just write “…see [3]."
• Citing multiple sources : Narrative: Several simulations [4, 5, 6, 7] resulted…Sentence end: “…have found the problem intractable [4], [5], [6]." or  “…have found the problem intractable [4] [6]."
• Narrative: Several simulations [4, 5, 6, 7] resulted…
• Sentence end: “…have found the problem intractable [4], [5], [6]." or  “…have found the problem intractable [4] [6]."

IEEE Reference List Citation

Different source types get cited differently in the IEEE style. But, the basic principle applies just like other citation styles. Citations basically answer the who, what, when, and where questions. In this section, we will provide a general format for major document types and some citation examples.

Print Documents

For published works, the titles are italicized and capitalized. On the other hand, you do not italicize the titles of unpublished works. And, you only capitalize the first word for the titles. Also, authors’ names are written with initials first then their surnames. For two authors, each name is separated with the word “and." For three or more authors, you only use the word “and" before the last author’s name. Also, you end the author element with a comma.

• Journal article : [n] Author name(s), “Title of Work,"  Journal Title , vol #, no. #, Abbreviated Month., Page(s), Year of Publication. [6] A. Lutter and T. Silva, “Logic and Dialethism,"  Journal of Formal Systems , vol. 3, no. 5, Jan., pp. 8-9, 2001.
• [6] A. Lutter and T. Silva, “Logic and Dialethism,"  Journal of Formal Systems , vol. 3, no. 5, Jan., pp. 8-9, 2001.
• Single author book : [n] F. M. Surname,  Title of Work . Location: Publisher, Year of Publication. Example : [1] J. H. Tinsley, Writing for Speeches . Los Angeles, California: Hot Press, 2007.
• Example : [1] J. H. Tinsley, Writing for Speeches . Los Angeles, California: Hot Press, 2007.
• Edited book (multiple editors) : [n] E. O. Surname and E. T. Last Name, Eds.,  Title of Work . Location: Publisher, Year of Publication. Example : [2] Y. H. Chan and L. C. Daniels, Eds.,  Computation and its History . New York: Lavender House, 2008.
• Example : [2] Y. H. Chan and L. C. Daniels, Eds.,  Computation and its History . New York: Lavender House, 2008.
• Selection in edited books :  [n] Author name(s), “Chapter/Part Title," in  Book Title , Editor name(s), Eds. Location: Publisher, Year of Publication, Page(s). Example : [3] T. T. Kennedy and B. B. Gunn, “The circulation of conspiracy theories," in  Evolving Pop Culture , L. D. Myers and C. D. Roberts, Eds. Quebec: Maple Press, 2017, pp.23-29.
• Example : [3] T. T. Kennedy and B. B. Gunn, “The circulation of conspiracy theories," in  Evolving Pop Culture , L. D. Myers and C. D. Roberts, Eds. Quebec: Maple Press, 2017, pp.23-29.
• Manuals : [n] Author name(s),  Manual Title , Publisher, Year of Publication. Example : [4] Information Technology Department Staff, Company Digital Tools Manual , Kite Analog Systems, 2009.
• Example : [4] Information Technology Department Staff, Company Digital Tools Manual , Kite Analog Systems, 2009.
• Thesis or Dissertation  (unpublished) :  [n]  Author name(s), “Title of Work," M. S. Thesis or Ph.D. diss., School, City, State, Year. Example : [5] H. Johns, “Category Theory and Computing," M. S. Thesis, City University of New York, New York, New York, 2018.
• Example : [5] H. Johns, “Category Theory and Computing," M. S. Thesis, City University of New York, New York, New York, 2018.
• Conference proceedings : [n] Author name(s), “Title of paper," in  Abbrev. Title of Conf. Proceedings,  Place of Conference/Publication, (volume number if available), Year (only if not included in the title), Page(s) Example : [6] A. Y. Tsieh, “Legal loopholes in hoarding laws," in  2nd   Local Conf. on Bus. Pol.,  Clark, Pampanga, March 2013
• Example : [6] A. Y. Tsieh, “Legal loopholes in hoarding laws," in  2nd   Local Conf. on Bus. Pol.,  Clark, Pampanga, March 2013

Internet Documents and Software

For online documents and digital software, one needs to include the format using “[format]". For online sources, provide the URL using this format “Available: URL." Also, provide the access date with “[Accessed Month Day, Year]" Also, there are different ways of citing different source types.

• Professional internet site : [n] Author Name(s), “Title of Work,"  Title of Source, Year of Publication. [Online]. Available: URL. [Accessed Month Day, Year]. Example : [1] Consumer Rights Charter, “A 2017 Review of Consumer Rights Issues in the United States,"  Consumer Rights Charter , 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.CRC1.org/xx/xxx… [Accessed November 3, 2020].
• Example : [1] Consumer Rights Charter, “A 2017 Review of Consumer Rights Issues in the United States,"  Consumer Rights Charter , 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.CRC1.org/xx/xxx… [Accessed November 3, 2020].
• Personal website : [n] Author name(s), “Title of Work," Month, Year of Publication. [Online]. Available: URL. [Accessed Month Day. Year]. Example : [2] K. Hong, “Lucid Dreaming Techniques," June, 2001. [Online]. Available: https://www.khong.com/x/… [Accessed March 3, 2009].
• Example : [2] K. Hong, “Lucid Dreaming Techniques," June, 2001. [Online]. Available: https://www.khong.com/x/… [Accessed March 3, 2009].
• General website : [n] Author Name(s), “Title of Work,"  website name , para. #, Abbreviated Month Day, Year. [Online]. Available: URL. [Accessed Month Day, Year]. Example : [3] G. Davidson, “Types of Woks,"  cooksbakersfiends.com , para. 4, Feb. 19, 2010. [Online]. Available: https://www.cooksbakersfiends.com/x/xxx… [Accessed January 17, 2018].
• Example : [3] G. Davidson, “Types of Woks,"  cooksbakersfiends.com , para. 4, Feb. 19, 2010. [Online]. Available: https://www.cooksbakersfiends.com/x/xxx… [Accessed January 17, 2018].
• Software : [n] Author Name(s),  Software Name and Version . [Format]. Location: Software Publisher, Year. Example : Software News Staff,  Indie Cad 9 . [CD-ROM]. Las Vegas, Nevada: Yolo Sith, 2008.
• Example : Software News Staff,  Indie Cad 9 . [CD-ROM]. Las Vegas, Nevada: Yolo Sith, 2008.

There are many other document types and examples that we cannot cover here. It is best to check the official IEEE style guide for more.

Citation Styles Summary

The table below can serve as a quick guide to help you cite your sources properly. In case you are using other data sources for your research, you may also consult this guide on how to cite a PowerPoint in APA.

Lastly, if you wish to circumvent all the troubles in citing materials, you can use a bibliography generator . However, it is still best to be able to make proper citations in different styles on your own.

Key Insights

• Citations prevent intellectual dishonesty and uphold scientific ethics.
• They give credit to original authors and provide context and evidence for research.
• Various citation styles (APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, IEEE) cater to different disciplines and publication venues.
• Common citation elements include author, title, publication year, volume, page numbers, and URL or DOI for online sources.
• APA citations emphasize the author and date.
• In-text citations can be parenthetical or narrative, and the reference list requires detailed formatting of authors' names, publication dates, titles, and sources.
• MLA focuses on the author and page number for in-text citations.
• The works-cited list includes author names, titles, publication dates, and sources formatted specifically for books, articles, and digital content.
• Chicago offers notes and bibliography and author-date styles.
• Footnotes/endnotes and bibliography entries require detailed formatting, including publication information and page numbers.
• IEEE uses numerical in-text citations in brackets.
• Reference lists include author initials and surnames, titles in quotation marks, and publication information.
• Undercitation and overcitation should be avoided to maintain clarity and credibility.
• Ethical citations are crucial, avoiding self-promotion and ensuring sources are relevant and properly credited.
• Digital tools and bibliography generators can simplify citation tasks but understanding manual citation is beneficial for accuracy and integrity.

Why is citing sources important in research?

Citing sources is crucial for preventing plagiarism, giving proper credit to original authors, and providing evidence and context for your research. It helps readers trace the origin of ideas and assess the validity and relevance of your work.

What are the common elements included in a citation?

Common citation elements include the author's name, title of the work, publication year, volume and issue numbers (for articles), page numbers, and URLs or DOIs for online sources. Specific requirements vary by citation style.

How do APA and MLA citation styles differ in in-text citations?

APA in-text citations include the author's last name and the publication year (e.g., Smith, 2020). MLA in-text citations include the author's last name and the page number (e.g., Smith 123). APA focuses on the date to emphasize the currency of research, while MLA focuses on the location of the cited information within the source.

What should I do to avoid overcitation?

To avoid overcitation, ensure that you only cite a source once per paragraph unless the source is integral to multiple points. Avoid repeating citations unnecessarily within the same context, and ensure that each citation adds value to your argument.

What is the difference between footnotes and endnotes in Chicago style?

Footnotes appear at the bottom of the page where the citation is made, while endnotes appear at the end of a chapter or document. Both are used in the notes and bibliography style of Chicago to provide detailed citation information corresponding to superscript numbers in the text.

When should I use a bibliography generator?

A bibliography generator can be useful for quickly creating citation lists and ensuring proper formatting. However, it is essential to understand manual citation rules to verify the accuracy of generated citations and make necessary adjustments.

Can I cite my own previous work in a new research paper?

Yes, you can cite your previous work if it is relevant to your current research. However, avoid excessive self-citation as it can be seen as self-promotion and may detract from the credibility of your current work. Ensure that the cited work directly contributes to your new research.

References:

• APA (2009, May). How do you cite website material that has no author, no year, and no page numbers?  APA Style . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association .
• APA (2019, September).  Appropriate level of citation . APA Style. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association .
• APA (2020). Style and grammar guidelines. APA Style . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association .
• Bast, C. M., & Samuels, L. B. (2008). Plagiarism and legal scholarship in the age of information sharing: the need for intellectual honesty.  Catholic University Law Review ,  57  (3), 777-815.  https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1077&context=lawreview
• Gross, C. (2016). Scientific misconduct. Annual Review of Psychology, 67 , 693-711. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033437
• Lanning, S. (2016). A modern, simplified citation style and student response. Reference Services Review, 44 (1), 21-37. https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-10-2015-0045
• IEEE (n.d.). How to Cite References: IEEE Documentation Style. IEEE DataPort .
• Mendeley. (2019). How to cite sources in MLA citation format . Mendeley .
• Truluck, C., & Richardson, D. (2013). Citing sources correctly. Radiologic Technology, 84 (3), 311-316. https://www.radiologictechnology.org/content/84/3/311.extract
• University of Chicago Press (2017a). The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition. The Chicago Manual of Style Online .
• University of Chicago Press (2017b). Notes and bibliography: Sample citations. Turabian: A Manual for Writers .
• University of Chicago Press (2017c). Author-date: Sample citations. Turabian: A Manual for Writers .
• University of Pittsburgh. (2020, January 28). LibGuides: Citation styles: APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, IEEE: APA 6th edition. LibGuides at University of Pittsburgh .

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• Citing Sources

Citing Sources: What are citations and why should I use them?

What is a citation.

Citations are a way of giving credit when certain material in your work came from another source. It also gives your readers the information necessary to find that source again-- it provides an important roadmap to your research process. Whenever you use sources such as books, journals or websites in your research, you must give credit to the original author by citing the source. 

Why do researchers cite?

Scholarship is a conversation  and scholars use citations not only to  give credit  to original creators and thinkers, but also to  add strength and authority  to their own work.  By citing their sources, scholars are  placing their work in a specific context  to show where they “fit” within the larger conversation.  Citations are also a great way to  leave a trail  intended to help others who may want to explore the conversation or use the sources in their own work.

In short, citations

(1) give credit

(2) add strength and authority to your work

(3) place your work in a specific context

(4) leave a trail for other scholars

"Good citations should reveal your sources, not conceal them. They should honeslty reflect the research you conducted." (Lipson 4)

Lipson, Charles. "Why Cite?"  Cite Right: A Quick Guide to Citation Styles--MLA, APA, Chicago, the Sciences, Professions, and More . Chicago: U of Chicago, 2006. Print.

What does a citation look like?

Different subject disciplines call for citation information to be written in very specific order, capitalization, and punctuation. There are therefore many different style formats. Three popular citation formats are MLA Style (for humanities articles) and APA or Chicago (for social sciences articles).

MLA style (print journal article):  

Whisenant, Warren A. "How Women Have Fared as Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Since the Passage of Title IX." Sex Roles Vol. 49.3 (2003): 179-182.

APA style (print journal article):

Whisenant, W. A. (2003) How Women Have Fared as Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Since the Passage of Title IX. Sex Roles , 49 (3), 179-182.

Chicago style (print journal article):

Whisenant, Warren A. "How Women Have Fared as Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Since the Passage of Title IX." Sex Roles 49, no. 3 (2003): 179-182.

No matter which style you use, all citations require the same basic information:

• Author or Creator
• Container (e.g., Journal or magazine, website, edited book)
• Date of creation or publication
• Publisher 

You are most likely to have easy access to all of your citation information when you find it in the first place. Take note of this information up front, and it will be much easier to cite it effectively later.

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Using Information Sources Ethically and Legally

• Understanding Plagiarism
• Avoidance Tips

When do I need to cite sources?

Does everything need to be cited, all you need to know about citing sources, get help from libraries and writing centers.

Always give credit where credit is due. If the words that you are including in your research belong to someone else, give credit. 

Here is  a brief list of what needs to be credited or documented :  

• Words or ideas presented in a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, website, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium  
• Information you gain through interviewing or conversing with another person, face to face, over the phone, or in writing  
• When you copy the exact words or a unique phrase  
• When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or other visual materials  
• When you reuse or repost any digital media, including images, audio, video, or other media  

There are certain things that  do not need documentation or credit, including :  

• Writing your own lived experiences, your own observations and insights, your own thoughts, and your own conclusions about a subject  
• When you are writing up your own results obtained through lab or field experiments  
• When you use your own artwork, digital photographs, video, audio, etc.  
• When you are using "common knowledge," things like folklore, common sense observations, myths, urban legends, and historical events (but  not  historical documents)  
• When you are using generally accepted facts (e.g., pollution is bad for the environment) including facts that are accepted within particular discourse communities (e.g., in the field of composition studies, "writing is a process" is a generally accepted fact).  

(From Plagiarism FAQs - Purdue Writing Lab )

The following chart from the UT Arlington Library Acknowledging Sources tutorial will guide you in your decision:

What is common knowledge? This refers to facts well known by many people and verifiable in five or more sources. Examples:

• Bill Gates is the founder of the Microsoft Corporation.
• There are 60 minutes in an hour.
• Columbus is the capital of Ohio.
• The whole is greater than the part.
• Common Knowledge inforgraphic

If you have any doubts or questions, ask your professor or librarian. Err on the side of caution: when in doubt, cite!

The online guide Citing Your Sources provides information on citation, style guides, citation tools, and more.

• Ask a Question (UC Libraries form) Email you reference question and get a response within 24 hours.
• Subject librarians Contact a specialist in your discipline.

Writing Centers

• Academic Writing Center (UC Clifton) Trained writing center tutors provide UC students with free writing assistance.

Schedule an appointment

AWC Tutor Feedback (submit a paper of six double-spaced pages or less and get  feedback from a tutor within 48 hours)

Email: [email protected]

• UC Clermont Learning Commons Support Services

Email: [email protected]

• UC Blue Ash Writing and Study Skills Center

Submit your work (submit a paper of six double-spaced pages or less and get  feedback from a tutor within 24-48 hours)

Email: [email protected]

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Clip Art or Stock Image References

There are special requirements for using clip art and stock images in APA Style papers.

Common sources for stock images and clip art are iStock, Getty Images, Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, Pixabay, and Flickr. Common sources for clip art are Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint.

The license associated with the clip art or stock image determines how it should be credited.

• Sometimes the license indicates no reference or attribution is needed, in which case writers can reproduce the image without any reference, citation, or attribution in an APA Style paper.
• Other times, the license indicates that credit is required to reproduce the image, in which case writers should write an APA Style copyright attribution and reference list entry.

Follow the terms of the license associated with the image you want to reproduce. The guidelines apply regardless of whether the image costs money to purchase or is available for free. The guidelines also apply to both students and professionals and to both papers and PowerPoint presentations.

Although for most images you must look at the license on a case-by-case basis, images and clip art from programs such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint can be used without attribution. By purchasing the program, you have purchased a license to use the clip art and images that come with the program without attribution.

This page contains examples for clip art or stock images, including the following:

• Image with no attribution required
• Image that requires an attribution

1. Image with no attribution required

If the license associated with clip art or a stock image states “no attribution required,” then do not provide an APA Style reference, in-text citation, or copyright attribution.

For example, this image of a cat comes from Pixabay and has a license that says the image is free to reproduce with no attribution required. To use the image as a figure in an APA Style paper, provide a figure number and title and then the image. If desired, describe the image in a figure note. In a presentation (such as a PowerPoint presentation), the figure number, title, and note are optional.

Figure 1 A Striped Cat Sits With Paws Crossed

Note. Participants assigned to the cute pets condition saw this image of a cat.

2. Image that requires an attribution

If the license associated with clip art or a stock image says that attribution is required, then provide a copyright attribution in the figure note and a reference list entry for the image in the reference list. Many (but not all) images with Creative Commons licenses require attribution.

For example, this image of a sled dog comes from Flickr and has a Creative Commons license (specifically, CC BY 2.0). The license states that the image is free to use but attribution is required.

To use the image as a figure in an APA Style paper, provide a figure number and title and then the image. Below the image, provide a copyright attribution in the figure note. In a presentation, the figure number and title are optional but the note containing the copyright attribution is required.

The copyright attribution is used instead of an in-text citation. The copyright attribution consists of the same elements as the reference list entry, but in a different order (title, author, date, site name, URL), followed by the name of the Creative Commons License.

Figure 1 Lava the Sled Dog

Note . From Lava [Photograph], by Denali National Park and Preserve, 2013, Flickr

( https://www.flickr.com/photos/denalinps/8639280606/ ). CC BY 2.0.

Also provide a reference list entry for the image. The reference list entry for the image consists of its author, year of publication, title, description in brackets, and source (usually the name of the website and the URL).

Denali National Park and Preserve. (2013). Lava [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/denalinps/8639280606/

To cite clip art or a stock image without reproducing it, provide an in-text citation for the image instead of a copyright attribution. Also provide a reference list entry.

• Parenthetical citation : (Denali National Park and Preserve, 2013)
• Narrative citation : Denali National Park and Preserve (2013)

Clip art or stock images are covered in the seventh edition APA Style manuals in the Publication Manual Sections 12.14 to 12.18 and the Concise Guide Section 10.12

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• Citing Your Sources

RUSS 1500 - Introduction to Russian & East European Studies - Holekamp: Citing Your Sources

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• Style Guide Overview | Purdue OWL. This guide provides an overview of the different style guides including examples of bibliographies and citations.
• CItation Information | UNC Library. "This site is designed to introduce you to citing information in a variety of citation styles."
• Citation Management Software. Citation management software (or bibliographic management software) allows you to create your personal library of references to books, articles and documents. See this guide to learn about the following citation management software packages: EndNote, EndNote Web, Mendeley, and Zotero.

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Deep Feature Embedding for Tabular Data

• Yuqian Wu , Hengyi Luo , Raymond S. T. Lee
• Published 30 August 2024
• Computer Science

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Facility for Rare Isotope Beams

At michigan state university, ask the expert: how—and why—do you harvest isotopes, katharina domnanich is helping set up a lab at frib that will provide a bounty of isotopes useful for medicine, plant science, and more.

Katharina Domnanich joined Michigan State University in 2018, when the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) was entering its final phases of construction. 

The facility was closing in on becoming a world-class particle accelerator and user facility for the  U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE-SC), making short-lived isotopes  that couldn’t be made anywhere else .

 These exotic isotopes will help us better understand fundamental rules of nature and find answers about how the early universe was formed. But Domnanich wasn’t most interested in these fast-decaying nuclei that have likely never existed on Earth before. 

Rather, she was drawn to the more common isotopes that researchers already knew could be useful for a variety of applications that would be made in the background of FRIB’s isotope discovery. Domnanich came to FRIB to work as a postdoc with  Gregory Severin , associate professor of chemistry at FRIB and in the  MSU Department of Chemistry , who was building what’s called an  isotope harvesting laboratory . 

Severin’s team was assembling technology to extract or harvest those “by-product” isotopes and make them available to other researchers who could put them to work in fields like medicine, plant science and many more. The isotopes are harvested during routine operation for FRIB’s nuclear physics mission—without interfering with its primary users. The  U.S. Department of Energy Isotope R&D and Production Program (DOE Isotope Program) supports isotope harvesting at FRIB.

Today, FRIB is officially up and running and its isotope harvesting laboratory is nearing completion. Domnanich is now an assistant professor of chemistry at FRIB and in the  MSU Department of Chemistry  who has started her own team, won a  2023 FRIB Achievement Award for Early Career Researchers , and branched out into new research areas. 

In fact, she recently published about one of those in the journal  Applied Radiation and Isotopes   (“Preparation of stable and long-lived source samples for the stand-alone beam program at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams”).

But she’s still a driving force on the team making isotope harvesting at FRIB a reality, working alongside Severin and their colleagues. 

The  College of Natural Science caught up with Domnanich to talk about the project, as well as what it was like launching her career at FRIB and what’s on the horizon for this rising star of nuclear science.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You joined FRIB to work on isotope harvesting, yet your new paper is about something else. It sounds like there’s no shortage of things to work on at FRIB.

Oh no. There are tons of things to do here.

My group is working on isotope harvesting, and I have newer projects working on what’s called mass separation. These all use radioactive isotopes and, to work safely with those, experiments have to be like a well-rehearsed show. 

To prepare students, they have to do an experiment at least 10 times with nonradioactive materials before using the radioactive stuff so they know how to handle everything.

So, in addition to all the work we have to do, students also have a lot of pre-experiments. If you ask them, they’ll tell you we’re always busy.

Why did you decide to stay at MSU and FRIB after completing your postdoctoral research?

I really enjoyed working together with Greg. It was incredible and a very productive time. I liked the dynamics in the group and how isotope harvesting at FRIB was being developed, so when there was an opening, it just seemed like a great opportunity.

You were recognized with an  FRIB Achievement Award for Early Career Researchers in 2023 —the year after you became a faculty member. What was that like?

It felt very encouraging. I was very positively surprised that I got that award and it was really nice. 

It also feels like there is a lot of interest in isotope harvesting and that people really want to use the isotopes. I know there are organic chemistry professors who are interested and some plant biologists. We also have a  Department of Radiology where people are interested. 

So, I think there will be tons of opportunities for collaboration when the isotope harvesting is running.

What sorts of things do researchers want to do with isotopes harvested from FRIB?

A lot of the isotopes are for nuclear medicine. For example, we’ve worked with scandium-47, which is being studied as a therapeutic for cancer treatment.

When I was a postdoc, I also looked into collecting zinc-62, which is interesting for nuclear medicine and also for plant sciences. Plants needs zinc, and I showed that plants could take up zinc-62, then scanned the plants to see where it goes. That could be quite a nice tool to study plant systems.

Then for materials science, you can use certain isotopes to visualize leaks and cracks in pipes and things like that.

We could also harvest isotopes to be used in nuclear batteries. The rovers we send to Mars use radioactive isotopes in their batteries, and some of those same isotopes will be produced at FRIB.

So, how do you harvest isotopes?

At FRIB, we accelerate ions into a primary beam that reacts with a target and produces secondary beams. It’s these exotic secondary beams that are used by nuclear physicists and nuclear scientists to study reactions that happen in stars, for example—or whatever they want to explore.

But maybe just 20 percent of the primary beam goes into producing secondary beams. That means you have 80 percent of the primary beam that you still need to do something with. It’s usually stopped by a solid metal block, just to have something that can absorb all its energy.

At FRIB, we want to instead stop it inside a rotating drum of water. By stopping the beam within water, you have tons of reactions happening between the beam particles and water molecules, producing many new isotopes in the process.

Those isotopes are then just floating in this water system. And FRIB’s water system will be huge, like 7,000 liters or almost 2,000 gallons as a ballpark number.

We can capture the isotopes on ion exchange resins, which function like a really fancy Brita filter. From there, we can extract them—kind of like remove them with a liquid—and purify them, thereby making them available for further experiments.

What’s the status of the isotope harvesting lab now?

We did some proof-of-principle tests when I was a postdoc in Greg’s group with a smaller type of water system. So that had about 50 liters of water instead of 7,000. But even that helped us develop the chemistry and learn what the  reaction rates are for certain isotopes. Still, scaling up is a huge task.

While you’re bringing the isotope harvesting lab online, you’re also exploring some new directions in your group, which led to your recent paper. Can you talk more about that?

My group is looking into something called mass separation to purify isotopes, and that’s the connection to the new paper.

What is mass separation?

Remember that I said we use something like fancy Brita filters in isotope harvesting? If you have a fancy setup, like us, you can separate the individual elements by their chemistry. You can separate the sodium from the magnesium from the calcium and so on.

But with a filter, you can’t separate different isotopes of the same element. Calcium, for example, has several stable isotopes, like calcium-40, calcium-42 and so on. That makes it almost impossible to separate isotopes using chemistry. 

But mass separation is feasible. These isotopes all have different masses and you can separate them by their mass using an incredibly strong magnet. 

And how does that fit in with your new work?

I was working with another group led by  Georg Bollen , director of the Experimental Systems Division at FRIB, and they have a setup to generate so-called offline beams. Before the main FRIB accelerator was running, but after FRIB’s predecessor, the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, was already switched off, researchers needed to use something else to be able to study rare isotopes. That’s why they made the Batch Mode Ion Source (BMIS). 

It’s a device that can make a lower energy beam than FRIB’s main beam, but it needs to have source samples that have specific chemical and physical properties. I collaborated with this BMIS group to prepare those source samples.

Actually, our last paper is about the preparation of source samples. And that fits into the mass separation project because I want to use this ion source and magnet as part of the mass separation setup to do my next mass separation experiments. 

So this was very good preparation for me, kind of like training, to figure out what is necessary to establish mass separation for further experiments.

Last question: Do you have a favorite isotope?

Yes. I love scandium-43. 

It’s a rare-earth-like element, which means it’s useful in electronics, but it also has cool applications in nuclear medicine. You can use different isotopes of scandium for therapy and diagnostics, so you can think about using the same medicine for diagnosing cancer and for treatment.

I worked with scandium a lot during my doctorate—I spent so many hours working with different scandium isotopes in the lab—and I still really like it.

Michigan State University operates the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) as a user facility for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE-SC), supporting the mission of the DOE-SC Office of Nuclear Physics. Hosting what is designed to be the most powerful heavy-ion accelerator, FRIB enables scientists to make discoveries about the properties of rare isotopes in order to better understand the physics of nuclei, nuclear astrophysics, fundamental interactions, and applications for society, including in medicine, homeland security, and industry.

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of today’s most pressing challenges. For more information, visit  energy.gov/science .

The  U.S. Department of Energy Isotope R&D and Production Program  (DOE Isotope Program) supports isotope harvesting at FRIB. MSU operates FRIB as a user facility for the  Office of Nuclear Physics  in the  U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science , supporting the mission of the DOE-SC Office of Nuclear Physics.

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• How to cite a website in APA Style

How to Cite a Website in APA Style | Format & Examples

Published on November 5, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on January 17, 2024.

APA website citations usually include the author, the publication date, the title of the page or article, the website name, and the URL. If there is no author, start the citation with the title of the article. If the page is likely to change over time, add a retrieval date.

If you are citing an online version of a print publication (e.g. a newspaper , magazine , or dictionary ), use the same format as you would for print, with a URL added at the end. Formats differ for online videos (e.g. TED Talks ), images , and dissertations .

Use the buttons below to explore the format, or use our free APA Citation Generator to automatically create citations.

Cite a website in APA Style now:

Table of contents, citing an entire website, how to cite online articles, websites with no author, websites with no date, how to cite from social media, frequently asked questions about apa style citations.

When you refer to a website in your text without quoting or paraphrasing from a specific part of it, you don’t need a formal citation. Instead, you can just include the URL in parentheses after the name of the site:

One of the most popular social media sites, Instagram (http://instagram.com), allows users to share images and videos.

For this kind of citation, you don’t need to include the website on the reference page . However, if you’re citing a specific page or article from a website, you will need a formal in-text citation and reference list entry.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Various kinds of articles appear online, and how you cite them depends on where the article appears.

Online articles from newspapers, magazines, and blogs

Articles appearing in online versions of print publications (e.g. newspapers and magazines) are cited like their print versions, but with an added URL.

The same format is used for blog posts. Just include the blog name where you would usually put the name of the magazine or newspaper.

Articles from online-only news sites

For articles from news sites without print equivalents (e.g. BBC News, Reuters), italicize the name of the article and  not  the name of the site.

When a web page does not list an individual author, it can usually be attributed to an organization or government . If this results in the author name being identical to the site name, omit the site name, as in the example below.

If you can’t identify any author at all, replace the author name with the title of the page or article.

In the in-text citation , put the title in quotation marks if it is in plain text in the reference list, or in italics if it is in italics in the reference list. Note that title case is used for the title here, unlike in the reference list. Shorten the title to the first few words if necessary.

When a web page or article does not list a publication or revision date, replace the date with “n.d.” (“no date”) in all citations.

If an online source is likely to change over time, it is recommended to include the date on which you accessed it.

As social media posts are usually untitled, use the first 20 words of the post, in italics, as a title. Also include any relevant information about the type of post and any multimedia aspects (e.g. videos, images, sound, links) in square brackets.

On some social media sites (such as Twitter ), users go by usernames instead of or in addition to their real names. Where the author’s real name is known, include it, along with their username in square brackets:

In some cases, you’ll want to cite a whole social media profile instead of a specific post. In these cases, include an access date, because a profile will obviously change over time:

When citing a webpage or online article , the APA in-text citation consists of the author’s last name and year of publication. For example: (Worland & Williams, 2015). Note that the author can also be an organization. For example: (American Psychological Association, 2019).

If you’re quoting you should also include a locator. Since web pages don’t have page numbers, you can use one of the following options:

• Paragraph number: (Smith, 2018, para. 15).
• Heading or section name: ( CDC, 2020, Flu Season section)
• Abbreviated heading:  ( CDC, 2020, “Key Facts” section)

When you quote or paraphrase a specific passage from a source, you need to indicate the location of the passage in your APA in-text citation . If there are no page numbers (e.g. when citing a website ) but the text is long, you can instead use section headings, paragraph numbers, or a combination of the two:

(Caulfield, 2019, Linking section, para. 1).

Section headings can be shortened if necessary. Kindle location numbers should not be used in ebook citations , as they are unreliable.

If you are referring to the source as a whole, it’s not necessary to include a page number or other marker.

When no individual author name is listed, but the source can clearly be attributed to a specific organization—e.g., a press release by a charity, a report by an agency, or a page from a company’s website—use the organization’s name as the author in the reference entry and APA in-text citations .

When no author at all can be determined—e.g. a collaboratively edited wiki or an online article published anonymously—use the title in place of the author. In the in-text citation, put the title in quotation marks if it appears in plain text in the reference list, and in italics if it appears in italics in the reference list. Shorten it if necessary.

APA Style usually does not require an access date. You never need to include one when citing journal articles , e-books , or other stable online sources.

However, if you are citing a website or online article that’s designed to change over time, it’s a good idea to include an access date. In this case, write it in the following format at the end of the reference: Retrieved October 19, 2020, from https://www.uva.nl/en/about-the-uva/about-the-university/about-the-university.html

Instead of the author’s name, include the first few words of the work’s title in the in-text citation. Enclose the title in double quotation marks when citing an article, web page or book chapter. Italicize the title of periodicals, books, and reports.

No publication date

If the publication date is unknown , use “n.d.” (no date) instead. For example: (Johnson, n.d.).

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GPT-fabricated scientific papers on Google Scholar: Key features, spread, and implications for preempting evidence manipulation

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Academic journals, archives, and repositories are seeing an increasing number of questionable research papers clearly produced using generative AI. They are often created with widely available, general-purpose AI applications, most likely ChatGPT, and mimic scientific writing. Google Scholar easily locates and lists these questionable papers alongside reputable, quality-controlled research. Our analysis of a selection of questionable GPT-fabricated scientific papers found in Google Scholar shows that many are about applied, often controversial topics susceptible to disinformation: the environment, health, and computing. The resulting enhanced potential for malicious manipulation of society’s evidence base, particularly in politically divisive domains, is a growing concern.

Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of Borås, Sweden

Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University, Sweden

Division of Environmental Communication, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden

Research Questions

• Where are questionable publications produced with generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) that can be found via Google Scholar published or deposited?
• What are the main characteristics of these publications in relation to predominant subject categories?
• How are these publications spread in the research infrastructure for scholarly communication?
• How is the role of the scholarly communication infrastructure challenged in maintaining public trust in science and evidence through inappropriate use of generative AI?

research note Summary

• A sample of scientific papers with signs of GPT-use found on Google Scholar was retrieved, downloaded, and analyzed using a combination of qualitative coding and descriptive statistics. All papers contained at least one of two common phrases returned by conversational agents that use large language models (LLM) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Google Search was then used to determine the extent to which copies of questionable, GPT-fabricated papers were available in various repositories, archives, citation databases, and social media platforms.
• Roughly two-thirds of the retrieved papers were found to have been produced, at least in part, through undisclosed, potentially deceptive use of GPT. The majority (57%) of these questionable papers dealt with policy-relevant subjects (i.e., environment, health, computing), susceptible to influence operations. Most were available in several copies on different domains (e.g., social media, archives, and repositories).
• Two main risks arise from the increasingly common use of GPT to (mass-)produce fake, scientific publications. First, the abundance of fabricated “studies” seeping into all areas of the research infrastructure threatens to overwhelm the scholarly communication system and jeopardize the integrity of the scientific record. A second risk lies in the increased possibility that convincingly scientific-looking content was in fact deceitfully created with AI tools and is also optimized to be retrieved by publicly available academic search engines, particularly Google Scholar. However small, this possibility and awareness of it risks undermining the basis for trust in scientific knowledge and poses serious societal risks.

Implications

The use of ChatGPT to generate text for academic papers has raised concerns about research integrity. Discussion of this phenomenon is ongoing in editorials, commentaries, opinion pieces, and on social media (Bom, 2023; Stokel-Walker, 2024; Thorp, 2023). There are now several lists of papers suspected of GPT misuse, and new papers are constantly being added. 1 See for example Academ-AI, https://www.academ-ai.info/ , and Retraction Watch, https://retractionwatch.com/papers-and-peer-reviews-with-evidence-of-chatgpt-writing/ . While many legitimate uses of GPT for research and academic writing exist (Huang & Tan, 2023; Kitamura, 2023; Lund et al., 2023), its undeclared use—beyond proofreading—has potentially far-reaching implications for both science and society, but especially for their relationship. It, therefore, seems important to extend the discussion to one of the most accessible and well-known intermediaries between science, but also certain types of misinformation, and the public, namely Google Scholar, also in response to the legitimate concerns that the discussion of generative AI and misinformation needs to be more nuanced and empirically substantiated  (Simon et al., 2023).

Google Scholar, https://scholar.google.com , is an easy-to-use academic search engine. It is available for free, and its index is extensive (Gusenbauer & Haddaway, 2020). It is also often touted as a credible source for academic literature and even recommended in library guides, by media and information literacy initiatives, and fact checkers (Tripodi et al., 2023). However, Google Scholar lacks the transparency and adherence to standards that usually characterize citation databases. Instead, Google Scholar uses automated crawlers, like Google’s web search engine (Martín-Martín et al., 2021), and the inclusion criteria are based on primarily technical standards, allowing any individual author—with or without scientific affiliation—to upload papers to be indexed (Google Scholar Help, n.d.). It has been shown that Google Scholar is susceptible to manipulation through citation exploits (Antkare, 2020) and by providing access to fake scientific papers (Dadkhah et al., 2017). A large part of Google Scholar’s index consists of publications from established scientific journals or other forms of quality-controlled, scholarly literature. However, the index also contains a large amount of gray literature, including student papers, working papers, reports, preprint servers, and academic networking sites, as well as material from so-called “questionable” academic journals, including paper mills. The search interface does not offer the possibility to filter the results meaningfully by material type, publication status, or form of quality control, such as limiting the search to peer-reviewed material.

To understand the occurrence of ChatGPT (co-)authored work in Google Scholar’s index, we scraped it for publications, including one of two common ChatGPT responses (see Appendix A) that we encountered on social media and in media reports (DeGeurin, 2024). The results of our descriptive statistical analyses showed that around 62% did not declare the use of GPTs. Most of these GPT-fabricated papers were found in non-indexed journals and working papers, but some cases included research published in mainstream scientific journals and conference proceedings. 2 Indexed journals mean scholarly journals indexed by abstract and citation databases such as Scopus and Web of Science, where the indexation implies journals with high scientific quality. Non-indexed journals are journals that fall outside of this indexation. More than half (57%) of these GPT-fabricated papers concerned policy-relevant subject areas susceptible to influence operations. To avoid increasing the visibility of these publications, we abstained from referencing them in this research note. However, we have made the data available in the Harvard Dataverse repository.

The publications were related to three issue areas—health (14.5%), environment (19.5%) and computing (23%)—with key terms such “healthcare,” “COVID-19,” or “infection”for health-related papers, and “analysis,” “sustainable,” and “global” for environment-related papers. In several cases, the papers had titles that strung together general keywords and buzzwords, thus alluding to very broad and current research. These terms included “biology,” “telehealth,” “climate policy,” “diversity,” and “disrupting,” to name just a few.  While the study’s scope and design did not include a detailed analysis of which parts of the articles included fabricated text, our dataset did contain the surrounding sentences for each occurrence of the suspicious phrases that formed the basis for our search and subsequent selection. Based on that, we can say that the phrases occurred in most sections typically found in scientific publications, including the literature review, methods, conceptual and theoretical frameworks, background, motivation or societal relevance, and even discussion. This was confirmed during the joint coding, where we read and discussed all articles. It became clear that not just the text related to the telltale phrases was created by GPT, but that almost all articles in our sample of questionable articles likely contained traces of GPT-fabricated text everywhere.

Evidence hacking and backfiring effects

Generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) can be used to produce texts that mimic scientific writing. These texts, when made available online—as we demonstrate—leak into the databases of academic search engines and other parts of the research infrastructure for scholarly communication. This development exacerbates problems that were already present with less sophisticated text generators (Antkare, 2020; Cabanac & Labbé, 2021). Yet, the public release of ChatGPT in 2022, together with the way Google Scholar works, has increased the likelihood of lay people (e.g., media, politicians, patients, students) coming across questionable (or even entirely GPT-fabricated) papers and other problematic research findings. Previous research has emphasized that the ability to determine the value and status of scientific publications for lay people is at stake when misleading articles are passed off as reputable (Haider & Åström, 2017) and that systematic literature reviews risk being compromised (Dadkhah et al., 2017). It has also been highlighted that Google Scholar, in particular, can be and has been exploited for manipulating the evidence base for politically charged issues and to fuel conspiracy narratives (Tripodi et al., 2023). Both concerns are likely to be magnified in the future, increasing the risk of what we suggest calling evidence hacking —the strategic and coordinated malicious manipulation of society’s evidence base.

The authority of quality-controlled research as evidence to support legislation, policy, politics, and other forms of decision-making is undermined by the presence of undeclared GPT-fabricated content in publications professing to be scientific. Due to the large number of archives, repositories, mirror sites, and shadow libraries to which they spread, there is a clear risk that GPT-fabricated, questionable papers will reach audiences even after a possible retraction. There are considerable technical difficulties involved in identifying and tracing computer-fabricated papers (Cabanac & Labbé, 2021; Dadkhah et al., 2023; Jones, 2024), not to mention preventing and curbing their spread and uptake.

However, as the rise of the so-called anti-vaxx movement during the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing obstruction and denial of climate change show, retracting erroneous publications often fuels conspiracies and increases the following of these movements rather than stopping them. To illustrate this mechanism, climate deniers frequently question established scientific consensus by pointing to other, supposedly scientific, studies that support their claims. Usually, these are poorly executed, not peer-reviewed, based on obsolete data, or even fraudulent (Dunlap & Brulle, 2020). A similar strategy is successful in the alternative epistemic world of the global anti-vaccination movement (Carrion, 2018) and the persistence of flawed and questionable publications in the scientific record already poses significant problems for health research, policy, and lawmakers, and thus for society as a whole (Littell et al., 2024). Considering that a person’s support for “doing your own research” is associated with increased mistrust in scientific institutions (Chinn & Hasell, 2023), it will be of utmost importance to anticipate and consider such backfiring effects already when designing a technical solution, when suggesting industry or legal regulation, and in the planning of educational measures.

Recommendations

Solutions should be based on simultaneous considerations of technical, educational, and regulatory approaches, as well as incentives, including social ones, across the entire research infrastructure. Paying attention to how these approaches and incentives relate to each other can help identify points and mechanisms for disruption. Recognizing fraudulent academic papers must happen alongside understanding how they reach their audiences and what reasons there might be for some of these papers successfully “sticking around.” A possible way to mitigate some of the risks associated with GPT-fabricated scholarly texts finding their way into academic search engine results would be to provide filtering options for facets such as indexed journals, gray literature, peer-review, and similar on the interface of publicly available academic search engines. Furthermore, evaluation tools for indexed journals 3 Such as LiU Journal CheckUp, https://ep.liu.se/JournalCheckup/default.aspx?lang=eng . could be integrated into the graphical user interfaces and the crawlers of these academic search engines. To enable accountability, it is important that the index (database) of such a search engine is populated according to criteria that are transparent, open to scrutiny, and appropriate to the workings of  science and other forms of academic research. Moreover, considering that Google Scholar has no real competitor, there is a strong case for establishing a freely accessible, non-specialized academic search engine that is not run for commercial reasons but for reasons of public interest. Such measures, together with educational initiatives aimed particularly at policymakers, science communicators, journalists, and other media workers, will be crucial to reducing the possibilities for and effects of malicious manipulation or evidence hacking. It is important not to present this as a technical problem that exists only because of AI text generators but to relate it to the wider concerns in which it is embedded. These range from a largely dysfunctional scholarly publishing system (Haider & Åström, 2017) and academia’s “publish or perish” paradigm to Google’s near-monopoly and ideological battles over the control of information and ultimately knowledge. Any intervention is likely to have systemic effects; these effects need to be considered and assessed in advance and, ideally, followed up on.

Our study focused on a selection of papers that were easily recognizable as fraudulent. We used this relatively small sample as a magnifying glass to examine, delineate, and understand a problem that goes beyond the scope of the sample itself, which however points towards larger concerns that require further investigation. The work of ongoing whistleblowing initiatives 4 Such as Academ-AI, https://www.academ-ai.info/ , and Retraction Watch, https://retractionwatch.com/papers-and-peer-reviews-with-evidence-of-chatgpt-writing/ . , recent media reports of journal closures (Subbaraman, 2024), or GPT-related changes in word use and writing style (Cabanac et al., 2021; Stokel-Walker, 2024) suggest that we only see the tip of the iceberg. There are already more sophisticated cases (Dadkhah et al., 2023) as well as cases involving fabricated images (Gu et al., 2022). Our analysis shows that questionable and potentially manipulative GPT-fabricated papers permeate the research infrastructure and are likely to become a widespread phenomenon. Our findings underline that the risk of fake scientific papers being used to maliciously manipulate evidence (see Dadkhah et al., 2017) must be taken seriously. Manipulation may involve undeclared automatic summaries of texts, inclusion in literature reviews, explicit scientific claims, or the concealment of errors in studies so that they are difficult to detect in peer review. However, the mere possibility of these things happening is a significant risk in its own right that can be strategically exploited and will have ramifications for trust in and perception of science. Society’s methods of evaluating sources and the foundations of media and information literacy are under threat and public trust in science is at risk of further erosion, with far-reaching consequences for society in dealing with information disorders. To address this multifaceted problem, we first need to understand why it exists and proliferates.

Finding 1: 139 GPT-fabricated, questionable papers were found and listed as regular results on the Google Scholar results page. Non-indexed journals dominate.

Most questionable papers we found were in non-indexed journals or were working papers, but we did also find some in established journals, publications, conferences, and repositories. We found a total of 139 papers with a suspected deceptive use of ChatGPT or similar LLM applications (see Table 1). Out of these, 19 were in indexed journals, 89 were in non-indexed journals, 19 were student papers found in university databases, and 12 were working papers (mostly in preprint databases). Table 1 divides these papers into categories. Health and environment papers made up around 34% (47) of the sample. Of these, 66% were present in non-indexed journals.

Finding 2: GPT-fabricated, questionable papers are disseminated online, permeating the research infrastructure for scholarly communication, often in multiple copies. Applied topics with practical implications dominate.

The 20 papers concerning health-related issues are distributed across 20 unique domains, accounting for 46 URLs. The 27 papers dealing with environmental issues can be found across 26 unique domains, accounting for 56 URLs.  Most of the identified papers exist in multiple copies and have already spread to several archives, repositories, and social media. It would be difficult, or impossible, to remove them from the scientific record.

As apparent from Table 2, GPT-fabricated, questionable papers are seeping into most parts of the online research infrastructure for scholarly communication. Platforms on which identified papers have appeared include ResearchGate, ORCiD, Journal of Population Therapeutics and Clinical Pharmacology (JPTCP), Easychair, Frontiers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer (IEEE), and X/Twitter. Thus, even if they are retracted from their original source, it will prove very difficult to track, remove, or even just mark them up on other platforms. Moreover, unless regulated, Google Scholar will enable their continued and most likely unlabeled discoverability.

A word rain visualization (Centre for Digital Humanities Uppsala, 2023), which combines word prominences through TF-IDF 5 Term frequency–inverse document frequency , a method for measuring the significance of a word in a document compared to its frequency across all documents in a collection. scores with semantic similarity of the full texts of our sample of GPT-generated articles that fall into the “Environment” and “Health” categories, reflects the two categories in question. However, as can be seen in Figure 1, it also reveals overlap and sub-areas. The y-axis shows word prominences through word positions and font sizes, while the x-axis indicates semantic similarity. In addition to a certain amount of overlap, this reveals sub-areas, which are best described as two distinct events within the word rain. The event on the left bundles terms related to the development and management of health and healthcare with “challenges,” “impact,” and “potential of artificial intelligence”emerging as semantically related terms. Terms related to research infrastructures, environmental, epistemic, and technological concepts are arranged further down in the same event (e.g., “system,” “climate,” “understanding,” “knowledge,” “learning,” “education,” “sustainable”). A second distinct event further to the right bundles terms associated with fish farming and aquatic medicinal plants, highlighting the presence of an aquaculture cluster.  Here, the prominence of groups of terms such as “used,” “model,” “-based,” and “traditional” suggests the presence of applied research on these topics. The two events making up the word rain visualization, are linked by a less dominant but overlapping cluster of terms related to “energy” and “water.”

The bar chart of the terms in the paper subset (see Figure 2) complements the word rain visualization by depicting the most prominent terms in the full texts along the y-axis. Here, word prominences across health and environment papers are arranged descendingly, where values outside parentheses are TF-IDF values (relative frequencies) and values inside parentheses are raw term frequencies (absolute frequencies).

Finding 3: Google Scholar presents results from quality-controlled and non-controlled citation databases on the same interface, providing unfiltered access to GPT-fabricated questionable papers.

Google Scholar’s central position in the publicly accessible scholarly communication infrastructure, as well as its lack of standards, transparency, and accountability in terms of inclusion criteria, has potentially serious implications for public trust in science. This is likely to exacerbate the already-known potential to exploit Google Scholar for evidence hacking (Tripodi et al., 2023) and will have implications for any attempts to retract or remove fraudulent papers from their original publication venues. Any solution must consider the entirety of the research infrastructure for scholarly communication and the interplay of different actors, interests, and incentives.

We searched and scraped Google Scholar using the Python library Scholarly (Cholewiak et al., 2023) for papers that included specific phrases known to be common responses from ChatGPT and similar applications with the same underlying model (GPT3.5 or GPT4): “as of my last knowledge update” and/or “I don’t have access to real-time data” (see Appendix A). This facilitated the identification of papers that likely used generative AI to produce text, resulting in 227 retrieved papers. The papers’ bibliographic information was automatically added to a spreadsheet and downloaded into Zotero. 6 An open-source reference manager, https://zotero.org .

We employed multiple coding (Barbour, 2001) to classify the papers based on their content. First, we jointly assessed whether the paper was suspected of fraudulent use of ChatGPT (or similar) based on how the text was integrated into the papers and whether the paper was presented as original research output or the AI tool’s role was acknowledged. Second, in analyzing the content of the papers, we continued the multiple coding by classifying the fraudulent papers into four categories identified during an initial round of analysis—health, environment, computing, and others—and then determining which subjects were most affected by this issue (see Table 1). Out of the 227 retrieved papers, 88 papers were written with legitimate and/or declared use of GPTs (i.e., false positives, which were excluded from further analysis), and 139 papers were written with undeclared and/or fraudulent use (i.e., true positives, which were included in further analysis). The multiple coding was conducted jointly by all authors of the present article, who collaboratively coded and cross-checked each other’s interpretation of the data simultaneously in a shared spreadsheet file. This was done to single out coding discrepancies and settle coding disagreements, which in turn ensured methodological thoroughness and analytical consensus (see Barbour, 2001). Redoing the category coding later based on our established coding schedule, we achieved an intercoder reliability (Cohen’s kappa) of 0.806 after eradicating obvious differences.

The ranking algorithm of Google Scholar prioritizes highly cited and older publications (Martín-Martín et al., 2016). Therefore, the position of the articles on the search engine results pages was not particularly informative, considering the relatively small number of results in combination with the recency of the publications. Only the query “as of my last knowledge update” had more than two search engine result pages. On those, questionable articles with undeclared use of GPTs were evenly distributed across all result pages (min: 4, max: 9, mode: 8), with the proportion of undeclared use being slightly higher on average on later search result pages.

To understand how the papers making fraudulent use of generative AI were disseminated online, we programmatically searched for the paper titles (with exact string matching) in Google Search from our local IP address (see Appendix B) using the googlesearch – python library(Vikramaditya, 2020). We manually verified each search result to filter out false positives—results that were not related to the paper—and then compiled the most prominent URLs by field. This enabled the identification of other platforms through which the papers had been spread. We did not, however, investigate whether copies had spread into SciHub or other shadow libraries, or if they were referenced in Wikipedia.

We used descriptive statistics to count the prevalence of the number of GPT-fabricated papers across topics and venues and top domains by subject. The pandas software library for the Python programming language (The pandas development team, 2024) was used for this part of the analysis. Based on the multiple coding, paper occurrences were counted in relation to their categories, divided into indexed journals, non-indexed journals, student papers, and working papers. The schemes, subdomains, and subdirectories of the URL strings were filtered out while top-level domains and second-level domains were kept, which led to normalizing domain names. This, in turn, allowed the counting of domain frequencies in the environment and health categories. To distinguish word prominences and meanings in the environment and health-related GPT-fabricated questionable papers, a semantically-aware word cloud visualization was produced through the use of a word rain (Centre for Digital Humanities Uppsala, 2023) for full-text versions of the papers. Font size and y-axis positions indicate word prominences through TF-IDF scores for the environment and health papers (also visualized in a separate bar chart with raw term frequencies in parentheses), and words are positioned along the x-axis to reflect semantic similarity (Skeppstedt et al., 2024), with an English Word2vec skip gram model space (Fares et al., 2017). An English stop word list was used, along with a manually produced list including terms such as “https,” “volume,” or “years.”

• Artificial Intelligence
• / Search engines

Cite this Essay

Haider, J., Söderström, K. R., Ekström, B., & Rödl, M. (2024). GPT-fabricated scientific papers on Google Scholar: Key features, spread, and implications for preempting evidence manipulation. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review . https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-156

• / Appendix B

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This research has been supported by Mistra, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research, through the research program Mistra Environmental Communication (Haider, Ekström, Rödl) and the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation [2020.0004] (Söderström).

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

The research described in this article was carried out under Swedish legislation. According to the relevant EU and Swedish legislation (2003:460) on the ethical review of research involving humans (“Ethical Review Act”), the research reported on here is not subject to authorization by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (“etikprövningsmyndigheten”) (SRC, 2017).

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original author and source are properly credited.

Data Availability

All data needed to replicate this study are available at the Harvard Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/WUVD8X

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the article manuscript as well as the editorial group of Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review for their thoughtful feedback and input.