Citing seems so picky and time consuming to me. I think it is a waste of my time. Why do I need to cite?

• It is required, and it helps you avoid plagiarism!

  You must always give credit for information you obtain from another person or source. Courses at UMUC will require you to cite sources, and correct style will be expected. Citing correctly can protect you against charges of plagiarism.

• It ensures complete information is included

The structured format of a citation may seem unnecessarily limiting, but it ensures that you include all the information a reader needs in order to find the source to which you refer.  If you have ever had to trace a publication with inadequate or inaccurate information, you will know how important it is to use a structured format for references.

• It's the right thing to do!  

Like correct grammar or proper spelling, good citation style demonstrates your attention to detail, consideration for your reader, and good organizational skills. It makes a favorable impression, and may even influence your faculty member to look more favorably on your work as a whole.

• It keeps you focused!

Thinking about citing can make you aware of factors that will help you judge a paper. For instance, you need to include the date of publication in a citation. Being forced to look for the date for citing purposes is useful because currency is usually an important factor in evaluating information. If you decide initially that the date is too old, you will not have to spend time reading the paper. Similarly, a reputable author or publisher or a scholarly journal are additional clues that indicate a source is worth including in your paper. You will be noticing and accumulating all of this data while preparing to cite the resource.

• What styles are available?

There are several different styles for citing resources in a research paper. Some of the most common include American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA), Turabian, and Chicago. See the VAIL citation tutorial overview for more information on these styles and a more complete list of other possible styles.

In general, APA is most used in the sciences and social sciences such as psychology, business and management, while MLA is more frequently employed in the humanities. In addition to the more common styles, you may also encounter styles specific to a discipline. For example, medical professionals may use the American Medical Association Manual of Style.

• Which style is best?

Is one style necessarily better than the others? Not really. Indeed, some relatively expensive commercial software products (ProCite, EndNote) allow you to convert from one style to another with a few keystrokes. We'll be talking more about these software products in Module 4. 

The important point is that, once you or your faculty member chooses a style, you need to consistently use that style. Just as you can't start measuring in inches and then switch to centimeters midway through a project without producing a strange construction, changing citation styles may produce a hybrid that is missing information and hard to understand. Is "Joining" the name of the article or the journal? Is "93" the volume number or the year of publication? With a consistent citation style, you make that information clear.

•  Does this tutorial focus on a particular style?

This tutorial will use American Psychological Association (APA) style, although VAIL provides a list of examples in both APA and MLA styles is available for your use. APA is the style required by UMUC's Graduate School and is widely used in the School of Undergraduate Studies. Examples of APA style formatting, including electronic and print resources, are provided at the end of this tutorial. 

• Do I need to buy a style manual?

If you don't already have a print copy of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition, you should consider purchasing one because you will be referring to it throughout your studies at UMUC.  Each resource you cite is different, and you may well need to refer to the print manual to find an example similar to the format you need. Print copies of the manual can also be found in most academic and many public libraries. Unfortunately, a full edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition, is not available in electronic form. 

Please be aware that, because of the increased use of electronic resources in research, there are considerable differences between the 4th and 5th editions of the APA Manual. Therefore, it would not be helpful for you to purchase or use an older edition.

This can be a complicated issue. For instance, many students incorrectly believe that, if a work is available on the free Web or if they cannot identify the author of a work, they do not need to cite it. Other students think that they can weave together information from several different sources, sometimes using phrases from those sources, and that they do not need to cite that information. In both cases, these students are incorrect. Using another person's material under any circumstances without citing it is plagiarism. For more information on plagiarism, see the Online Guide to Writing and Research Chapter 5: Academic Integrity and Documentation. When in doubt, you can seldom go wrong by citing the source.

In general, you must cite any information from another source except for information that can be considered "common knowledge." In your papers, you should provide citations for the following:

• opinions, theories, statements, beliefs, or ideas from any source 
  
  
• any information (facts, statistics, etc.) that is not common knowledge 
  
  
• direct quotations of written or spoken words from another source, even if you use just phrases or partial statements 
  
  
• paraphrases or summaries of written or spoken words from another source, even if you use just phrases or partial statements. What is the difference between a paraphrase and a summary? According to UMUC's Online Guide to Writing and Research, in a paraphrase you repeat "what someone else has said in your own words." Your statement is usually either the same length or longer than the original. In contrast, in a summary, you incorporate the ideas you have read but condense the information so that it is briefer than the original. 
  

Whitesel, C., Raymundo, M., Kirby, P., Newbern, R.,  & McDonald, R.

(2002). Glossary.  Online guide to writing and research.

Retrieved January 2, 2003, from University of Maryland

University College Web site: http://www.umuc.edu/prog/ugp/

ewp_writingcenter/writinggde/glossary/glossary-01.shtml

You will find the correct answers at the end of the exercise.

With as many examples as the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association provides, it doesn't begin to cover all situations. How do you handle the citation if the closest citation example you've found in the Manual has only two authors and your article has four?  The answer is that citing is really more of an art than a science. You have to begin with the standard citations the Manual provides, find the similarities with your source, and then use these standard citations and the rules in the Manual to create a citation that you feel is most applicable to your resource. See below to view an example of how to formulate the citation.

Example: You retrieve a transcript of a television show from a Web site and note the following:

But there is no example for an online transcript of a television show. How then will you format the citation? When you study the above citation, you see some similarities with your reference. You decide you will need:

• the producer's name
• the producer's title
• the date of the broadcast
• the program title
• the type of audiovisual media
• the production location

What additional information will you need? Since you located the transcript online, you look in the Manual for the correct way to format electronic resources and find the following:

Thus, for the electronic resource part, you decide you need

• the date you accessed the transcript
• a URL or subscription database title

In addition, since this is only a transcript and not an actual show you watched, you decide you need to indicate that your document is a transcript.

Finally, you come up with the correct citation:

Ellison, R. (Executive Producer). (1983, November 4). The American

experience. Vietnam: A television history: The Tet

offensive (Television Broadcast Transcript). Boston: WGBH.

Retrieved October 30, 2002, from

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/107ts.html

It is important to think about citing when you are doing research. For example, a photocopy of an article may not include all the information you will need in order to cite it.  Make certain that you have the full list of authors, title of article, name of the journal, volume, issue and pages. It will be much more difficult to obtain this information afterwards. 

Citing Web sites requires you to be even more careful at the time you gather information since the Web site may change. Citation information may be challenging to obtain; for example, you may need to follow the URL to the site's homepage to determine the author of the site. Be careful, because a site may be linked by an organization not associated with it. In addition, be sure to note the date that you accessed the Web site (or any electronic resource) because you will need that information for the citation.

For example, assume you are doing a paper for an education class on children who have trouble in school because they cannot process what the teacher says to them. You find a useful online site that would be perfect for your paper. Think ahead and make certain that the page contains all the information you will need to write your citation.. On the following screen,  I've circled some information you need.

But what is NIDCD and where is the date and publication number? To find out more, you would scroll down and see the following information at the bottom of the Web page.

You see that NIDCD are the initials of the government agency (author): National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. You also note that  the publication has a publication number and date.

Now you have all the information you need to create the citation below. 

Citation:

National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Deafness and Other

Communication Disorders. (2001, March). Auditory

processing disorder in children: What does it mean? (NIH

Pub. No. 01-4949). Retrieved October 25, 2002, from

http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/pubs_vsl/auditory.html

If the full name of NIDCD had not been available on this page, you might have needed to click on the home button or search the source of the URL (www.nidcd.nih.gov) for additional information.

Within the text you need to identify the sources briefly so that readers can tie them to more complete information in the reference list at the end of the article. In APA style you provide the last name of the author, the year of publication and the page number if available in the text.

When citing electronic sources, you probably will not know on what page the quote was found because you cannot see the original pagination (unless the pages are PDF reproductions of the original article in print). If the paragraphs are numbered in an electronic document, use the symbol ¶ or the abbreviation para.

Example: (Smith, 1997, para. 12) or (Smith, 1997, ¶ 12)

You need to give in-text citations for any material you get from another source, whether you quote it directly, summarize it, or paraphrase it. There are different rules for formulating the citation depending on how many authors there are and how you introduce or insert the material into your text.

In your text you can cite the author and date before you introduce the quote, summary, or paraphrase or write that information in parentheses after an introductory word, such as study or research. The page number (if available) comes after the cited material.

Use the following table to find details on how to cite in particular situations.

You will find the correct answers at the end of the exercise.

The reference list is the bibliography at the end of your paper where you tell the reader how to find the sources to which you referred in the paper. The sources on the reference list must match the sources in your in-text citations.

Together we'll go through creating a citation using four examples. We've focused mainly on electronic resources, and we've selected examples from formats that we think you will encounter most often in your research at UMUC: 

1. an article you found in one of the library's more than 100 databases.

2. an article received electronically through DocumentExpress or that you photocopied from a print library collection.

3. a chapter from a book. This selection is from an e-book but an example for a print book would be the same except that the last part of the citation, indicating when and where the e-book was retrieved, would be omitted.

4. a Web site located on the free Web. 

Obviously each of these categories has many permutations, and there are other types of material you may need to cite as well. For example, you may use information from government documents, proceedings, videos, etc. Consult the VAIL Citation Examples: APA and MLA Styles or Citing Electronic Resources - APA and MLA styles  for information on how to cite in these less common situations. If you don't find what you need there, additional examples are available in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition. 

Some General Tips to Keep in Mind

 When using APA style, remember to:  

• type the first line of the citation at the left margin; all other lines should be indented five spaces (use a hanging indent).
• double-space the entire reference list. Alternately, you can single space the references and double space between references.
• italicize the title of a book or a journal, regardless of whether it is in print or available electronically. 
• alphabetize entries letter by letter in your reference list at the end of your paper. 
• use the author's first initial, never the entire first name. 
• think of an electronic source as having two parts. Format the first part as though it were a print source and then add the subscription database or Web page information with the date you accessed it.

The first screen shows a citation found in Business Source Premier on May 3, 2003. The important elements you will need for the citation have been circled. Below that you will find a blank template for a citation and an example of what the citation would look like when it is filled in using the information in the record.

Library Database Record:

Model template:

Authors. (date). Title of article. Title of journal, volume(issue), pages.

Retrieved date, from database name database.

Citation filled in:

Barker, R. (2003). Can Netflix keep spinning gold? Business

Week, (3829), 112. Retrieved May 3, 2003, from Business

Source Premier database.

This is an example of the first page of an article that might have been sent to you electronically in PDF format after you requested it through DocumentExpress. However, the principles for citing would be similar if you had photocopied the article yourself. Therefore, you will cite it as a print source and not as an electronic source.

Not all articles supply this much information about the journal, volume and pages in the header. Information and Library Services sends you a copy of your request as well as the article so you will have access to complete information for citing. If you are copying an article yourself, make certain that you have all the information you will need to cite the article. The elements you will need for the citation have been circled.

Model template:

Kemp, W. C. (2002). Persistence of adult learners in distance education.

American Journal of  Distance Education, 16(2), 65-81.

This example was taken from an e-book available in NetLibrary and retrieved on Sept. 25, 2002. The first screen shows the information retrieved when you key in the title of the book. The second screen shows what you would see when you select the chapter you wish to view. You can't see the pages of the chapter on the screen excerpts provided below but they are 37- 60. As mentioned earlier if this were a print book instead of an e-book, you would cite it the same way but omit the last part of the reference which indicates when and where the material was retrieved.

Using an APA style citation example as a template, you would fill in the information as shown below.

Model template:

publication: Publisher.  Retrieved date, from database name

database.

Template filled in:

Kotter, J. P. (1998). What leaders really do. In Harvard 

Business Review on leadership (pp. 37-60). Boston: Harvard 

Business School Press. Retrieved September 25, 2002, 

from NetLibrary database. 

Not all Web sites provide as much information as this one which was accessed on October 29, 2002. Don't panic! In composing your citation, you are only expected to include as much of the required information as you can find. Please note that on this example you see only the author, title and URL.

To find out more, you would click on the Contents button on the screen to find information on the online journal which contains this article. You would see the following screen.

To create a citation, you would need to put together information from both screens. 

Model template:

Author or Creator of Page. (date of page). Title of article, chapter, or page.

Title of journal or newspaper or book, if available.

Retrieved date, from URL

Template filled in:

Leary, W.M. (1999-2000, Winter). Supporting the "secret war": CIA air

operations in Laos, 1955-1974.  Studies in Intelligence.

Retrieved October 29, 2002, from    

http://www.odci.gov/csi/studies/winter99-00/art7.html

You will find the correct answers at the end of the exercise.

Are there any software programs that could help me?

Citing can be time consuming. As mentioned in Module 1, there are commercial programs that can format your citations. Some, like ProCite and EndNote, cost hundreds of dollars and allow you to convert from one citation style to another. They can be useful if you submit articles to multiple publications.

For many students, a relatively inexpensive software program specializing in one style is adequate to meet most needs. Information and Library Services (ILS) has created a list of some software programs in which you may be interested. They can be very helpful in determining the order of elements and assisting you with the placing of punctuation. However, just like the grammar and spelling checkers in word processing software, you cannot rely on them too heavily. Even using software, you will  need to be able to identify the parts of a citation (author, title, publisher, etc.). If you do not put the data into the software template correctly, the resulting citation will be inaccurate. In addition, you need to be familiar with APA rules in order to evaluate the software's formatting and ensure its accuracy and applicability for your citations. 

We hope that this tutorial will help you to cite correctly either with or without the use of software programs. For more  information, consider the following resources.

• American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication manual (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

• Citing Electronic Resources - APA and MLA styles  (http://www.umuc.edu/library/guides/cite.html)

• Vail citation tutorial, Citation, Citation, Citation! (http://www.umuc.edu/distance/odell/cip/vail/students/citation/intro.html)

  •   Citation Examples, APA and MLA Style (http://www.umuc.edu/distance/odell/cip/vail/students/citation/examples.html)
  
  

• UMUC's Online Writing Center's Online Guide to Writing and Research, Chapter 5, Academic Integrity and Documentation (http://www.umuc.edu/prog/ugp/ewp_writingcenter/writinggde/chapter5/chapter5-02.shtml)

If you have additional questions, please contact the Information and Library Services staff for assistance.