Armacost Library: BIOL 107: Concepts of Biology (Glendening): Cite Your Sources

Why Cite?

To Connect Ideas | To Acknowledge a Community of Contributors | To Read & Cite Inclusively

What Citations Reveal & How They Impact Us

"When you cite a source, you show how your voice enters into an intellectual conversation and you demonstrate your link to the community within which you work. Working with sources can inspire your own ideas and enrich them, and your citation of these sources is the visible trace of that debt." (Yale College Writing Center)

When you cite a source you also reveal whose voices and thoughts are included in these intellectual conversations. Thus, who you read and what you cite can help strengthen diversity and equity in scholarship.

We are a collective of Black women of first-generation, queer, working class and poor, immigrant, and disabled experience and we formed out of the necessity to cite, (re)claim, and honor Black women's work. #CiteBlackWomen
— Cite Black Women. (@citeblackwomen) September 9, 2020

Why Cite?*

To Become a More Mature Thinker | To Recreate a Sense of Lively Debate | To Give Credit Where It's Due | To Lead Us to Further Research

When you cite a source, you show how your voice enters into an intellectual conversation and you demonstrate your link to the community within which you work. Working with sources can inspire your own ideas and enrich them, and your citation of these sources is the visible trace of that debt.

*An excerpt from the Yale College Writing Center's Using Sources

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association by American Psychological Association
Call Number: BF76.7 .P83 2020
ISBN: 9781433832161
Publication Date: 2019-10-01
The official source for APA Style.
Online Resources:
Fairfield University APA Guide

APA Style Guide to Electronic References

Additional Online Citation Guides

When citing maps and other less-traditional sources, start with the citation style (e.g., APA, MLA) recommended by your professor, then build or modify as necessary. As the researcher, you'll have to decide how you'll cite your resources and which citation elements you'll need to include. Providers of information sometimes specify how they want their sources cited; check to see if such instructions are available.

Citing Audio from the University of Cincinnati
Citing Data and Statistics from Michigan State
Citing Images from the University of Cincinnati Examples of how to cite images in MLA and APA style, from University of Cincinatti Libraries.
How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications This guide will help you create links between your academic publications and the underlying datasets, so that anyone viewing the publication will be able to locate the dataset and vice versa. It provides a working knowledge of the issues and challenges involved, and of how current approaches seek to address them.
Trans citation practices -- A quick-and-dirty guideline
While not a formal guide, the author helps researchers practice their good intentions. Main takeaways: style guide rules may cause harm, follow the author's lead, and don't out people by deadnaming.

APA Style

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association by American Psychological Association
Call Number: BF76.7 .P83 2020
ISBN: 9781433832161
Publication Date: 2019-10-01
The official source for APA style.
Online Resources:
Fairfield University APA Guide

APA Style Guide to Electronic References

Citation Helpers

Citation Generators can be great time-savers, but their accuracy is only as good as the information you enter and they will still make mistakes. For best results, identify the type of source you are citing, accept that most generators only cite commonly used sources, and double-check every generated citation.

Zotero can help you manage your citations. View these guides from the Armacost Library (video-based), GTU, and information on which is particularly useful to researchers managing 100s of sources.
KnightCite helps auto-generate citations. Be sure to double-check these.

Writing Tutoring

If you need more help with citations, including how to incorporate them into your writing, you can work with a writing tutor who can review your work with you. Writing tutors can offer friendly, constructive assistance at any step of the writing process. Tutoring is 100% free for students.