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Research Therapy: Citing Your Sources

Posted in Reference, and Services

The sixth installment of Research Therapy gives you a brief overview of why you need to cite, when you should cite and how you should cite.

Do you have a research paper or project coming up and your instructor wants a specific number of sources? Knowing when and how to cite your sources can be a little confusing. The most important thing that you need to know is that you need to cite anything you use that doesn’t originate from you. Not only should you do this when you’re writing a paper or working on a research project, but also when creating a presentation or a website. You should cite tweets, blog posts, images, podcasts, and YouTube videos, basically anything you use that you did not create yourself.

explanation of citation

Citation Styles

Different academic disciplines have different citation styles, it’s important that you know what style your instructor wants you to use. Here’s some examples of the different styles

Citation Styles
Resource Academic Discipline
MLA: Modern Language Association arts & humanities
APA: American Psychological Association social sciences and education
Chicago & Turabian both are used mostly in history
AMA: American Medical Association health sciences
CSE: Council of Science Editors biological and hard sciences
ACS: American Chemical Society chemistry

Citing Special Resources?

Here’s a list of resources and guides for citing less common sources.

  • Government Documents
  • Business Resources : a comprehensive guide from Harvard Business School on citing various types of sources, including reports, interviews, and legal cases (just to name a few).
  • This guide from Boise State gives examples of citing images, Twitter, Facebook, blog posts, maps, and videos.

Need More Help?
For additional help on creating citations using various styles check out Oviatt Library’s Citing Your Sources guide. For a quick how-to on creating an annotated bibliography, check out session three of the Research Therapy video series.
Still confused, about plagiarism? Check out this online tutorial created by UCLA students.

-Laurie Borchard

laurie.borchard@csun.edu

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