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Citing Sources

College Policy on Citing Sources & Plagiarism

It is necessary for you to give proper credit to all of the resources you use in your research papers. Plagiarism is a violation of Dickinson's Student Code of Conduct, and is a specific form of cheating defined in the code as follows:

1) To plagiarize is to use without proper citation or acknowledgment the words, ideas, or work of another. Whenever one relies on someone else for phraseology, even for only two or three words, one must acknowledge indebtedness by using quotation marks and giving the source, either in the text or in a footnote.

2) When one includes information that is not a matter of general knowledge, including all statistics and translations, one must indicate one's indebtedness in the text or footnote. When one borrows an idea or the logic of an argument, one must acknowledge indebtedness either in a footnote or in the text. When in doubt, footnote. (Academic Standards Committee, November, 1965) You should include appropriate citations in all of your research. Your professor will direct you as to what specific citation style they may prefer.

How to Cite

In addition to the examples below, see the new online-only style guide:

In chemistry, the references are used in a paper may be presented in a number of formats, so always ask what your professor requires. ACS Style is used by the American Chemical Society:

Journal article citation elements for ACS Style :

Author one surname, first and middle initials; author 2 name, initials. Standard Abbreviation for Journal Title in Italics . Year in bold , Volume number in italics , first page-last page.

• List all authors using last names and initials.
• Do NOT make up or guess journal abbreviations! You can look them up using the CAS Source Index (CASSI) Search Tool .

For example:

1) online journal article (the S after the page numbers is because this specific article was in a supplement to the main journal)

2) print journal article

When a quotation or idea needs to be cited within the text of the paper, an italicized number corresponding to the appropriate source in the enumerated list is included within the sentence, in parentheses and italicized, immediately following the phrase that requires credit, like so: "...quotation from article" (2) .

Book citation elements for  ACS Style :

Author (or editor), book title, date of publication, publisher, and place of publication. 

1) Book with two authors

Beall, H.; Trimbur, J. A Short Guide to Writing about Chemistry , 2nd ed.; Longman: New York, 2001. 

2) Chapter in an edited book (italicize the title of the edited volume, not the chapter title, and include page numbers for the chapter being cited)

McBrien, M. Selecting the Correct pH Value for HPLC. In HPLC Made to Measure: A Practical Handbook for Optimization ; Kromidas, S., Ed.; Wiley-VCH: Weinheim, Germany, 2006; pp 89-103.

Website  citation elements for  ACS Style :

Author (if known), title of the website, URL, date of access. 

1) Website with no listed author:

Penn State Department of Chemistry. http://www.chem.psu.edu/ (accessed June 7, 2010).

2) Website with author:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. http://www.epa.gov (accessed Nov 15, 2004). 

The University of Wisconsin - Madison Chemistry Library has a nice online guide to citing in ACS Style with many more examples.

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Module 5: Writing the Research Paper and Acknowledging Your Sources

Introduction to writing the research paper and acknowledging your sources.

When you write a research paper, the success of your work can depend almost as heavily on the work of others as it does on your own efforts. Your information sources not only provide essential facts and insights that can enhance and clarify your original ideas, source material can help you better understand your own theories and opinions and help you to arrive at more authoritative, clearly drawn conclusions.

Because of the debt that you, as the author of a research paper, owe to your sources, it is essential that you understand how to present, acknowledge, and document the sources that you have built into your work. You should be aware that using accepted standards of style and citation can benefit you as a writer as well. When your references are clearly annotated within your work, you can see where your source material appears, making it that much easier to edit, update, and expand your work.

By following accepted standards to present your work in a manner that is accessible to readers, you also enhance your credibility as a writer and researcher. When your readers can easily identify and check your sources, they are more likely to accept you as a member of their discourse communities. This is especially important in an academic environment, where your readers are likely to investigate your work as a potential source for their own research projects. To put it bluntly, careful adherence to accepted style conventions in academic writing can mean the difference between great success and total failure.

In this unit, we will review the concept of plagiarism and discuss how you can use clear, consistent documentation to avoid even the unintentional misuse of source material. We will also review many of the commonly accepted methods of acknowledging and documenting sources used in writing college research papers. We will pay particular attention to the Modern Language Association (MLA) style standards, because this is the most widely used convention in college undergraduate work.

This unit will culminate in an opportunity to build your selected source material into a fully developed first draft of your final research paper. By the time you have finished the final activity in this unit, you should have accomplished much of the groundwork for your final research paper.

By the time you have finished the work in this unit, you should have a command of the materials and techniques you will need to complete a well-developed academic paper. As a by-product, your final research paper for this course will probably be nearly finished.

The final activity in this unit is to develop a final polished and clearly documented research paper that makes full use of the tools, techniques, and products that you have discovered, developed, and organized during the preceding four units.

• ENGL002: English Composition II. Provided by : Saylor Academy. Located at : http://www.saylor.org/courses/engl002/ . License : CC BY: Attribution

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7-Ethical Use of Sources

2. Why Cite Sources?

As a student citing is important because it shows your reader (or professor) that you have invested time in learning what has already been learned and thought about the topic before offering your own perspective. It is the practice of giving credit to the sources that inform your work.

Our definitions of academic integrity, academic misconduct and plagiarism, also give us important reasons for citing the sources we use to accomplish academic research. Here are all the good reasons for citing.

To Avoid Plagiarism & Maintain Academic Integrity

Misrepresenting your academic achievements by not giving credit to others indicates a lack of academic integrity. This is not only looked down upon by the scholarly community, but it is also punished. When you are a student this could mean a failing grade or even expulsion from the university.

To Acknowledge the Work of Others

One major purpose of citations is to simply provide credit where it is due. When you provide accurate citations, you are acknowledging both the hard work that has gone into producing research and the person(s) who performed that research.

Think about the effort you put into your work (whether essays, reports, or even non-academic jobs): if someone else took credit for your ideas or words, would that seem fair, or would you expect to have your efforts recognized?

To Provide Credibility to Your Work & to Place Your Work in Context

Providing accurate citations puts your work and ideas into an academic context. They tell your reader that you’ve done your research and know what others have said about your topic. Not only do citations provide context for your work but they also lend credibility and authority to your claims.

For example, if you’re researching and writing about sustainability and construction, you should cite experts in sustainability, construction, and sustainable construction in order to demonstrate that you are well-versed in the most common ideas in the fields. Although you can make a claim about sustainable construction after doing research only in that particular field, your claim will carry more weight if you can demonstrate that your claim can be supported by the research of experts in closely related fields as well.

Citing sources about sustainability and construction as well as sustainable construction demonstrates the diversity of views and approaches to the topic. In addition, proper citation also demonstrates the ways in which research is social: no one researches in a vacuum—we all rely on the work of others to help us during the research process.

To Help Your Future Researching Self & Other Researchers Easily Locate Sources

Having accurate citations will help you as a researcher and writer keep track of the sources and information you find so that you can easily find the source again. Accurate citations may take some effort to produce, but they will save you time in the long run. So think of proper citation as a gift to your future researching self!

Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research Copyright © 2015 by Teaching & Learning, Ohio State University Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Uncomplicated Reviews of Educational Research Methods

• Writing a Research Report

.pdf version of this page

This review covers the basic elements of a research report. This is a general guide for what you will see in journal articles or dissertations. This format assumes a mixed methods study, but you can leave out either quantitative or qualitative sections if you only used a single methodology.

This review is divided into sections for easy reference. There are five MAJOR parts of a Research Report:

1.    Introduction 2.    Review of Literature 3.    Methods 4.    Results 5.    Discussion

As a general guide, the Introduction, Review of Literature, and Methods should be about 1/3 of your paper, Discussion 1/3, then Results 1/3.

Section 1 : Cover Sheet (APA format cover sheet) optional, if required.

Section 2: Abstract (a basic summary of the report, including sample, treatment, design, results, and implications) (≤ 150 words) optional, if required.

Section 3 : Introduction (1-3 paragraphs) •    Basic introduction •    Supportive statistics (can be from periodicals) •    Statement of Purpose •    Statement of Significance

Section 4 : Research question(s) or hypotheses •    An overall research question (optional) •    A quantitative-based (hypotheses) •    A qualitative-based (research questions) Note: You will generally have more than one, especially if using hypotheses.

Section 5: Review of Literature ▪    Should be organized by subheadings ▪    Should adequately support your study using supporting, related, and/or refuting evidence ▪    Is a synthesis, not a collection of individual summaries

Section 6: Methods ▪    Procedure: Describe data gathering or participant recruitment, including IRB approval ▪    Sample: Describe the sample or dataset, including basic demographics ▪    Setting: Describe the setting, if applicable (generally only in qualitative designs) ▪    Treatment: If applicable, describe, in detail, how you implemented the treatment ▪    Instrument: Describe, in detail, how you implemented the instrument; Describe the reliability and validity associated with the instrument ▪    Data Analysis: Describe type of procedure (t-test, interviews, etc.) and software (if used)

Section 7: Results ▪    Restate Research Question 1 (Quantitative) ▪    Describe results ▪    Restate Research Question 2 (Qualitative) ▪    Describe results

Section 8: Discussion ▪    Restate Overall Research Question ▪    Describe how the results, when taken together, answer the overall question ▪    ***Describe how the results confirm or contrast the literature you reviewed

Section 9: Recommendations (if applicable, generally related to practice)

Section 10: Limitations ▪    Discuss, in several sentences, the limitations of this study. ▪    Research Design (overall, then info about the limitations of each separately) ▪    Sample ▪    Instrument/s ▪    Other limitations

Section 11: Conclusion (A brief closing summary)

Section 12: References (APA format)

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About research rundowns.

Research Rundowns was made possible by support from the Dewar College of Education at Valdosta State University .

• Experimental Design
• What is Educational Research?
• Writing Research Questions
• Mixed Methods Research Designs
• Qualitative Coding & Analysis
• Qualitative Research Design
• Correlation
• Effect Size
• Instrument, Validity, Reliability
• Mean & Standard Deviation
• Significance Testing (t-tests)
• Steps 1-4: Finding Research
• Steps 5-6: Analyzing & Organizing
• Steps 7-9: Citing & Writing

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Writing up a Research Report

• First Online: 04 January 2024

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• Stefan Hunziker 3 &
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A research report is one big argument about how and why you came up with your conclusions. To make it a convincing argument, a typical guiding structure has developed. In the different chapters, there are distinct issues that need to be addressed to explain to the reader why your conclusions are valid. The governing principle for writing the report is full disclosure: to explain everything and ensure replicability by another researcher.

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Hunziker, S., Blankenagel, M. (2024). Writing up a Research Report. In: Research Design in Business and Management. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-42739-9_4

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Plagiarism and Academic Integrity Tutorial

• Introduction to the Tutorial
• CSUSM Academic Integrity Policy
• Common Knowledge
• Other Issues
• The Importance of Avoiding Plagiarism
• Note Taking
• Direct Quotation
• Online Sources
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• Additional Plagiarism & Citation Resources
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What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is using someone else's words or ideas as your own without attribution. Whether or not it's intentional, failure to properly give credit to work that is not yours is considered plagiarism.

Examples of plagiarism:

• Copying and pasting directly from a source without enclosing the text in quotation marks or providing a citation.
• Summarizing or paraphrasing someone else's ideas without proper attribution.
• Re-using assignments used in previous courses.
• Submitting work completed by another person.

According to the  CSUSM Academic Integrity Policy (Section II. D) , plagiarism is defined as:

Representing the words, ideas, or work of another as one's own in any academic exercise. Guidelines :

• Plagiarism includes the act of incorporating the ideas, words, sentences, paragraphs, or parts thereof, or the specific substance of another's work, without providing the appropriate citation.
• Plagiarism includes putting one's name as an author on a group project to which no contribution was made.
• Plagiarism includes representing another's artistic/scholarly works such as musical compositions, computer programs, photographs, paintings, drawings, sculptures, or similar works as one's own.
• Self-plagiarism includes submitting identical or similar versions of one's own work for more than one assignment or more than one class (including a repeated course) without prior approval from the course instructor.

To avoid committing plagiarism follow these recommendations:

• Direct Quotation:  Every direct quote must be identified by quotation marks, or by appropriate indentation or by other means of identification, and must be properly cited with author(s) name(s), year of publication, page number(s), footnotes and/or endnotes, depending on the citation style used. Proper citation style for academic writing is outlined by such manuals as the MLA handbook for writers of research papers, APA: Publication manual of the American Psychological Association, or Chicago manual of style.
• Paraphrase:  Prompt acknowledgment is required when material from another source is paraphrased or summarized in whole or in part in one’s own words. To acknowledge a paraphrase properly, one might state: "to paraphrase Locke's comment..." and conclude with a citation identifying the exact reference. A citation acknowledging only a directly quoted statement does not suffice to notify the reader of any preceding or succeeding paraphrased material.
• Borrowed Facts or Information:  Information obtained in one's reading or research which is not common knowledge among students in the course must be acknowledged. Examples of common knowledge might include the names of leaders of prominent nations, basic scientific laws, etc.
• Material:  which contributes only to the student's general understanding of the subject may be acknowledged in the bibliography and need not be immediately cited. One citation is usually sufficient to acknowledge indebtedness when a number of connected sentences in the paper draw their special information from one source. When direct quotations are used, however, quotation format must be used and prompt acknowledgment is required."
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