Citation

Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source (not always the original source). More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression (e.g. [Newell84]) embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of acknowledging the relevance of the works of others to the topic of discussion at the spot where the citation appears. Generally the combination of both the in-body citation and the bibliographic entry constitutes what is commonly thought of as a citation (whereas bibliographic entries by themselves are not).

A prime purpose of a citation is intellectual honesty: to attribute prior or unoriginal work and ideas to the correct sources, and to allow the reader to determine independently whether the referenced material supports the author's argument in the claimed way.

The forms of citations generally subscribe to one of the generally accepted citations systems, such as the Oxford,[1] Harvard, MLA, American Sociological Association (ASA), American Psychological Association (APA), and other citations systems, as their syntactic conventions are widely known and easily interpreted by readers. Each of these citation systems has its respective advantages and disadvantages relative to the trade-offs of being informative (but not too disruptive) and thus are chosen relative to the needs of the type of publication being crafted. Editors will often specify the citation system to use.

Bibliographies, and other list-like compilations of references, are generally not considered citations because they do not fulfil the true spirit of the term: deliberate acknowledgement by other authors of the priority of one's ideas.

Contents

Concepts

Citation content

Citation content can vary depending on the type of source and may include:

Unique identifiers

Along with information such as author(s), date of publication, title and page numbers, citations may also include unique identifiers depending on the type of work being referred to.

Citation systems

Broadly speaking, there are two citation systems:[6][7][8]

Note systems

Note systems involve the use of sequential numbers in the text which refer to either footnotes (notes at the end of the page) or endnotes (a note on a separate page at the end of the paper) which gives the source detail. The notes system may or may not require a full bibliography, depending on whether the writer has used a full note form or a shortened note form.

For example, an excerpt from the text of a paper using a notes system without a full bibliography could look like this:

"The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance."1

The note, located either at the foot of the page (footnote) or at the end of the paper (endnote) would look like this:

1. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York: Macmillan, 1969) 45–60.

In a paper which contains a full bibliography, the shortened note could look like this:

1. Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying 45–60.

and the bibliography entry, which would be required with a shortened note, would look like this:

Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. New York: Macmillan, 1969.

In the humanities, many authors use footnotes or endnotes to supply anecdotal information. In this way, what looks like a citation is actually supplementary material, or suggestions for further reading.[9]

Parenthetical referencing

Parenthetical referencing also known as Harvard referencing where full or partial, in-text citations are enclosed within parentheses and embedded in the paragraph, as opposed to the footnote style.

An example of a parenthetical reference would be:

(Smith 2010, p. 1)

Depending on the choice of style, fully cited parenthetical references may require no end section. Alternately a list of the citations with complete bibliographical references may be included in an end section sorted alphabetically by author's last name.

This section may be known as:

Citation styles

Citation styles can be broadly divided into styles common to the Humanities and the Sciences, though there is considerable overlap. Some style guides, such as the Chicago Manual of Style, are quite flexible and cover both parenthetical and note citation systems.[8] Others, such as MLA and APA styles, specify formats within the context of a single citation system.[7] These may be referred to as citation formats as well as citation styles.[10][11][12] The various guides thus specify order of appearance, for example, of publication date, title, and page numbers following the author name, in addition to conventions of punctuation, use of italics, emphasis, parenthesis, quotation marks, etc., particular to their style.

A number of organizations have created styles to fit their needs; consequently, a number of different guides exist. Individual publishers often have their own in-house variations as well, and some works are so long-established as to have their own citation methods too: Stephanus pagination for Plato; Bekker numbers for Aristotle; citing the Bible by book, chapter and verse; or Shakespeare notation by play, act and scene.

Some examples of style guides include:

Humanities

In some areas of the Humanities, footnotes are used exclusively for references, and their use for conventional footnotes (explanations or examples) is avoided. In these areas, the term "footnote" is actually used as a synonym for "reference", and care must be taken by editors and typesetters to ensure that they understand how the term is being used by their authors.

Law

Sciences, mathematics, engineering, physiology, and medicine

Social sciences

Citation marks

In the case of direct citations, the boundaries of a citation are apparent from the quotation marks. However, the boundaries of indirect citations are usually unknown. In order to clarify these boundaries, citation marks (˻…˼) can be used. Example:

This is sentence 1. ˻This is sentence 2. This is sentence 3.˼ (Smith et al., 2012)

Here, it becomes apparent from the citation marks that the citation refers to both sentence 2 and 3, but not to sentence 1.

Issues

In their research on footnotes in scholarly journals in the field of communication, Michael Bugeja and Daniela V. Dimitrova have found that citations to online sources have a rate of decay (as cited pages are taken down), which they call a "half-life," that renders footnotes in those journals less useful for scholarship over time.[24]

Another important issue is citation errors, which often occur due to carelessness on either the researcher or journal editor's part in the publication procedure. Experts have found that simple precautions, such as consulting the author of a cited source about proper citations, reduce the likelihood of citation errors and thus increases the quality of research.[25]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ "Oxford Referencing System". http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/refbib.html. Retrieved 18 January 2011. 
  2. ^ "Library glossary". Benedictine University. August 22, 2008. Archived from the original on April 30, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080430220849/http://www.ben.edu/library/help/glossary.htm. Retrieved 2009-02-27. 
  3. ^ Long Island University.
  4. ^ Duke University Libraries 2007.
  5. ^ a b Brigham Young University 2008.
  6. ^ University of Maryland, College Park 2006.
  7. ^ a b Yale University 2008.
  8. ^ a b Colorado State University 2008.
  9. ^ "How to Write Research Papers with Citations - MLA, APA, Footnotes, Endnotes". http://www.studenthandouts.com/citations.htm. Retrieved 2010-01-31. 
  10. ^ California State University 2007.
  11. ^ Lesley University 2007.
  12. ^ Rochester Institute of Technology 2003.
  13. ^ Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Evidence Explained : Citing History Sources from Artifacts to cyberspace. 2d ed. Baltimore:Genealogical Pub. Co., 2009. Two supplemental guides provide more-specialized coverage of online sources. (1) QuickSheet: Citing Online Historical Resources, Evidence! Style. Baltimore: GPC, 2005. (2) QuickSheet: Citing Ancestry.com Databases & Images, Evidence Style. 2d ed. Baltimore: GPC, 2009.
  14. ^ The field of Communication (or Communications) overlaps with some of the disciplines also covered by the MLA and has its own disciplinary style recommendations for documentation format; the style guide recommended for use in student papers in such departments in American colleges and universities is often The Publication Manual of the APA (American Psychological Association); designated for short as "APA style".
  15. ^ The 2nd edition (updated April 2008) of the MHRA Style Guide is downloadable for free from the Modern Humanities Research Association official Website.
  16. ^ Martin 2007.
  17. ^ Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (Cite Guide). McGill Law Journal. Updated October 2008. Retrieved on 2009-02-05.
  18. ^ Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals.
  19. ^ International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. "ICMJE Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals -- Sample References".
  20. ^ IEEE Style Manual. Accessed 2011-08-08.
  21. ^ Pechenik Citation Style QuickGuide (PDF). University of Alberta, Augustana Campus, Canada. Web. November 2007.
  22. ^ Garfield, Eugene (2006). "Citation indexes for science. A new dimension in documentation through association of ideas". International Journal of Epidemiology 35 (5): 1123–1127. doi:10.1093/ije/dyl189. PMID 16987841. 
  23. ^ Stephen Yoder, ed. (2008). The APSA Guide to Writing and Publishing and Style Manual for Political Science. Rev. ed. August 2006. APSAnet.org Publications. Retrieved on 2009-02-05.
  24. ^ Bugeja, Michael and Daniela V. Dimitrova. Vanishing Act: The Erosion of Online Footnotes and Implications for Scholarship in the Digital Age. Duluth, Minnesota: Litwin Books (2010)
  25. ^ Malcolm Wright and J. Scott Armstrong (2008). "The Ombudsman: Verification of Citations: Fawlty Towers of Knowledge?". Interfaces (INFORMS) 38 (2): 125–139. doi:10.1287/inte.1070.0317. http://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/documents/research/Citations-Interfaces.pdf. 

References

External links

Guidelines
Examples
Style guides
Other online resources