how to find citations for a research paper

Evaluating Scholarly Publications for Tenure and Promotion: How to find Citations to an Article

• Introduction
• How to find the SCImago Factor
• How to Find Impact Factors for Journals
• How to Find Eignefactors
• How to find Citations to an Article
• How to find your h-index
• Qualitative Measures
• Creative Activity
• Potential Risks

How do I Find Citations to a Journal Article?

More and more databases are tracking citations now. Check the database that you normally use to find articles for your research. If you have questions about whether a particular database includes citation counts, ask a librarian for help and we can help you determine if your favorite database has what you need.

Below are listed several databases that do include citation counts that you can use as examples. The first, the citation databases (science, social science, and humanities) are all included in the Web of Science and are a good starting point for all fields. Next come Google Scholar and SocIndex.

Web of Science

From the library's website ( http://www.sdstate.edu/library ), click Databases A-Z, and search for "Web of Science."

Select Cited Reference Search, and follow the on-screen tips and examples to complete your search.

Fill out as many fields as you feel necessary to find the article you want to find citations to.

From the list of results, you can see the number of times your article has been cited in the Web of Science, you can look at more information for a particular article, or you can choose several articles from the list.

If you click on View Record, you can see who has cited the article and create an alert that will send you an e-mail every time another citation to your articl is added to Web of Science.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar counts the number of times it finds citations to a particular article; however, there are some reasons to be cautious in using the Google Scholar citations. First, Google Scholar does not evaluate the publications it indexes in any way. Other indexes use some sort of criteria to determine what they index so there is some quality control within the index. Google scholar does have some criteria but they are not quality control type criteria. The number may not be an accurate reflection of the number of individual publications that cite your work either.

For instance, if an article cites your work and the citing article is written by 6 people. After a few months (assuming those 6 authors were researching using federal grants), the article can be put on their individual web pages so each of those 6 people put the article on their web page and the journal makes the article available in some way that Google finds it on the journal web site as well. Google Scholar will count 7 citations to your work even though only 1 article cited it.

With those caveats, Google will pick up citations that other indexes don't so it is a good index to use for citation counts if you are careful.

Go to http://google.scholar.com .

If you have a Google account, you can log into it and Google will make searching for your citations very easy.

Fill out your profile.

Choose the articles you have written from the list that is discoverd for authors with your name. (This is an instance where you should be grateful if your parents gave you an unusual name.)

Once you have chosen yourself as an author and added the articles Google identified as yours, you will be able to follow those articles.

Search Google Scholar for a particular article

You can search Google Scholar for a particular article as well. In the search box type the title of the article (you can use quotation marks around the title to make Google search it as a phrase but this is often unnecessary).

Find the article in the results list and the citations to it will be at the botom of the citation.

(Note that this is the same article as the example in the Web of Science instructions, WOS has 185 citations, Google lists 237. Once you have checked for unique citations, you can list both numbers.)

Articles Indexed in PubMed & NIH-funded Research

Relative Citation Ratio (RCR)  and Field Citation Ratio (FCR)   These metrics compare a given paper to others in the same research area or field. The papers need to be at least two years old.  Dimensions database : Search this app to find RCR and FCR   at https://app.dimensions.ai/discover/publication . 

Examples: Results in Dimensions for two papers

1. A highly-cited paper in a journal with Impact factor of 5.76 

2. A paper with below-average ctiations in a journal with impact factor of 5.36

While the IFs are not very different, the publications' impacts are quite different!

Our thanks to Dr. Sen Subramanian for supplying these links and examples.

• << Previous: How to Find Eignefactors
• Next: How to find your h-index >>
• Last Updated: Sep 1, 2023 3:00 PM
• URL: https://libguides.sdstate.edu/ScholarlyResearchEvidence

Home / Guides / Citation Guides / How to Cite Sources

How to Cite Sources

Here is a complete list for how to cite sources. Most of these guides present citation guidance and examples in MLA, APA, and Chicago.

If you’re looking for general information on MLA or APA citations , the EasyBib Writing Center was designed for you! It has articles on what’s needed in an MLA in-text citation , how to format an APA paper, what an MLA annotated bibliography is, making an MLA works cited page, and much more!

MLA Format Citation Examples

The Modern Language Association created the MLA Style, currently in its 9th edition, to provide researchers with guidelines for writing and documenting scholarly borrowings.  Most often used in the humanities, MLA style (or MLA format ) has been adopted and used by numerous other disciplines, in multiple parts of the world.

MLA provides standard rules to follow so that most research papers are formatted in a similar manner. This makes it easier for readers to comprehend the information. The MLA in-text citation guidelines, MLA works cited standards, and MLA annotated bibliography instructions provide scholars with the information they need to properly cite sources in their research papers, articles, and assignments.

• Book Chapter
• Conference Paper
• Documentary
• Encyclopedia
• Google Images
• Kindle Book
• Memorial Inscription
• Museum Exhibit
• Painting or Artwork
• PowerPoint Presentation
• Sheet Music
• Thesis or Dissertation
• YouTube Video

APA Format Citation Examples

The American Psychological Association created the APA citation style in 1929 as a way to help psychologists, anthropologists, and even business managers establish one common way to cite sources and present content.

APA is used when citing sources for academic articles such as journals, and is intended to help readers better comprehend content, and to avoid language bias wherever possible. The APA style (or APA format ) is now in its 7th edition, and provides citation style guides for virtually any type of resource.

Chicago Style Citation Examples

The Chicago/Turabian style of citing sources is generally used when citing sources for humanities papers, and is best known for its requirement that writers place bibliographic citations at the bottom of a page (in Chicago-format footnotes ) or at the end of a paper (endnotes).

The Turabian and Chicago citation styles are almost identical, but the Turabian style is geared towards student published papers such as theses and dissertations, while the Chicago style provides guidelines for all types of publications. This is why you’ll commonly see Chicago style and Turabian style presented together. The Chicago Manual of Style is currently in its 17th edition, and Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations is in its 8th edition.

Citing Specific Sources or Events

• Declaration of Independence
• Gettysburg Address
• Martin Luther King Jr. Speech
• President Obama’s Farewell Address
• President Trump’s Inauguration Speech
• White House Press Briefing

Additional FAQs

• Citing Archived Contributors
• Citing a Blog
• Citing a Book Chapter
• Citing a Source in a Foreign Language
• Citing an Image
• Citing a Song
• Citing Special Contributors
• Citing a Translated Article
• Citing a Tweet

6 Interesting Citation Facts

The world of citations may seem cut and dry, but there’s more to them than just specific capitalization rules, MLA in-text citations , and other formatting specifications. Citations have been helping researches document their sources for hundreds of years, and are a great way to learn more about a particular subject area.

Ever wonder what sets all the different styles apart, or how they came to be in the first place? Read on for some interesting facts about citations!

1. There are Over 7,000 Different Citation Styles

You may be familiar with MLA and APA citation styles, but there are actually thousands of citation styles used for all different academic disciplines all across the world. Deciding which one to use can be difficult, so be sure to ask you instructor which one you should be using for your next paper.

2. Some Citation Styles are Named After People

While a majority of citation styles are named for the specific organizations that publish them (i.e. APA is published by the American Psychological Association, and MLA format is named for the Modern Language Association), some are actually named after individuals. The most well-known example of this is perhaps Turabian style, named for Kate L. Turabian, an American educator and writer. She developed this style as a condensed version of the Chicago Manual of Style in order to present a more concise set of rules to students.

3. There are Some Really Specific and Uniquely Named Citation Styles

How specific can citation styles get? The answer is very. For example, the “Flavour and Fragrance Journal” style is based on a bimonthly, peer-reviewed scientific journal published since 1985 by John Wiley & Sons. It publishes original research articles, reviews and special reports on all aspects of flavor and fragrance. Another example is “Nordic Pulp and Paper Research,” a style used by an international scientific magazine covering science and technology for the areas of wood or bio-mass constituents.

4. More citations were created on  EasyBib.com  in the first quarter of 2018 than there are people in California.

The US Census Bureau estimates that approximately 39.5 million people live in the state of California. Meanwhile, about 43 million citations were made on EasyBib from January to March of 2018. That’s a lot of citations.

5. “Citations” is a Word With a Long History

The word “citations” can be traced back literally thousands of years to the Latin word “citare” meaning “to summon, urge, call; put in sudden motion, call forward; rouse, excite.” The word then took on its more modern meaning and relevance to writing papers in the 1600s, where it became known as the “act of citing or quoting a passage from a book, etc.”

6. Citation Styles are Always Changing

The concept of citations always stays the same. It is a means of preventing plagiarism and demonstrating where you relied on outside sources. The specific style rules, however, can and do change regularly. For example, in 2018 alone, 46 new citation styles were introduced , and 106 updates were made to exiting styles. At EasyBib, we are always on the lookout for ways to improve our styles and opportunities to add new ones to our list.

Why Citations Matter

Here are the ways accurate citations can help your students achieve academic success, and how you can answer the dreaded question, “why should I cite my sources?”

They Give Credit to the Right People

Citing their sources makes sure that the reader can differentiate the student’s original thoughts from those of other researchers. Not only does this make sure that the sources they use receive proper credit for their work, it ensures that the student receives deserved recognition for their unique contributions to the topic. Whether the student is citing in MLA format , APA format , or any other style, citations serve as a natural way to place a student’s work in the broader context of the subject area, and serve as an easy way to gauge their commitment to the project.

They Provide Hard Evidence of Ideas

Having many citations from a wide variety of sources related to their idea means that the student is working on a well-researched and respected subject. Citing sources that back up their claim creates room for fact-checking and further research . And, if they can cite a few sources that have the converse opinion or idea, and then demonstrate to the reader why they believe that that viewpoint is wrong by again citing credible sources, the student is well on their way to winning over the reader and cementing their point of view.

They Promote Originality and Prevent Plagiarism

The point of research projects is not to regurgitate information that can already be found elsewhere. We have Google for that! What the student’s project should aim to do is promote an original idea or a spin on an existing idea, and use reliable sources to promote that idea. Copying or directly referencing a source without proper citation can lead to not only a poor grade, but accusations of academic dishonesty. By citing their sources regularly and accurately, students can easily avoid the trap of plagiarism , and promote further research on their topic.

They Create Better Researchers

By researching sources to back up and promote their ideas, students are becoming better researchers without even knowing it! Each time a new source is read or researched, the student is becoming more engaged with the project and is developing a deeper understanding of the subject area. Proper citations demonstrate a breadth of the student’s reading and dedication to the project itself. By creating citations, students are compelled to make connections between their sources and discern research patterns. Each time they complete this process, they are helping themselves become better researchers and writers overall.

When is the Right Time to Start Making Citations?

Make in-text/parenthetical citations as you need them.

As you are writing your paper, be sure to include references within the text that correspond with references in a works cited or bibliography. These are usually called in-text citations or parenthetical citations in MLA and APA formats. The most effective time to complete these is directly after you have made your reference to another source. For instance, after writing the line from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities : “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…,” you would include a citation like this (depending on your chosen citation style):

(Dickens 11).

This signals to the reader that you have referenced an outside source. What’s great about this system is that the in-text citations serve as a natural list for all of the citations you have made in your paper, which will make completing the works cited page a whole lot easier. After you are done writing, all that will be left for you to do is scan your paper for these references, and then build a works cited page that includes a citation for each one.

Need help creating an MLA works cited page ? Try the MLA format generator on EasyBib.com! We also have a guide on how to format an APA reference page .

2. Understand the General Formatting Rules of Your Citation Style Before You Start Writing

While reading up on paper formatting may not sound exciting, being aware of how your paper should look early on in the paper writing process is super important. Citation styles can dictate more than just the appearance of the citations themselves, but rather can impact the layout of your paper as a whole, with specific guidelines concerning margin width, title treatment, and even font size and spacing. Knowing how to organize your paper before you start writing will ensure that you do not receive a low grade for something as trivial as forgetting a hanging indent.

Don’t know where to start? Here’s a formatting guide on APA format .

3. Double-check All of Your Outside Sources for Relevance and Trustworthiness First

Collecting outside sources that support your research and specific topic is a critical step in writing an effective paper. But before you run to the library and grab the first 20 books you can lay your hands on, keep in mind that selecting a source to include in your paper should not be taken lightly. Before you proceed with using it to backup your ideas, run a quick Internet search for it and see if other scholars in your field have written about it as well. Check to see if there are book reviews about it or peer accolades. If you spot something that seems off to you, you may want to consider leaving it out of your work. Doing this before your start making citations can save you a ton of time in the long run.

Finished with your paper? It may be time to run it through a grammar and plagiarism checker , like the one offered by EasyBib Plus. If you’re just looking to brush up on the basics, our grammar guides  are ready anytime you are.

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Citation Basics

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Basic Principles of Citation

APA Style uses the author–date citation system , in which a brief in-text citation directs readers to a full reference list entry. The in-text citation appears within the body of the paper (or in a table, figure, footnote, or appendix) and briefly identifies the cited work by its author and date of publication. This enables readers to locate the corresponding entry in the alphabetical reference list at the end of the paper.

Each work cited must appear in the reference list, and each work in the reference list must be cited in the text (or in a table, figure, footnote, or appendix).

Both paraphrases and quotations require citations.

The following are guidelines to follow when writing in-text citations:

• Ensure that the spelling of author names and the publication dates in reference list entries match those in the corresponding in-text citations.
• Cite only works that you have read and ideas that you have incorporated into your writing. The works you cite may provide key background information, support or dispute your thesis, or offer critical definitions and data.
• Readers may find a long string of citations difficult to understand, especially if they are using assistive technology such as a screen reader; therefore, include only those citations needed to support your immediate point.
• Cite primary sources when possible, and cite secondary sources sparingly.
• Cite sources to document all facts and figures that you mention that are not common knowledge.
• To cite a specific part of a source , provide an author–date citation for the work plus information about the specific part.
• Even when sources cannot be retrieved (e.g., because they are personal communications ), still credit them in the text (however, avoid using online sources that are no longer recoverable).

Basic principles of citation are covered in the seventh edition APA Style manuals in the Publication Manual Sections 8.1 to 8.36 and the Concise Guide Sections 8.1 to 8.34

Related handouts

• In-Text Citation Checklist (PDF, 227KB)
• Six Steps to Proper Citation (PDF, 112KB)

From the APA Style blog

How to cite your own translations

If you translate a passage from one language into another on your own in your paper, your translation is considered a paraphrase, not a direct quotation.

Key takeaways from the Psi Chi webinar So You Need to Write a Literature Review

This blog post describes key tasks in writing an effective literature review and provides strategies for approaching those tasks.

How to cite a work with a nonrecoverable source

In most cases, nonrecoverable sources such as personal emails, nonarchived social media livestreams (or deleted and unarchived social media posts), classroom lectures, unrecorded webinars or presentations, and intranet sources should be cited only in the text as personal communications.

The “outdated sources” myth

The “outdated sources” myth is that sources must have been published recently, such as the last 5 to 10 years. There is no timeliness requirement in APA Style.

From COVID-19 to demands for social justice: Citing contemporary sources for current events

The guidance in the seventh edition of the Publication Manual makes the process of citing contemporary sources found online easier than ever before.

Citing classical and religious works

A classical or religious work is cited as either a book or a webpage, depending on what version of the source you are using. This post includes details and examples.

Academic Writer—APA’s essential teaching resource for higher education instructors

Academic Writer’s advanced authoring technology and digital learning tools allow students to take a hands-on approach to learning the scholarly research and writing process.

APA Style webinar on citing works in text

Attend the webinar, “Citing Works in Text Using Seventh Edition APA Style,” on July 14, 2020, to learn the keys to accurately and consistently citing sources in APA Style.

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REFERENCE FINDER

Find relevant information like your own rough draft from among the 13,002 reports available for free at NAP.edu. Copy and paste up to 8 pages of content from some other source: an outside article, a rough draft of your own, etc., then select "Find Relevant Reports".

Find Relevant Reports

Click here to search reports published from the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Research Council.

Build Web Searches

Click here to view key search phrases derived from your content for searching on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and NAP.edu.

The Reference Finder is provided exclusively as a research tool. No information will be retained regarding use of this resource beyond normal server logs. That is, entered text is not retained, and the staff of the National Academies will make no correlations between server logs, IP addresses, and submitted content.

What is the Reference Finder?

University Library

Start your research.

• Research Process
• Find Background Info
• Find Sources through the Library
• Evaluate Your Info
• Cite Your Sources
• Evaluate, Write & Cite

• is the right thing to do  to give credit to those who had the idea
• shows that you have read and understand  what experts have had to say about your topic
• helps people find the sources  that you used in case they want to read more about the topic
• provides   evidence  for your arguments
• is professional and  standard practice   for students and scholars

What is a Citation?

A citation identifies for the reader the original source for an idea, information, or image that is referred to in a work.

• In the body of a paper, the  in-text citation  acknowledges the source of information used.
• At the end of a paper, the citations are compiled on a  References  or  Works Cited  list. A basic citation includes the author, title, and publication information of the source. 

From:  Lemieux  Library,  University  of Seattle 

Why Should You Cite?

Quoting Are you quoting two or more consecutive words from a source? Then the original source should be cited and the words or phrase placed in quotes. 

Paraphrasing If an idea or information comes from another source,  even if you put it in your own words , you still need to credit the source.  General vs. Unfamiliar Knowledge You do not need to cite material which is accepted common knowledge. If in doubt whether your information is common knowledge or not, cite it. Formats We usually think of books and articles. However, if you use material from web sites, films, music, graphs, tables, etc. you'll also need to cite these as well.

Plagiarism is presenting the words or ideas of someone else as your own without proper acknowledgment of the source. When you work on a research paper and use supporting material from works by others, it's okay to quote people and use their ideas, but you do need to correctly credit them. Even when you summarize or paraphrase information found in books, articles, or Web pages, you must acknowledge the original author.

Citation Style Help

Helpful links:

• MLA ,  Works Cited : A Quick Guide (a template of core elements)
• CSE  (Council of Science Editors)

For additional writing resources specific to styles listed here visit the  Purdue OWL Writing Lab

Citation and Bibliography Resources

• How to Write an Annotated Bibliography
• << Previous: Evaluate Your Info
• Next: Evaluate, Write & Cite >>

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Land Acknowledgement

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The land acknowledgement used at UC Santa Cruz was developed in partnership with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band Chairman and the Amah Mutsun Relearning Program at the UCSC Arboretum .

Public Access

Google Scholar Profiles

Google Scholar Profiles provide a simple way for authors to showcase their academic publications. You can check who is citing your articles, graph citations over time, and compute several citation metrics. You can also make your profile public, so that it may appear in Google Scholar results when people search for your name, e.g., richard feynman .

Best of all, it's quick to set up and simple to maintain - even if you have written hundreds of articles, and even if your name is shared by several different scholars. You can add groups of related articles, not just one article at a time; and your citation metrics are computed and updated automatically as Google Scholar finds new citations to your work on the web. You can choose to have your list of articles updated automatically or review the updates yourself, or to manually update your articles at any time.

Set up your Google Scholar Profile

Setting up your profile

Start here. It's quick and free.

• First, sign in to your Google account, or create one if you don't yet have one. We recommend that you use a personal account, not an account at your institution, so that you can keep your profile for as long as you wish.
• Once you've signed in to your Google account, open the Scholar profile sign up form , confirm the spelling of your name, enter your affiliation, interests, etc. We recommend that you also enter your university email address; this would make your profile eligible for inclusion in Google Scholar search results.
• On the next page, you'll see groups of articles written by people with names similar to yours. Add all articles that you have written; keep in mind your articles may be in several different groups, and some groups may occasionally include articles by several different authors. If you publish under several different names, you may need to do several searches to add all your articles.
• Once you're done with adding articles, it will ask you what to do when the article data changes in Google Scholar. You can either have the updates applied to your profile automatically, or you can choose to review them beforehand. In either case, you can always go to your profile and make changes by hand.
• Finally, you will see your profile. This is a good time to add a few finishing touches - upload your professional looking photo, visit your university email inbox and click on the verification link, double check the list of articles, and, once you're completely satisfied, make your profile public. Voila - it's now eligible to appear in Google Scholar when someone searches for your name!

Select the "Add articles" option from the menu. Search for your articles using titles, keywords, or your name. Your citation metrics will update immediately to account for the articles you added.

If your search doesn't find the right article, click "Add article manually". Then, type in the title, the authors, etc., and click "Save". Keep in mind that citations to manually added articles may not appear in your profile for a few days.

To add a group of related articles, click "Add article groups". If you have written articles under different names, with multiple groups of colleagues, or in different journals, you may need to select multiple groups. Your citation metrics will update immediately to account for the groups you added.

If the menu doesn't appear, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

Alas, we have no way of knowing which articles are really yours . Author names are often abbreviated and different people sometimes share similar names. We use a statistical model to try to tell different authors apart but such automatic processes are not always accurate. The best way to fix this is to look through the articles in your profile and remove the ones that were written by others.

Select the articles you would like to remove and then click the "Delete" button.

If the article checkboxes don't appear, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

Deleted articles are moved to the Trash. To view articles in the Trash, select the "View trash" option from the menu. To restore an article from the Trash, select the article and click the "Restore" button.

Click the title of the article and then click the "Edit" button. When you finish your changes, click the "Save" button.

If the "Edit" button doesn't appear, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

If you've made substantial changes to the article, please keep the following in mind.

• The list of "Scholar articles" at the bottom of the page may no longer match the article you've edited. We recommend that you review this list and "unmerge" the Scholar articles that no longer correspond to your article. Scholar articles affect the computation of your "Cited by" counts and citation metrics.
• As with manual additions of articles, it may take several days for all citations to the edited article to be collected in your profile. You can speed up the process by adding the appropriate article from Google Scholar and then merging it with your version; then, your citation metrics will update right away.
• It's possible that the article you've edited was already in your profile as a separate record. We recommend that you merge duplicate records - click the "Title" column header to sort your articles by title, select the checkboxes next to the duplicate entries, which should now be adjacent, and then click the "Merge" button.

Select both versions of the article and click the "Merge" button. You will then see both citations for the article listed. Select the best citation to the article (you can edit it later if you wish) and click "Merge". This will merge the two versions. Your citation metrics will automatically update to count the versions you've merged as a single article, not two different articles.

Nope, the "Cited by" count after the merge is the number of papers that cite the merged article. One of these probably cites both versions that you've merged; the 27+4=31 formula counts this citation twice. But if the count has dropped below 27... ugh, please do let us know.

The ∗ indicates that the "Cited by" count includes citations that might not match this article. It is an estimate made automatically by a computer program. You can check these citations by clicking on the article's title and looking for "Scholar articles" with a ∗ next to their title.

Making your profile public

Your profile is private and visible only to you until and unless you make your profile public.

Click the "Edit" button next to your name, check the "Make my profile public" box, and click "Save".

You can share the URL displayed by the browser. It looks like this: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ID&hl=en …where ID identifies your Google Scholar profile. You can link to it from your homepage, email it to colleagues, or share it on social media. The link only works if the profile is public, and only lets other people see the profile but not make changes to it.

Click the "Edit" button next to your name, uncheck the "Make my profile public" box, and click "Save".

You also need to add a verified email address at your university or institution.

To be eligible for inclusion in Google Scholar search results, your profile needs to be public and needs to have a verified email address at your university (non-institutional email addresses, such as gmail.com, hotmail.com, aol.com, yahoo.com, qq.com, etc., are not suitable for this purpose). To add a verified email to your profile, click the "Edit" button next to your name, add your email address at your institution and click "Save". We will send you an email message with a verification link. Once you click on this link, the email address will be marked verified. Your profile will now be eligible for inclusion in Google Scholar search results.

Rest assured, we will not display your email address on your public profile. Nor will we sell it, trade it, or use it to send you email unrelated to Google Scholar.

Exploring citations to your articles

Click the "Cited by" number for the article.

Click the title of the article.

Click the "Follow" button next to your name, check the "New citations to my articles" box, and click "Done". We'll then email you when newly published articles cite any of the works in your profile.

Click the "Cited by" number for your article and then click the envelope icon in the left sidebar. Then we'll email you when newly published articles cite yours.

Google Scholar considers this article the same as another article in your profile. We display the "Cited by" count next to both of the duplicates, but we only count them once in your citation metrics.

We recommend that you merge the duplicates - select both articles and click the "Merge" button.

Probably not. We compute two versions, All and Recent, of three metrics - h-index, i10-index and the total number of citations. While there's no shortage of other reasonable metrics, the incremental usefulness of adding each number generally goes down, while the user confusion generally goes up.

Your "Cited by" counts come from the Google Scholar index. You can change the articles in your profile, but citations to them are computed and updated automatically as we update Google Scholar.

To change the "Cited by" counts in your profile, you would need to have them updated in Google Scholar. Google Scholar generally reflects the state of the web as it is currently visible to our search robots and to the majority of users. If some of the citations to your article are not included, chances are that the citing articles are not accessible to our search robots or are formatted in ways that make it difficult for our indexing algorithms to identify their bibliographic data or references.

To fix this, you'll need to identify the specific citing articles with indexing problems and work with the publisher of these articles to make the necessary changes (see our inclusion guidelines for details). For most publishers, it usually takes 6-9 months for the changes to be reflected in Google Scholar; for very large publishers, it can take much longer.

Many research funding agencies promote broad access to funded research by mandating that articles describing the research should be publicly available. The Public Access section of a Google Scholar profile contains the articles that are expected to be publicly available based on funding agency mandates. For each article, you can view the applicable mandates and see if it is publicly available. If the article has a publicly available version, a link marked [PDF] or [HTML] appears on the right hand side.

An article can be publicly available from several sources including its publisher, an institutional repository, a research area specific repository and others. The Google Scholar indexing system tries to include all publicly accessible versions that follow our inclusion guidelines . For your own profile, you can update the list of articles and make corrections. You can also make an article publicly available by uploading a PDF of the article to your own Google Drive.

The Public Access Mandates table presents summary statistics about public access mandates for different funding agencies. For each funding agency, you can view the level of public availability of mandated articles overall and over several recent years.

The Google Scholar indexing system automatically extracts funding information from the acknowledgement sections of articles. You can see the funding acknowledgement for an article by clicking on its title on the public access page.

Public access mandates usually specify that funded articles should be publicly available within a given period of time (referred to as the "embargo") after publication. You can see the embargo period for an article by clicking on its title on the public access page.

Your profile should only include articles that you wrote. To remove an article that you didn't write, click "REVIEW", then "MAKE A CORRECTION", select "I'm not an author of this article" from the list of options and click "DONE". The article will be removed from your public access page. It will also be deleted from your profile. If you don't see "MAKE A CORRECTION", sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

Click "REVIEW", then "MAKE A CORRECTION", select "This article wasn't funded by any of these agencies" from the list of options and click "DONE". The article will be removed from your public access page. If you don't see "MAKE A CORRECTION", sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

Click "REVIEW", then "MAKE A CORRECTION", select "This article's publication date is incorrect" from the list of options, enter the correct date and click "DONE". If the new publication date is outside the scope of the mandate, the article will be removed from your public access page. This will also update the publication date in your profile. If you don't see "MAKE A CORRECTION", sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

The simplest thing would be to ask your coauthor to make the article publicly available. Once the publicly available version is included in the Google Scholar index, your public access page will be automatically updated.

You can also indicate this on your public access page. To do this, click "REVIEW", then "MAKE A CORRECTION", select "I'm not the responsible author" from the list of options, select the authors that are responsible for making the article publicly available and then click "DONE". The article will then be listed in the "Recused" section on your public access page. If you don't see "MAKE A CORRECTION", sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile. Once the article is publicly available from another source, it will automatically move to the "Available" section.

The star indicates that one or more of your mandated articles is not yet publicly available and that you have recused yourself from making them available.

The Public Access section is only available for public profiles. If your profile is currently private, click the "Edit" button next to your name, check the "Make my profile public" box, and click "SAVE". If the "Edit" button doesn't appear, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

If your profile is already public and you still don't see the Public Access section, the Google Scholar indexing system has not yet identified any articles with public access mandates in your profile.

The Google Scholar indexing system tries to include all publicly accessible versions that follow our inclusion guidelines . Please contact your publisher and ask them to make sure that the publicly available version is accessible to our search robots.

You can also make the article publicly available by uploading a PDF of the article to your own Google Drive. To do that, click the "UPLOAD PDF" button next to the article on your public access page. If you don't see the "UPLOAD PDF" button, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile. Please upload only articles that you've written and have the rights to share.

The Google Scholar indexing system tries to include all publicly accessible versions that follow our inclusion guidelines . Please contact the repository administrators and ask them to make sure that the article is accessible to our search robots.

You can also make the article publicly available by uploading a PDF of the article to your own Google Drive . To do that, click the "UPLOAD PDF" button next to the article on your public access page. If you don't see the "UPLOAD PDF" button, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile. Please upload only articles that you've written and have the rights to share.

Yes, the uploaded article will be linked from your profile. It will also be eligible for inclusion in the Google Scholar index.

Click on the title of the article, and then click "UPDATE PDF". Follow the prompts to upload a PDF file from your computer. The link in your profile will be updated immediately. If the original version was indexed in Google Scholar, it will be replaced in a few days.

Note, the original uploaded article will still be in the "Public research articles" folder in your Google Drive . If you wish, you can delete it from there as well. If you don't see the original article or the 'Public research articles' folder in your Google Drive, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

Go to the "Public research articles" folder in your Google Drive , and delete the article from there. The link to the article will disappear from your profile and the Google Scholar index in a few days.

If you don't see the "Public research articles" folder or the article in question in your Google Drive, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile.

This error message means that your domain's administrators have disabled public sharing through Google Drive possibly as a part of organizational policy. Please contact your domain's administrators for assistance and clarification.

Public Access Reports for Agencies

In addition to reviewing public access for all your articles, you can also view and export public access reports for individual funding agencies. You can view an agency-specific report by clicking the agency’s name on the left-hand side of the Public Access page on desktops, or by selecting the agency in the dropdown list on the top-left side of the page on mobile phones.

Funding agencies can require articles to be available at a particular repository (e.g., PubMed Central), at a group of repositories (any subject or institutional repository), or anywhere on the web. Agency-specific reports take these requirements into account. When an article is available at a suitable location, it will be linked on the right. If you don’t see the link for an available article, you can provide the link to us. For agencies that specify a particular repository, there is also a link to submit your article to that repository. You can also fix errors - remove articles, correct publication dates, or update funding information.

Updates to your profile

You don't need to do anything! Your citation metrics and citation graph will be automatically updated whenever Google Scholar is updated.

Select "Configure article updates" from the menu. Choose the automatic updates setting and click "Update settings". Your profile will be automatically updated when Google Scholar is updated.

This setting only controls the updates to your list of articles. It does not control the updates to your "Cited by" counts and citation metrics - those are always updated to reflect the current state of the web.

To add a missing article to your profile, select "Add articles" from the menu and search for it. If you can't find your article in Google Scholar, select "Add article manually" to enter its bibliographic record by hand.

Select "Configure article updates" from the menu. Choose the confirmation email setting and click "Update settings". When we identify suitable updates for your profile, we'll send you an email message so that you can review and apply the updates.

You don't need to do anything. Automated updates will not make changes to an article that you have edited.

Reviewing updates to your profile

This happens when the Google Scholar search index changes, and it now considers this entry a duplicate of some other article in your profile. This could happen, e.g., if the publisher re-formats their papers or fixes a typo. We recommend that you accept this suggestion. You can, of course, choose to keep duplicate entries in your profile, but only one of them will be counted towards your citation metrics.

This happens when the Google Scholar search index has changed, and we have been unable to match an article in your profile with the new index. Most of the time, this is because it was considered to be a duplicate of some other article in your profile, but we weren't able to determine which one. Occasionally, the article may have been removed from Google Scholar entirely, e.g., because it's no longer available on the web, or because articles that reference it have become unavailable to our search robots.

To check if the article is a duplicate, go to your profile, click the "Title" column header to sort by title, and look for the article in question. If the same article is indeed listed multiple times, you can safely accept the suggestion to delete the unmatched entry. However, if it isn't a duplicate entry, you can choose to keep it in your profile. Though, since it is not matched in Google Scholar, its "Cited by" count will be zero.

Note that your decision to keep an unmatched entry in your profile will not reinstate the entry in Google Scholar. See the inclusion guidelines for help on including your articles in Google Scholar.

General questions

It's under " My profile " on top of the page or in the side drawer. If this link shows a profile creation form, sign in to the Google account that you used to create your profile and try again.

Select the articles you'd like to export - or check the box next to the "Title" column header to select all articles in your profile - and click the "Export" button. Follow the prompts to download a BibTeX, EndNote, RefMan, or CSV file.

Click the column header labeled "Year".

Click the "Edit" button next to your name, paste the URL into the "Homepage" field, and click "Save".

If the profile is yours, sign in to the Google account that you used to create it, and follow the instructions in the Setup section to make corrections. You can add, delete, edit, and merge articles in your own profile.

If the profile is someone else's, it's best to contact its author and ask them to make a correction.

Note that profile owners can't change their "Cited-by" counts, and that updating an article in a profile does not change it in the Google Scholar search results. To make those kinds of corrections, you usually need to talk to the article's publisher; please refer to the inclusion guidelines .

• Privacy & Terms

• USC Libraries
• Research Guides

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

• 11. Citing Sources
• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Reading Research Effectively
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Applying Critical Thinking
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Research Process Video Series
• Executive Summary
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tiertiary Sources
• Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Insiderness
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Generative AI and Writing
• USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
• Bibliography

A citation is a formal reference to a published or unpublished source that you consulted and obtained information from while writing your research paper. It refers to a source of information that supports a factual statement, proposition, argument, or assertion or any quoted text obtained from a book, article, web site, or any other type of material . In-text citations are embedded within the body of your paper and use a shorthand notation style that refers to a complete description of the item at the end of the paper. Materials cited at the end of a paper may be listed under the heading References, Sources, Works Cited, or Bibliography. Rules on how to properly cite a source depends on the writing style manual your professor wants you to use for the class [e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, etc.]. Note that some disciplines have their own citation rules [e.g., law].

Citations: Overview. OASIS Writing Center, Walden University; Research and Citation. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Citing Sources. University Writing Center, Texas A&M University.

Citing Your Sources

Reasons for Citing Sources in Your Research Paper

English scientist, Sir Isaac Newton, once wrote, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”* Citations support learning how to "see further" through processes of intellectual discovery, critical thinking, and applying a deliberate method of navigating through the scholarly landscape by tracking how cited works are propagated by scholars over time and the subsequent ways this leads to the devarication of new knowledge.

Listed below are specific reasons why citing sources is an important part of doing good research.

• Shows the reader where to find more information . Citations help readers expand their understanding and knowledge about the issues being investigated. One of the most effective strategies for locating authoritative, relevant sources about a research problem is to review materials cited in studies published by other authors. In this way, the sources you cite help the reader identify where to go to examine the topic in more depth and detail.
• Increases your credibility as an author . Citations to the words, ideas, and arguments of scholars demonstrates that you have conducted a thorough review of the literature and, therefore, you are reporting your research results or proposing recommended courses of action from an informed and critically engaged perspective. Your citations offer evidence that you effectively contemplated, evaluated, and synthesized sources of information in relation to your conceptualization of the research problem.
• Illustrates the non-linear and contested nature of knowledge creation . The sources you cite show the reader how you characterized the dynamics of prior knowledge creation relevant to the research problem and how you managed to identify the contested relationships between problems and solutions proposed among scholars. Citations don't just list materials used in your study, they tell a story about how prior knowledge-making emerged from a constant state of creation, renewal, and transformation.
• Reinforces your arguments . Sources cited in your paper provide the evidence that readers need to determine that you properly addressed the “So What?” question. This refers to whether you considered the relevance and significance of the research problem, its implications applied to creating new knowledge, and its importance for improving practice. In this way, citations draw attention to and support the legitimacy and originality of your own ideas and assertions.
• Demonstrates that you "listened" to relevant conversations among scholars before joining in . Your citations tell the reader where you developed an understanding of the debates among scholars. They show how you educated yourself about ongoing conversations taking place within relevant communities of researchers before inserting your own ideas and arguments. In peer-reviewed scholarship, most of these conversations emerge within books, research reports, journal articles, and other cited works.
• Delineates alternative approaches to explaining the research problem . If you disagree with prior research assumptions or you believe that a topic has been understudied or you find that there is a gap in how scholars have understood a problem, your citations serve as the source materials from which to analyze and present an alternative viewpoint or to assert that a different course of action should be pursued. In short, the materials you cite serve as the means by which to argue persuasively against long-standing assumptions promulgated in prior studies.
• Helps the reader understand contextual aspects of your research . Cited sources help readers understand the specific circumstances, conditions, and settings of the problem being investigated and, by extension, how your arguments can be fully understood and assessed. Citations place your line of reasoning within a specific contextualized framework based on how others have studied the problem and how you interpreted their findings in support of your overall research objectives.
• Frames the development of concepts and ideas within the literature . No topic in the social and behavioral sciences rests in isolation from research that has taken place in the past. Your citations help the reader understand the growth and transformation of the theoretical assumptions, key concepts, and systematic inquiries that emerged prior to your engagement with the research problem.
• Underscores sources that were most important to you . Your citations represent a set of choices made about what you determined to be the most important sources for understanding the topic. They not only list what you discovered, but why it matters and how the materials you chose to cite fit within the broader context of your research design and arguments. As part of an overall assessment of the study’s validity and reliability , the choices you make also helps the reader determine what sources of research may have been excluded.
• Provides evidence of interdisciplinary thinking . An important principle of good research is to extend your review of the literature beyond the predominant disciplinary space where scholars have previously examined a topic. Citations provide evidence that you have integrated epistemological arguments, observations, and/or methodological strategies of other disciplines into your paper, thereby demonstrating that you understand the complex, interconnected nature of contemporary research topics.
• Forms the basis for bibliometric analysis of research . Bibliometric analysis is a quantitative method used, for example, to identify and predict emerging trends in research, document patterns of collaboration among scholars, explore the intellectual structure of a specific domain of research, map the development of research within and across disciplines, or identify gaps in knowledge within the literature. Bibliometrics data can also be used to visually map relationships among published studies. An author's citations to books, journal articles, research reports, and other publications represent the raw data used in bibliometric research.
• Supports critical thinking and independent learning . Evaluating the authenticity, reliability, validity, and originality of prior research is an act of interpretation and introspective reasoning applied to assessing whether a source of information will contribute to understanding the problem in ways that are persuasive and align with your overall research objectives. Reviewing and citing prior studies represents a deliberate act of critically scrutinizing each source as part of your overall assessment of how scholars have confronted the research problem.
• Honors the achievements of others . As Susan Blum recently noted,** citations not only identify sources used, they acknowledge the achievements of scholars within the larger network of research about the topic. Citing sources is a normative act of professionalism within academe and a way to highlight and recognize the work of scholars who likely do not obtain any tangible benefits or monetary value from their research endeavors. Your citations help to validate the work of others.

*Vernon. Jamie L. "On the Shoulder of Giants." American Scientist 105 (July-August 2017): 194.

**Blum, Susan D. "In Defense of the Morality of Citation.” Inside Higher Ed , January 29, 2024.

Aksnes, Dag W., Liv Langfeldt, and Paul Wouters. "Citations, Citation Indicators, and Research Quality: An Overview of Basic Concepts and Theories." Sage Open 9 (January-March 2019): https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019829575; Blum, Susan Debra. My Word!: Plagiarism and College Culture . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009; Bretag, Tracey., editor. Handbook of Academic Integrity . Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2020; Ballenger, Bruce P. The Curious Researcher: A Guide to Writing Research Papers . 7th edition. Boston, MA: Pearson, 2012; D'Angelo, Barbara J. "Using Source Analysis to Promote Critical Thinking." Research Strategies 18 (Winter 2001): 303-309; Donthu, Naveen et al. “How to Conduct a Bibliometric Analysis: An Overview and Guidelines.” Journal of Business Research 133 (2021): 285-296; Mauer, Barry and John Venecek. “Scholarship as Conversation.” Strategies for Conducting Literary Research, University of Central Florida, 2021; Öztürk, Oguzhan, Ridvan Kocaman, and Dominik K. Kanbach. "How to Design Bibliometric Research: An Overview and a Framework Proposal." Review of Managerial Science (2024): 1-29; Why Cite? Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, Yale University; Citing Information. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Harvard Guide to Using Sources. Harvard College Writing Program. Harvard University; Newton, Philip. "Academic Integrity: A Quantitative Study of Confidence and Understanding in Students at the Start of Their Higher Education."  Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 41 (2016): 482-497; Referencing More Effectively. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Using Sources. Yale College Writing Center. Yale University; Vosburgh, Richard M. "Closing the Academic-practitioner Gap: Research Must Answer the “SO WHAT” Question." H uman Resource Management Review 32 (March 2022): 100633; When and Why to Cite Sources. Information Literacy Playlists, SUNY, Albany Libraries.

Structure and Writing Style

Referencing your sources means systematically showing what information or ideas you acquired from another author’s work, and identifying where that information come from . You must cite research in order to do research, but at the same time, you must delineate what are your original thoughts and ideas and what are the thoughts and ideas of others. Citations help achieve this. Procedures used to cite sources vary among different fields of study. If not outlined in your course syllabus or writing assignment, always speak with your professor about what writing style for citing sources should be used for the class because it is important to fully understand the citation style to be used in your paper, and to apply it consistently. If your professor defers and tells you to "choose whatever you want, just be consistent," then choose the citation style you are most familiar with or that is appropriate to your major [e.g., use Chicago style if you are majoring in history; use APA if its an education course; use MLA if it is literature or a general writing course].

GENERAL GUIDELINES

1. Are there any reasons I should avoid referencing other people's work? No. If placed in the proper context, r eferencing other people's research is never an indication that your work is substandard or lacks originality. In fact, the opposite is true. If you write your paper without adequate references to previous studies, you are signaling to the reader that you are not familiar with the literature on the topic, thereby, undermining the validity of your study and your credibility as a researcher. Including references in academic writing is one of the most important ways to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of how the research problem has been addressed. It is the intellectual packaging around which you present your thoughts, ideas, and arguments to the reader.

2. What should I do if I find out that my great idea has already been studied by another researcher? It can be frustrating to come up with what you believe is a great topic only to find that it's already been thoroughly studied. However, do not become frustrated by this. You can acknowledge the prior research by writing in the text of your paper [see also Smith, 2002], then citing the complete source in your list of references. Use the discovery of prior studies as an opportunity to demonstrate the significance of the problem being investigated and, if applicable, as a means of delineating your analysis from those of others [e.g., the prior study is ten years old and doesn't take into account new variables]. Strategies for responding to prior research can include: stating how your study updates previous understandings about the topic, offering a new or different perspective, applying a different or innovative method of gathering and interpreting data, and/or describing a new set of insights, guidelines, recommendations, best practices, or working solutions.

3. What should I do if I want to use an adapted version of someone else's work? You still must cite the original work. For example, you use a table of statistics from a journal article published in 1996 by author Smith, but you have altered or added new data to it. Reference the revised chart, such as, [adapted from Smith, 1996], then cite the original source in your list of references. You can also use other terms in order to specify the exact relationship between the original source and the version you have presented, such as, "based on data from Smith [1996]...," or "summarized from Smith [1996]...." Citing the original source helps the reader locate where the information was first presented and under what context it was used as well as to evaluate how effectively you applied it to your own research.

4. What should I do if several authors have published very similar information or ideas? You can indicate that the topic, idea, concept, or information can be found in the works of others by stating something similar to the following example: "Though many scholars have applied rational choice theory to understanding economic relations among nations [Smith, 1989; Jones, 1991; Johnson, 1994; Anderson, 2003; Smith, 2014], little attention has been given to applying the theory to examining the influence of non-governmental organizations in a globalized economy." If you only reference one author or only the most recent study, then your readers may assume that only one author has published on this topic, or more likely, they will conclude that you have not conducted a thorough review of the literature. Referencing all relevant authors of prior studies gives your readers a clear idea of the breadth of analysis you conducted in preparing to study the research problem. If there has been a significant number of prior studies on the topic [i.e., ten or more], describe the most comprehensive and recent works because they will presumably discuss and reference the older studies. However, note in your review of the literature that there has been significant scholarship devoted to the topic so the reader knows that you are aware of the numerous prior studies.

5. What if I find exactly what I want to say in the writing of another researcher? In the social sciences, the rationale in duplicating prior research is generally governed by the passage of time, changing circumstances or conditions, or the emergence of variables that necessitate new investigations . If someone else has recently conducted a thorough investigation of precisely the same research problem that you intend to study, then you likely will have to revise your topic, or at the very least, review this literature to identify something new to say about the problem. However, if it is someone else's particularly succinct expression, but it fits perfectly with what you are trying to say, then you can quote from the author directly, referencing the source. Identifying an author who has made the exact same point that you want to make can be an opportunity to validate, as well as reinforce the significance of, the research problem you are investigating. The key is to build on that idea in new and innovative ways. If you are not sure how to do this, consult with a librarian .

6. Should I cite a source even if it was published long ago? Any source used in writing your paper should be cited, regardless of when it was written. However, in building a case for understanding prior research about your topic, it is generally true that you should focus on citing more recently published studies because they presumably have built upon the research of older studies. When referencing prior studies, use the research problem as your guide when considering what to cite. If a study from forty years ago investigated the same topic, it probably should be examined and considered in your list of references because the research may have been foundational or groundbreaking at the time, even if its findings are no longer relevant to current conditions or reflect current thinking [one way to determine if a study is foundational or groundbreaking is to examine how often it has been cited in recent studies using the "Cited by" feature of Google Scholar ]. However, if an older study only relates to the research problem tangentially or it has not been cited in recent studies, then it may be more appropriate to list it under further readings .

7. Can I cite unusual and non-scholarly sources in my research paper? The majority of the citations in a research paper should be to scholarly [a.k.a., academic; peer-reviewed] studies that rely on an objective and logical analysis of the research problem based on empirical evidence that reliably supports your arguments. However, any type of source can be considered valid if it brings relevant understanding and clarity to the topic. This can include, for example, non-textual elements such as photographs, maps, or illustrations. A source can include materials from special or archival collections, such as, personal papers, manuscripts, business memorandums, the official records of an organization, or digitized collections. Citations can also be to unusual items, such as, an audio recording, a transcript from a television news program, a unique set of data, or a social media post. The challenge is knowing how to cite unusual and non-scholarly sources because they often do not fit within consistent citation rules of books or journal articles. Given this, consult with a librarian if you are unsure how to cite a source.

NOTE:   In any academic writing, you are required to identify which ideas, facts, thoughts, concepts, or declarative statements are yours and which are derived from the research of others. The only exception to this rule is information that is considered to be a commonly known fact [e.g., "George Washington was the first president of the United States"] or a statement that is self-evident [e.g., "Australia is a country in the Global South"]. Appreciate, however, that any "commonly known fact" or self-evidencing statement is culturally constructed and shaped by specific social and aesthetical biases . If you have any doubt about whether or not a fact is considered to be widely understood knowledge, provide a supporting citation, or, ask your professor for clarification about whether the statement should be cited.

Ballenger, Bruce P. The Curious Researcher: A Guide to Writing Research Papers . 7th edition. Boston, MA: Pearson, 2012; Blum, Susan Debra. My Word!: Plagiarism and College Culture . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009; Bretag, Tracey., editor. Handbook of Academic Integrity . Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2020; Carlock, Janine. Developing Information Literacy Skills: A Guide to Finding, Evaluating, and Citing Sources . Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020; Harvard Guide to Using Sources. Harvard College Writing Program. Harvard University; How to Cite Other Sources in Your Paper. The Structure, Format, Content, and Style of a Journal-Style Scientific Paper. Department of Biology. Bates College; Lunsford, Andrea A. and Robert Connors; The St. Martin's Handbook . New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989; Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace . 3rd edition. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2015; Research and Citation Resources. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Writing Tutorial Services, Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. Indiana University; Why Cite? Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, Yale Univeraity.

Other Citation Research Guides

The following USC Libraries research guide can help you properly cite sources in your research paper:

• Citation Guide

The following USC Libraries research guide offers basic information on using images and media in research:

Listed below are particularly well-done and comprehensive websites that provide specific examples of how to cite sources under different style guidelines.

• Purdue University Online Writing Lab
• Southern Cross University Harvard Referencing Style
• University of Wisconsin Writing Center

This is a useful guide concerning how to properly cite images in your research paper.

• Colgate Visual Resources Library, Citing Images

This guide provides good information on the act of citation analysis, whereby you count the number of times a published work is cited by other works in order to measure the impact of a publication or author.

Measuring Your Impact: Impact Factor, Citation Analysis, and other Metrics: Citation Analysis [Sandy De Groote, University of Illinois, Chicago]

Automatic Citation Generators

The links below lead to systems where you can type in your information and have a citation compiled for you. Note that these systems are not foolproof so it is important that you verify that the citation is correct and check your spelling, capitalization, etc. However, they can be useful in creating basic types of citations, particularly for online sources.

• BibMe -- APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian styles
• DocsCite -- for citing government publications in APA or MLA formats
• EasyBib -- APA, MLA, and Chicago styles
• Son of Citation Machine -- APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian styles

NOTE:   Many companies that create the research databases the USC Libraries subscribe to, such as ProQuest , include built-in citation generators that help take the guesswork out of how to properly cite a work. When available, you should always utilize these features because they not only generate a citation to the source [e.g., a journal article], but include information about where you accessed the source [e.g., the database].

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What is a citation search?

Citation searching is a way to find relevant research in a field or subject by looking at what an article has referenced and who has referenced that article since it was published. For example, if you find a journal article from 2017, a citation search can show you both the articles it cited and the articles that have cited it since then. This helps you to see how research on the topic has evolved over time.

Why do a citation search?

There are several reasons to do a citation search:

• It can help uncover relevant articles from unexpected disciplines. 
• It can indicate how influential a particular idea, theory or study has become. If an article has been cited many times, it suggests it has been widely read and discussed. It could also be widely cited because it is considered controversial.
• It allows you to track an argument or idea over time.
• It helps you find other possible terms to use in your searches.
• It’s useful for putting together a bibliography or list of recommended readings.

How do you do a citation search?

• Identify a key article:  Start by finding a key article, author, or book that you’re studying, or one that is referenced in another article you’re looking at (usually something that has been in publication for at least one or two years). This will be the focus of your search.
• Find a database with a citation index:  Web of Science ,  Google Scholar ,  Academic Search Complete ,  ScienceDirect , and  Scopus  all include citation indexes.
• Carry out the citation search:  Use the title or author’s name to search for citations in the database.
• Review the results:  The search will provide a list of articles that have cited the same article, author, or book in their own reference lists. These articles likely discuss aspects of the subject you’re interested in.

By doing this, you are building a ‘web of knowledge’ for your topic. You may find useful articles in journals that seem unrelated to your main subject.

Example searches

Web of science.

Here is an example search from   Web of Science  using Jones, J.C. (1980)  Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures,  2nd edn, Wiley, as the target book citation:

• Access  Web of Science .
• Select ‘Cited reference Search’.
• Enter the name of your target author in the prescribed format (Jones JC) and the year of publication (1980).
• Select Search.
• You will then get a list of the books and papers published by Jones in 1980, which have been cited in the bibliographies of the articles in the Web of Science database.
• Select the check boxes in the list that match the work you are interested in (in this case Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures). Then select 'See Results'. to see who has cited it.
• To view more information about any of these articles click on the article title.
• To check whether an article is available in full text via the OU Library select 'OU Full Text?'.

For a guide to using the database, you can access the  Web of Science Platform Training Resources .

Google Scholar

Here is an example search from   Google Scholar   using Jones, J.C. (1980)  Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures,  2nd edn, Wiley, as the target book citation:

• Go to  Google Scholar .
• Search for the text you are interested in e.g. ‘Jones Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures 1980’.
• Under the entry for that text, follow the ‘Cited by [number of citations]’ link.
• This presents you with a list of other texts that have cited the text you specified.

You can set up Google Scholar to enable seamless access to journal articles subscribed to by the OU Library. You can find instructions on how to do this, on the  Access eresources using Google Scholar  page.

Citation searching tips

To get the best out of your citation searches:

• Use multiple databases : Different databases may index different sets of journals and articles, so using more than one can provide a more thorough search.
• Refine your search : Use filters such as publication date, subject area, and document type to narrow down the results to the most relevant citations.
• Stay updated : Some databases allow you to set alerts to get notified about new research on your topic.
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Measuring Your Impact: Impact Factor, Citation Analysis, and other Metrics: Citation Analysis

• Measuring Your Impact

Citation Analysis

Find your h-index.

• Other Metrics/ Altmetrics
• Journal Impact Factor (IF)
• Selecting Publication Venues

About Citation Analysis

What is Citation Analysis?

The process whereby the impact or "quality" of an article is assessed by counting the number of times other authors mention it in their work.

Citation analysis invovles counting the number of times an article is cited by other works to measure the impact of a publicaton or author.  The caviat however, there is no single citation analysis tools that collects all publications and their cited references.  For a thorough analysis of the impact of an author or a publication, one needs to look in multiple databases to find all possible cited references. A number of resources are available at UIC  that identify cited works including: Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and other databases with limited citation data.

Citation Analysis - Why use it?

To find out how much impact a particular article or author has had, by showing which other authors cited the work within their own papers.  The H-Index is one specific method utilizing citation analysis to determine an individuals impact.

Web of Science

Web of Science provides citation counts for articles indexed within it.  It i ndexes over 10,000 journals in the arts, humanities,  sciences, and social sciences.

• Enter the name of the author in the top search box (e.g. Smith JT).  
• Select Author from the drop-down menu on the right.
• To ensure accuracy for popular names, enter Univ Illinois in the middle search box, then select “Address” from the field drop down menu on the right.  (You might have to add the second search box by clicking "add another field" before you enter the address)
• Click on Search
• a list of publications by that author name will appear.   To the right of each citation, the number of times the article has been cited will appear.   Click the number next to "times cited" to view the articles that have cited your article

Scopus provide citation counts for articles indexed within it (limited to article written in 1996 and after).   It indexes o ver 15,000 journals from over 4,000 international publishers across the disciplines.

• Once in Scopus, click on the Author search tab.
• Enter the name of the author in the search box.  If you are using initials for the first and/or middle name, be sure to enter periods after the initials (e.g. Smith J.T.). 
• To ensure accuracy if it is a popular name, you may enter University of Illinois in the affiliation field.  
• If more than one profile appears, click on your profile (or the profile of the person you are examining). 
• Once you click on the author's profile, a list of the publications will appear and to the right of each ctation, the number of times the article has been cited will appear.  
• Click the number to view the articles that have cited your article

 Dimensions (UIC does not subscribe but parts are free to use)

• Indexes over 28000 journals
• Does not display h-index in Dimensions but can calculate or if faculty, look in MyActivities
• Includes Altmetrics score
• Google Scholar

Google Scholar provides citation counts for articles found within Google Scholar.  Depending on the discipline and cited article, it may find more cited references than Web of Science or Scopus because overall, Google Scholar is indexing more journals and more publication types than other databases. Google Scholar is not specific about what is included in its tool but information is available on how Google obtains its content .   Limiting searches to only publications by a specific author name is complicated in Google Scholar.  Using Google Scholar Citations and creating your own profile will make it easy for you to create a list of publications included in Google Scholar.   Using your Google Scholar Citations account, you can see the citation counts for your publications and have GS calculate your h-index.  (You can also search Google Scholar by author name and the title of an article to retrieve citation information for a specific article.)

• Using your google (gmail) account, create a profile of all your articles captured in Google Scholar.  Follow the prompt on the scrren to set up your profile.   Once complete, this will show all the times the articles have been cited by other documents in Google Scholar and your h-index will be provided.  Its your choice whether you make your profile public or private but if you make it public, you can link to it from your own webpages.

Try Harzing's Publish or Perish Tool in order to more selectively examine published works by a specific author.

Databases containing limited citation counts:

• PubMed Central
• Science Direct
• SciFinder Scholar

About the H-index

The h-index is an index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output ( J.E. Hirsch )   The h-index is an index that attempts to measure both the scientific productivity and the apparent scientific impact of a scientist. The index is based on the set of the researcher's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other people's publications ( Wikipedia )  A scientist has index h if h of [his/her] Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np − h) papers have at most h citations each.

Find your h-index at:

Below are instructions for obtaining your h-index from Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar.

Web of Science provides citation counts for articles indexed within it.  It indexes over 12,000 journals in the arts, humanities,  sciences, and social sciences.  To find an author's h-index in WOS:

• To ensure accuracy for popular names, add an additional search box and enter "Univ Illinois" and then select “Address” from the field drop down menu on the right.
• Click on Citation Report on the right hand corner of the results page.  The H-index is on the right of the screen.
• If more than one profile appears, click on your profile (or the profile of the person you are examining).  Under the Research section, you will see the h-index listed.
• If you have worked at more than one place, your name may appear twice with 2 separate h-index ratings.  Select the check box next to each relevent profile, and click show documents.

  Google Scholar

• Using your google (gmail) account, create a profile of all your articles captured in Google Scholar.  Follow the prompt on the screen to set up your profile.   Once complete, this will show all the times the articles have been cited by other documents in Google Scholar and your h-index will be provided.  Its your choice whether you make your profile public or private but if you make it public, you can link to it from your own webpages.
• See  Albert Einstein's
• Harzing’s Publish or Perish (POP) 
• Publish or Perish Searches Google Scholar.  After searching by your name, deselect from the list of articles retrieved those that you did not author.  Your h-index will appear at the top of the tool.  Note:This tool must be downloaded to use
• << Previous: Measuring Your Impact
• Next: Find Your H-Index >>
• Last Updated: Jun 14, 2024 1:10 PM
• URL: https://researchguides.uic.edu/if

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How to quickly get complete list of citations to all my papers?

I need to get citations (with complete info including authors, journal, date) to all my papers. What's the best way (hopefully without too much manual copy & paste) to do this?

What i so far tried:

Google Scholar seem to give more complete list of papers that cite my paper that it includes papers in non-English language journals etc. But i can't see how to get authors, journal title, volume number etc quickly from the Google Scholar search output.

• publications

• 1 I haven't used it, but this might help: github.com/tonybreyal/Blog-Reference-Functions/blob/master/R/… –  Suresh Commented Feb 22, 2013 at 5:38
• 2 If you are using Google Scholar, you'll have to filter out lots of false positives and edit the reference files for wrong fields (e.g., wrong journal names). Google itself hasn't managed to do it properly yet, so if you know a way to automate this you might want to contact them with an offer. :) –  Federico Poloni Commented Feb 22, 2013 at 7:31
• @DaveClarke I'm sorry, it seems that I misunderstood the question. I'm not a native speaker and it sounded like "citations to [include in]" instead of "citations [pointing] to" (/"citations of"). I deleted my previous comment. –  Piotr Migdal Commented Feb 22, 2013 at 14:50

3 Answers 3

You can use Scopus to do that, but only if you / your institute has access.

Search for an article that you (or someone else) has authored, click on the author name, then click on "citations".

I'm not sure if Scopus deeplinking works, but try this for a direct link.

• 3 but only if you / your institute has access — and you only care about citations in venues that Scopus indexes. –  JeffE Commented Feb 23, 2013 at 0:51

As an alternative to scopus, you can use Web of Science. It's also subscription based though, and your institution may or may not have access.

Go to http://apps.webofknowledge.com , select the tab labelled "Web of Science", and enter your name in the search field for the author. When the results show up, you should see a link labelled "Create citation report" near the top right corner of the results list. Follow that, and in the results table you will see an element "Citing Articles[?] : nnn", where nnn is the number of citing articles. Click on the number, and you are taken to a list of all citing articles from the Web of Science database.

In case the result list after searching for your name has false positives, you can exclude them from the citation report either by setting a year range, or manually excluding them one-by-one.

Harzing's Publish or Perish software is the tool which will probably help you most. It is a Windows application, which allows you to specify queries and then goes to Google Scholar to retrieve and sort the references, citations, etc. Besides computing h-index and a host of other bibliometric indices, it allows you to produce reports from your searches and this is what you seem to be after. Even though running only on Windows, installing Wine emulator to run it is worth the hassle.

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Finding How Many Times an Article Has Been Cited, and by Which Articles (aka Cited Reference Searching)

Several UMGC Library databases and other resources can be used to find how many times a particular article has been cited and to also find a list of the documents that have cited the article. These resources include:

Scroll down the page or use the links above to jump down the page to learn how to find citation information in these resources.

Scopus's most complete citation information is for documents published during or after 1970.

To use Scopus to find how many documents have cited a given article, enter information about the article into the database, as shown in the screen shot below. It's generally sufficient to enter just the first few words of an article's title -- which should be put between quotation marks so that the words will be searched for as a phrase -- into the search box and to then select the Article Title option from the field selection menu next to the search box. You may also want to click on the + icon next to the field selection menu to generate a new line with a new search box into which you can enter the first author's last name and then select the First Author option. (In this case, the article of interest is Robert M. Grant's 1996 article from Strategic Management Journal entitled "Toward a knowledge-based theory of the firm.")

The number in the "Cited by" column shows the number of times that the article has been cited by other documents that are indexed by Scopus. In this case, when the screen shot below was taken, it showed that Grant's article had been cited by 8,494 documents indexed by Scopus :

The number of citing documents is a hyperlink, so you can click on the 8494 to see a list of all 8,494 documents that have cited Grant's article.

Emerald Insight

To use Emerald Insight to find how many documents have cited a given article, go to the Advanced Search page and enter information about the article into the database, as shown in the screen shot below. It's generally sufficient to enter just the first few words of an article's title -- which should be put between quotation marks so that the words will be searched for as a phrase -- into one search box, selecting Title from the field selection menu next to the search box. You may also want to click on the "Add Row" button to generate a new line with a new search box into which you can enter an author's last name -- which should also be put between quotation marks if the last name consists of two or more words -- and select Contributor from the field selection menu next to the search box. (In this case, the article of interest is Jeroen P. J. de Jong and Deanne N. Den Hartog's 2007 article from European Journal of Innovation Management entitled "How leaders influence employees' innovative behaviour.")

From the search results page, click on the ALTMETRICS link for the article.

You will then be taken to a page that will show how much attention the article has received on sources such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. Click on the Dimensions citations tab to find how many publications cite the article.

The View all 426 publications that cite this research output on Dimensions sentence is a hyperlink, so you can click on the sentence to see a list of all 426 documents that have cited de Jong and Den Hartog's article.

Google Scholar

To use Google Scholar to find how many documents have cited a given article, enter information about the article into the search engine's search box, as shown in the screen shot below. It's generally sufficient to enter just the first few words of an article's title -- which should be put between quotation marks so that the words will be searched for as a phrase -- along with an author's last name. Google uses an implied AND, so there's no need to put AND between an article's title and an author's last name. (In this case, the article of interest is Sara L. Rynes, Barry Gerhart, and Kathleen A. Minette's 2004 article from Human Resource Management entitled "The importance of pay in employee motivation: Discrepancies between what people say and what they do .")

The number of citations for the article will be shown below the article's information on the search results page. In this case when the screen shot was taken, Google Scholar indicated that the article had been cited by 451 documents that are indexed by Google Scholar:

The number of citing documents is a hyperlink, so you can click on the Cited by 451 to see a list of all 451 documents that have cited Rynes, Gerhart, and Minette's article.

ProQuest databases (e.g., ABI/INFORM Collection)

To use ProQuest databases to find how many documents have cited a given article, enter information about the article into a ProQuest database (e.g., ABI/INFORM Collection ), as shown in the screen shot below. It's generally sufficient to enter just the first few words of an article's title -- which should be put between quotation marks so that the words will be searched for as a phrase -- into one search box, selecting the Document title - TI option from the field selection menu next to the search box. You may also want to enter an author's last name in another search box and select the Author - AU option from the field selection menu next to the search box. (In this case, the article of interest is Fariza H. Rusly, James L. Corner, and Peter Sun's 2012 article from Journal of Knowledge Management entitled "Positioning change readiness in knowledge management research.")

The number of citations for the article will be shown below the article's information on the search results page. In this case, when the screen shot was taken, ABI/INFORM Collection indicated that the article had been cited by 15 documents that are indexed by the database :

The number of citing documents is a hyperlink, so you can click on the Cited by (15) link to see a list of all 15 documents that have cited Rusly, Corner, and Sun's article.

The References entry indicates how many articles Rusly, Corner, and Sun's article cites (i.e., how many entries are on their own article's reference list).

EBSCO databases (e.g., Business Source Complete, PsycINFO, etc.)

Certain EBSCO databases, including Business Source Complete and PsycINFO , provide citation information for articles. To use those databases to find how many documents have cited a given article, enter information about the article into the database, as shown in the screen shot below. It's generally sufficient to enter just the first few words of an article's title -- which should be put between quotation marks so that the words will be searched for as a phrase -- into one search box, selecting the TI Title option. You may also want to enter an author's last name in another search box and select the AU Author option. (In this case, the article of interest is Dan Wheatley's 2012 article from New Technology, Work & Employment entitled "Good to be home? Time-use and satisfaction levels among home-based teleworkers.")

The number of citations for the article will be shown on the search results page. In this case, when the screen shot was taken, Business Source Complete indicated that the article had been cited by 1 document indexed by the database :

The number of citing documents is a hyperlink, so you can click on the Times Cited in this Database (1) link to see the 1 document that has cited Wheatley's article.

T he Cited References entry indicates how many articles Wheatley's article cites (i.e., how many entries are on his own article's reference list).

If you have any questions about this information, please use the UMGC Library's Ask a Librarian service to receive assistance.

Citation Generator

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• DVD, video, or film
• E-book or PDF
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• Music or recording
• Online image or video
• Presentation
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• Religious text

What Is Cite This For Me’s Citation Generator?

Cite This For Me’s open-access generator is an automated citation machine that turns any of your sources into citations in just a click. Using a citation generator helps students to integrate referencing into their research and writing routine; turning a time-consuming ordeal into a simple task.

A citation machine is essentially a works cited generator that accesses information from across the web, drawing the relevant information into a fully-formatted bibliography that clearly presents all of the sources that have contributed to your work.

If you don’t know how to cite correctly, or have a fast-approaching deadline, Cite This For Me’s accurate and intuitive citation machine will lend you the confidence to realise your full academic potential. In order to get a grade that reflects all your hard work, your citations must be accurate and complete. Using a citation maker to create your references not only saves you time but also ensures that you don’t lose valuable marks on your assignment.

Not sure how to format your citations, what citations are, or just want to find out more about Cite This For Me’s citation machine? This guide outlines everything you need to know to equip yourself with the know-how and confidence to research and cite a wide range of diverse sources in your work.

Why Do I Need To Cite?

Simply put, referencing is the citing of sources used in essays, articles, research, conferences etc. When another source contributes to your work, you have to give the original owner the appropriate credit. After all, you wouldn’t steal someone else’s possessions so why would you steal their ideas?

Any factual material or ideas you take from another source must be acknowledged in a reference, unless it is common knowledge (e.g. President Kennedy was killed in 1963). Failing to credit all of your sources, even when you’ve paraphrased or completely reworded the information, is plagiarism. Plagiarizing will result in disciplinary action, which can range from losing precious points on your assignment to expulsion from your university.

What’s more, attributing your research infuses credibility and authority into your work, both by supporting your own ideas and by demonstrating the breadth of your research. For many students, crediting sources can be a confusing and tedious process, but it’s a surefire way to improve the quality of your work so it’s essential to get it right. Luckily for you, using Cite This For Me’s citation machine makes creating accurate references easier than ever, leaving more time for you to excel in your studies.

In summary, the referencing process serves three main functions:

• To validate the statements and conclusions in your work by providing directions to other sound sources that support and verify them.
• To help your readers locate, read and check your sources, as well as establishing their contribution to your work.
• To give credit to the original author and hence avoid committing intellectual property theft (known as ‘plagiarism’ in academia).

How Do I Cite My Sources With The Cite This For Me Citation Machine?

Cite This For Me’s citation generator is the most accurate citation machine available, so whether you’re not sure how to format in-text citations or are looking for a foolproof solution to automate a fully-formatted works cited list, this citation machine will solve all of your referencing needs.

Referencing your source material doesn’t just prevent you from losing valuable marks for plagiarism, it also provides all of the information to help your reader find for themselves the book, article, or other item you are citing. The accessible interface of this citation builder makes it easy for you to identify the source you have used – simply enter its unique identifier into the citation machine search bar. If this information is not available you can search for the title or author instead, and then select from the search results that appear below the citation generator.

The good news is that by using tools such as Cite This For Me, which help you work smarter, you don’t need to limit your research to sources that are traditional to cite. In fact, there are no limits to what you can reference, whether it be a YouTube video, website or a tweet.

To use the works cited generator, simply:

• Select from APA, MLA, Chicago, ASA, IEEE and AMA * styles.
• Choose the type of source you would like to cite (e.g. website, book, journal, video).
• Enter the URL , DOI , ISBN , title, or other unique source information into the citation generator to find your source.
• Click the ‘Cite’ button on the citation machine.
• Copy your new reference from the citation generator into your bibliography or works cited list.
• Repeat for each source that has contributed to your work.

*If you require another referencing style for your paper, essay or other academic work, you can select from over 1,000 styles by creating a free Cite This For Me account.

Once you have created your Cite This For Me account you will be able to use the citation machine to generate multiple references and save them into a project. Use the highly-rated iOS or Android apps to create references in a flash with your smartphone camera, export your complete bibliography in one go, and much more.

What Will The Citation Machine Create For Me?

Cite This For Me’s citation maker will generate your reference in two parts; an in-text citation and a full reference to be copied straight into your work.

The citation machine will auto-generate the correct formatting for your works cited list or bibliography depending on your chosen style. For instance, if you select a parenthetical style on the citation machine it will generate an in-text citation in parentheses, along with a full reference to slot into your bibliography. Likewise, if the citation generator is set to a footnote style then it will create a fully-formatted reference for your reference page and bibliography, as well as a corresponding footnote to insert at the bottom of the page containing the relevant source.

Parenthetical referencing examples:

In-text example: A nation has been defined as an imagined community (Anderson, 2006).* Alternative format: Anderson (2006) defined a nation as an imagined community.

*The citation machine will create your references in the first style, but this should be edited if the author’s name already appears in the text.

Bibliography / Works Cited list example: Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities. London: Verso.

Popular Citation Examples

• Citing archive material
• Citing artwork
• Citing an audiobook
• Citing the Bible
• Citing a blog
• Citing a book
• Citing a book chapter
• Citing a comic book
• Citing conference proceedings
• Citing a court case
• Citing a database
• Citing a dictionary entry
• Citing a dissertation
• Citing an eBook
• Citing an edited book
• Citing an email
• Citing an encyclopedia article
• Citing a government publication
• Citing an image
• Citing an interview
• Citing a journal article
• Citing legislation
• Citing a magazine
• Citing a meme
• Citing a mobile app
• Citing a movie
• Citing a newspaper
• Citing a pamphlet
• Citing a patent
• Citing a play
• Citing a podcast
• Citing a poem
• Citing a presentation
• Citing a press release
• Citing a pseudonym
• Citing a report
• Citing Shakespeare
• Citing social media
• Citing a song
• Citing software
• Citing a speech
• Citing translated book
• Citing a TV Show
• Citing a weather report
• Citing a website
• Citing Wikipedia article
• Citing a YouTube video

What Are Citation Styles?

A citation style is a set of rules that you, as an academic writer, must follow to ensure the quality and relevance of your work. There are thousands of styles that are used in different academic institutions around the world, but in the US the most common are APA, MLA and Chicago.

The style you need to use will depend on the preference of your professor, discipline or academic institution – so if you’re unsure which style you should be using, consult your department and follow their guidelines exactly, as this is what you’ll be evaluated on when it comes to grading.

Referencing isn’t just there to guard against plagiarism – presenting your research in a clear and consistent way eases the reader’s comprehension. Each style has a different set of rules for both page formatting and referencing. Be sure to adhere to formatting rules such as font type, font size and line spacing to ensure that your work is easily legible. Furthermore, if your work is published as part of an anthology or collected works, each entry will need to be presented in the same style to maintain uniformity throughout. It is important to make sure that you don’t jump from one style to another, so follow the rules carefully to ensure your reference page and bibliography are both accurate and complete.

If you need a hand with your referencing then why not try Cite This For Me’s citation builder? It’s the quickest and easiest way to reference any source, in any style. The citation generator above will create your references in MLA format style as standard, but this powerful citation machine can generate fully-formatted references in over 1,000 styles – including individual university variations of each style. So, whether your subject requires you to use the APA citation , or your professor has asked you to adopt the Chicago style citation so that your work includes numbered footnotes, we’re sure to have the style you need. Cite This For Me also offers a citation machine and helpful formatting guide for styles such as ASA , IEEE , AMA or Harvard . To access all of them, simply create your free Cite This For Me account and search for your specific style.

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How Do I Format A Works Cited List Or Bibliography?

Drawing on a wide range of sources greatly enhances the quality of your work, and reading above and beyond your recommended reading list – and then using these sources to support your own thesis – is an excellent way to impress your reader. A clearly presented works cited list or bibliography demonstrates the lengths you have gone to in researching your chosen topic.

Typically, a works cited list starts on a new page at the end of the main body of text and includes a complete list of the sources you have actually cited in your paper. This list should contain all the information needed for the reader to locate the original source of the information, quote or statistic that directly contributed to your work. On the other hand, a bibliography is a comprehensive list of all the material you may have consulted throughout your research and writing process. Both provide the necessary information for readers to retrieve and check the sources cited in your work.

Each style’s guidelines will define the terminology of ‘ works cited ’ and ‘ bibliography ’, as well as providing formatting guidelines for font, line spacing and page indentations. In addition, it will instruct you on how to order your works cited list or bibliography – this will usually be either alphabetical or chronological (meaning the order that these sources appear in your work). Before submitting your work, be sure to check that you have formatted your whole paper – including your reference page and bibliography – according to your style’s formatting guidelines.

Sounds complicated? Referencing has never been so easy; Cite This For Me’s citation machine will automatically generate fully-formatted references for your works cited page or bibliography in your chosen style.

How Do Citations Actually Work?

Although the citation generator will create your bibliography and works cited list for you in record time, it is still useful to understand how this system works behind the scenes. Understanding how a citation machine actually generates references will greatly increase the quality of your work.

As well as saving you time with its citation maker, Cite This For Me provides the learning resources to help you fully understand the citing process and the benefits of adopting great referencing standards.

The referencing process:

• Find a book, journal, website or other source that will contribute to your work.
• Save the quote, image, data or other information that you will use in your work.
• Save the source information that enables you to find it again (i.e. URL, ISBN, DOI etc.).
• Format the source information into a reference.
• Copy and paste the reference into the body of the text.
• Repeat for each source that contributes to your work.
• Export or copy and paste the fully-formatted reference into your bibliography.

Manage all your citations in one place

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APA format: Basic Guide for Researchers

The American Psychological Association (APA) is an official style format that is used by researchers and authors for academic and scientific writing. It is basically a standardized style guide used in psychology, education, and social science. It provides a framework for structuring research papers, presenting findings in a clear and concise manner and for accurately cite sources. The other commonly used style guides are the MLA and the Chicago style formats.  

How to write your research paper in APA format    

In the APA style, you need to adhere to specific formats and guidelines throughout the research paper. Some of these are explained below:  

The APA format allows different types of fonts. Some of the recommended ones include 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, 11-point Calibri and 11-point Arial. The chosen font should be consistently used throughout the document. Figure images have to be in sans serif font with size between 8 and 14 points. Footnotes should be smaller than the text font and the line spacing will also be different.  

APA style provides for five levels of headings, each having its own format. Level 1 is the main heading, level 2 corresponds to the sub-heading of level 1, level 3 corresponds to the sub-heading of level 2 and so on. The headings should be double spaced and should not be numbered or lettered.  

Line spacing:

Generally, the APA format recommends double spacing throughout the text with few exceptions.  

A one inch margin is to be provided on each side of the paper. For dissertations and thesis, experts’ advice considering specific instructions provided by your institution.  

Paragraph alignment and indentation:

Text should be aligned to the left margin leaving the right margin uneven or “ragged”. The first line of each paragraph in the text should be indented 0.5 inches from the left margin.  

Under the APA format , there are also certain guidelines to be followed while preparing different sections of the research paper. These include –   

• Title page: All manuscripts must have a title page. The title should be concise, and must accurately reflect the contents of the paper. The author’s name and institutional affiliation should be centred, and positioned just below the title.  
• Abstract: A key part of academic manuscripts, an abstract must provide a brief summary of the research paper, including the purpose, methodology, results, and conclusions. It should be written within 250 words and should be the second page of your paper. The heading needs to be given as “Abstract” which is centred and bold. The text of the abstract should be written in a single paragraph, double spaced and must not be indented. Three to five keywords can be given one line below the abstract. These should not be italicized or bold but must be written in lower case. They should be separated by commas and there should not be any ending punctuation at the end of the keywords.  
• Introduction: The introduction is an essential part of scientific manuscripts and should be presented in an interesting and engaging manner. It should be able to convey clearly a critical overview of existing empirical knowledge and highlight knowledge gaps in the topic of study. Additionally, the aim of the research, a well formulated hypothesis, and a description of what you intend to address in the study must be clearly mentioned.  
• Methods: This is another critical part of an academic paper that requires researchers to describe the methods and procedures that were used during the study or experiment. Providing a detailed description contributes to ensuring the reproducibility and replicability of the study. The methods section should explain the research design that was adopted, details of the participants of the study, the equipment or materials used and the variables of the study.  
• Results: Here, researchers have to provide a brief summary of the results of their study. It is important that data is presented in a tabular format or in the form of graphs and figures to make it more interesting and to be easily understood by the reader. It is important to keep in mind that a clear narrative must accompany the statistics provided.  
• Discussion: Researchers must use the discussion section to provide their interpretation of the results of their research and explain its significance. Subsequently, it is in this section that they must present whether or not their results support their hypothesis.  
• References: Each and every source mentioned in a research paper must be referenced and accurately cited in this section.  

References and citations in APA format  

In the APA format, the author-date citation system is followed. Here, a brief in-text citation is provided in the text of your paper of a research paper. It can even appear in tables, figures, footnotes or appendix. Only the author and date of publication is provided here. The readers can refer to the corresponding entry in the reference list where the full citation is provided.   

While writing in-text citations, it is important to ensure that spelling of author names and publication dates are same in the in-text and reference list. The reference provides an alphabetical listing. Following are some examples of citations in APA format for different sources.  

• Books : The author surname with first and middle initials is written first. Only the title of the book is italicized. For eg.  
• Author Surname, A.B. (Publication Year). Title of the book . Publisher.  
• Journal article: Author surname, A.B. (Publication Year). Article Title: Subtitle. Journal title, Volume (issue), page range. URL or DOI.  
• Newspaper or magazine article : Surname. (Date of Publication). Title of the article. Title of the Newspaper or Magazine . URL.  

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How to Write an Academic Paragraph (Step-by-Step Guide)

How to choose a dissertation topic.

• How to Write the First Draft of a Research Paper with Paperpal? 

How to Write a Research Proposal: (with Examples & Templates)

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How to Cite a Research Paper

Last Updated: March 29, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was reviewed by Gerald Posner and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD . Gerald Posner is an Author & Journalist based in Miami, Florida. With over 35 years of experience, he specializes in investigative journalism, nonfiction books, and editorials. He holds a law degree from UC College of the Law, San Francisco, and a BA in Political Science from the University of California-Berkeley. He’s the author of thirteen books, including several New York Times bestsellers, the winner of the Florida Book Award for General Nonfiction, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. He was also shortlisted for the Best Business Book of 2020 by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 418,360 times.

When writing a paper for a research project, you may need to cite a research paper you used as a reference. The basic information included in your citation will be the same across all styles. However, the format in which that information is presented is somewhat different depending on whether you're using American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA), Chicago, or American Medical Association (AMA) style.

Referencing a Research Paper

• In APA style, cite the paper: Last Name, First Initial. (Year). Title. Publisher.
• In Chicago style, cite the paper: Last Name, First Name. “Title.” Publisher, Year.
• In MLA style, cite the paper: Last Name, First Name. “Title.” Publisher. Year.

Citation Help

• For example: "Kringle, K., & Frost, J."

• For example: "Kringle, K., & Frost, J. (2012)."
• If the date, or any other information, are not available, use the guide at https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/05/missing-pieces.html .

• For example: "Kringle, K., & Frost, J. (2012). Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer."
• If you found the research paper in a database maintained by a university, corporation, or other organization, include any index number assigned to the paper in parentheses after the title. For example: "Kringle, K., & Frost, J. (2012). Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer. (Report No. 1234)."

• For example: "Kringle, K., & Frost, J. (2012). Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer. (Report No. 1234). Retrieved from Alaska University Library Archives, December 24, 2017."

• For example: "(Kringle & Frost, 2012)."
• If there was no date on the research paper, use the abbreviation n.d. : "(Kringle & Frost, n.d.)."

• For example: "Kringle, Kris, and Jack Frost."

• For example: "Kringle, Kris, and Jack Frost. "Red Noses, Warm Hearts: The Glowing Phenomenon among North Pole Reindeer." Master's thesis."

• For example: "Kringle, Kris, and Jack Frost. "Red Noses, Warm Hearts: The Glowing Phenomenon among North Pole Reindeer." Master's thesis, Alaska University, 2012."

• For example: "Kringle, Kris, and Jack Frost. "Red Noses, Warm Hearts: The Glowing Phenomenon among North Pole Reindeer." Master's thesis, Alaska University, 2012. Accessed at https://www.northpolemedical.com/raising_rudolf."

• Footnotes are essentially the same as the full citation, although the first and last names of the authors aren't inverted.
• For parenthetical citations, Chicago uses the Author-Date format. For example: "(Kringle and Frost 2012)."

• For example: "Kringle, Kris, and Frost, Jack."

• For example: "Kringle, Kris, and Frost, Jack. "Red Noses, Warm Hearts: The Glowing Phenomenon Among North Pole Reindeer.""

• For example, suppose you found the paper in a collection of paper housed in university archives. Your citation might be: "Kringle, Kris, and Frost, Jack. "Red Noses, Warm Hearts: The Glowing Phenomenon Among North Pole Reindeer." Master's Theses 2000-2010. University of Alaska Library Archives. Accessed December 24, 2017."

• For example: "(Kringle & Frost, p. 33)."

• For example: "Kringle K, Frost J."

• For example: "Kringle K, Frost J. Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer."

• For example: "Kringle K, Frost J. Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer. Nat Med. 2012; 18(9): 1429-1433."

• For example, if you're citing a paper presented at a conference, you'd write: "Kringle K, Frost J. Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer. Oral presentation at Arctic Health Association Annual Summit; December, 2017; Nome, Alaska."
• To cite a paper you read online, you'd write: "Kringle K, Frost J. Red noses, warm hearts: The glowing phenomenon among North Pole reindeer. https://www.northpolemedical.com/raising_rudolf"

• For example: "According to Kringle and Frost, these red noses indicate a subspecies of reindeer native to Alaska and Canada that have migrated to the North Pole and mingled with North Pole reindeer. 1 "

Community Q&A

• If you used a manual as a source in your research paper, you'll need to learn how to cite the manual also. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If you use any figures in your research paper, you'll also need to know the proper way to cite them in MLA, APA, AMA, or Chicago. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://askus.library.wwu.edu/faq/116659
• ↑ https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/apaquickguide/intext
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.html
• ↑ https://libanswers.snhu.edu/faq/48009
• ↑ https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_in_text_citations_the_basics.html
• ↑ https://morningside.libguides.com/MLA8/location
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/ama_style/index.html

About This Article

To cite a paper APA style, start with the author's last name and first initial, and the year of publication. Then, list the title of the paper, where you found it, and the date that you accessed it. In a paper, use a parenthetical reference with the last name of the author and the publication year. For an MLA citation, list the author's last name and then first name and the title of the paper in quotations. Include where you accessed the paper and the date you retrieved it. In your paper, use a parenthetical reference with the author's last name and the page number. Keep reading for tips on Chicago and AMA citations and exceptions to the citation rules! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Citation Searching

• Intro to Citation Searching
• How to: Cited Reference searches in Web of Science
• How to: Related Record searches in Web of Science
• Google Scholar Search

How to search by citations: Cited By searching in Google Scholar

• How to: Citation Searches in other Databases

Google Scholar also tracks how many times an item is cited by other documents in Google Scholar.  Since Google Scholar includes all sorts of scholarly works, including Google Books, this can be a great resource for tracking citations forward.  Particularly in fields of study that rely on books to a greater degree than journal articles (such as many humanities disciplines), you may find very different results in Google Scholar compared to Web of Science.

1.  To begin, search for your item in Google Scholar  using words from the title, the author, etc.  You can click on the small downward triangle near the search button (magnifying glass) to get an advanced search screen.

2.  The results will be ranked by relevance, with matching titles closer to the top.  Beneath each entry, you will see a link that says 'Cited by ...' and a number.   Look carefully, as there may be more than one entry matching your search.  Often there will be a separate entry with [Citation] at the beginning of the title, indicating it is ONLY in Google Scholar as a citation.  Both types of entries are useful for tracing citations forward.

3.  Clicking on "Cited by ..." will bring up a list of citing documents in Google Scholar.  These are arranged with the most highly cited works at the top. 

To locate a copy of these works, you can look for [PDF] links on the right, or links to Find it @ UToledo to the right or below each citation.  Book entries will also have the ability to 'Find in a Library', but you need to click on More to reveal those links.  This will look for the book in libraries close to you based on ZIP Code.

4. You can further narrow you search by searching within the citing articles .  Just check the box below the search box, and enter your search.  The results will be a subset of the citing articles identified above.

• << Previous: How to: Related Record searches in Web of Science
• Next: How to: Citation Searches in other Databases >>
• Last Updated: Mar 2, 2022 11:53 AM
• URL: https://libguides.utoledo.edu/citationsearching

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This is commonly known as a cited reference search .

These searches are never universal---you are always looking at citations from a specific subset of the world’s publications. For library databases, the inclusion criteria mostly focus on a publication’s scholarly merit, but for full-text resources in particular, publishers’ business practices (such as the availability of full-text licensing) may also be a factor.

WEB OF SCIENCE

The most authoritative resource for citation tracing is Web of Science , a multidisciplinary database covering the journal literature of the sciences (comprehensive), social sciences (extensive), and arts and humanities (selective). Its cited references index systematically tracks the references cited in a specific set of journals that meet its criteria for inclusion.

To find citing articles, search for the article and then click on the “times cited” number next it.

For a more complete list, conduct a cited reference search , which will allow you to account for all of the database’s variant entries for your article.

OTHER CITED REFERENCE SEARCHES

Many other databases also offer various forms of "cited by" search or browse options. The accuracy and completeness of these searches vary. See, for example:

JSTOR (look for the "citation locator" search)

Google Scholar (n.b. this returns many false positives, and the total citation counts tend to be inflated)

ScienceDirect (from an article record, click on "citing articles")

EXACT PHRASE SEARCH

As the number of full-text scholarly resources increases, it is often possible to approximate a cited reference search with an exact phrase search, since the "works cited" portion of a scholarly work is usually searchable in full-text resources. That is, if the reference you'd like to trace has been cited in a consistent way, you can do a phrase search for it, and your results will include most of the articles or books that cite the reference. You may need to do multiple searches in order to account for variations in how a work has been cited. For literature in the humanities, exact phrase searching is an important tool, as many cited reference indexes have less complete coverage for humanities material.

Selected full-text resources:

• GoogleScholar
• Google Books
• Project Muse
• Cambridge Core
• Oxford Scholarship Online
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Bibliometrics - Impact Factor, H-index, and More: How to Determine the number of citations for an article

• What are Bibliometrics?
• How to Determine the number of citations for an article
• How to Determine the number of citations for an author
• How to determine the Impact Factor of a Journal

Introduction

There are a number of different databases available to determine how many times an article has been cited by other articles.

Both Scopus and Web of Science can be used to find this information. Google scholar can also provide this information.  Keep in mind the number of citations of each of these databases will be different because of the way they pull the citation information.

Below we will provide instructions on how to use the databases to gather this information

Find Number of Citations on Scopus

How to find the number of citations on scopus.

• Go to the CSHL Library website.
• From there you can click on Resources.
• Then click on Databases & Protocols.
• Then chose Scopus.
• Type in the Search Documents bar what article you would like to find or some key words.
• To the right is the Cited by column with a number, which represents the number of citations.  If the number is greater than 0 then you can click on it and it will give you the papers that cited the one you had searched.

Find Number of Citations on Web of Science

How to find the number of citations on web of science.

• Then chose Web of Science.
• To the right of the article is the number of citations.  If you click on the article, to the right, there is an overview of the references.
• If you click on the number, the papers that cited the article will be displayed.

Find Number of Citations on Google Scholar

How to find the number of citations on google scholar.

• Go to the Google Scholar.
• Below the article is the number of citations.  It says Cited by...
• If you click on the Cited by..., the links of the articles that cited what you searched for will be displayed.

Subject Guide

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• Next: How to Determine the number of citations for an author >>
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Sharing research data

As a researcher, you are increasingly encouraged, or even mandated, to make your research data available, accessible, discoverable and usable.

Sharing research data is something we are passionate about too, so we’ve created this short video and written guide to help you get started.

Research Data

What is research data.

While the definition often differs per field, generally, research data refers to the results of observations or experiments that validate your research findings. These span a range of useful materials associated with your research project, including:

Raw or processed data files

Research data  does not  include text in manuscript or final published article form, or data or other materials submitted and published as part of a journal article.

Why should I share my research data?

There are so many good reasons. We’ve listed just a few:

How you benefit

You get credit for the work you've done

Leads to more citations! 1

Can boost your number of publications

Increases your exposure and may lead to new collaborations

What it means for the research community

It's easy to reuse and reinterpret your data

Duplication of experiments can be avoided

New insights can be gained, sparking new lines of inquiry

Empowers replication

And society at large…

Greater transparency boosts public faith in research

Can play a role in guiding government policy

Improves access to research for those outside health and academia

Benefits the public purse as funding of repeat work is reduced

How do I share my research data?

The good news is it’s easy.

Yet to submit your research article?  There are a number of options available. These may vary depending on the journal you have chosen, so be sure to read the  Research Data  section in its  Guide for Authors  before you begin.

Already published your research article?  No problem – it’s never too late to share the research data associated with it.

Two of the most popular data sharing routes are:

Publishing a research elements article

These brief, peer-reviewed articles complement full research papers and are an easy way to receive proper credit and recognition for the work you have done. Research elements are research outputs that have come about as a result of following the research cycle – this includes things like data, methods and protocols, software, hardware and more.

You can publish research elements articles in several different Elsevier journals, including  our suite of dedicated Research Elements journals . They are easy to submit, are subject to a peer review process, receive a DOI and are fully citable. They also make your work more sharable, discoverable, comprehensible, reusable and reproducible.

The accompanying raw data can still be placed in a repository of your choice (see below).

Uploading your data to a repository like Mendeley Data

Mendeley Data is a certified, free-to-use repository that hosts open data from all disciplines, whatever its format (e.g. raw and processed data, tables, codes and software). With many Elsevier journals, it’s possible to upload and store your data to Mendeley Data during the manuscript submission process. You can also upload your data directly to the repository. In each case, your data will receive a DOI, making it independently citable and it can be linked to any associated article on ScienceDirect, making it easy for readers to find and reuse.

View an article featuring Mendeley data opens in new tab/window  (just select the  Research Data  link in the left-hand bar or scroll down the page).

What if I can’t submit my research data?

Data statements offer transparency.

We understand that there are times when the data is simply not available to post or there are good reasons why it shouldn’t be shared.  A number of Elsevier journals encourage authors to submit a data statement alongside their manuscript. This statement allows you to clearly explain the data you’ve used in the article and the reasons why it might not be available.  The statement will appear with the article on ScienceDirect. 

View a sample data statement opens in new tab/window  (just select the  Research Data  link in the left-hand bar or scroll down the page).

Showcasing your research data on ScienceDirect

We have 3 top tips to help you maximize the impact of your data in your article on ScienceDirect.

Link with data repositories

You can create bidirectional links between any data repositories you’ve used to store your data and your online article. If you’ve published a data article, you can link to that too.

Enrich with interactive data visualizations

The days of being confined to static visuals are over. Our in-article interactive viewers let readers delve into the data with helpful functions such as zoom, configurable display options and full screen mode.

Cite your research data

Get credit for your work by citing your research data in your article and adding a data reference to the reference list. This ensures you are recognized for the data you shared and/or used in your research. Read the  References  section in your chosen journal’s  Guide for Authors  for more information.

Ready to get started?

If you have yet to publish your research paper, the first step is to find the right journal for your submission and read the  Guide for Authors .

Find a journal by matching paper title and abstract of your manuscript in Elsevier's  JournalFinder opens in new tab/window

Find journal by title opens in new tab/window

Already published? Just view the options for sharing your research data above.

1 Several studies have now shown that making data available for an article increases article citations.

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• Introduction
• Finding sources

Evaluating sources

• Integrating sources

Citing sources

Tools and resources, a quick guide to working with sources.

Working with sources is an important skill that you’ll need throughout your academic career.

It includes knowing how to find relevant sources, assessing their authority and credibility, and understanding how to integrate sources into your work with proper referencing.

This quick guide will help you get started!

Finding relevant sources

Sources commonly used in academic writing include academic journals, scholarly books, websites, newspapers, and encyclopedias. There are three main places to look for such sources:

• Research databases: Databases can be general or subject-specific. To get started, check out this list of databases by academic discipline . Another good starting point is Google Scholar .
• Your institution’s library: Use your library’s database to narrow down your search using keywords to find relevant articles, books, and newspapers matching your topic.
• Other online resources: Consult popular online sources like websites, blogs, or Wikipedia to find background information. Be sure to carefully evaluate the credibility of those online sources.

When using academic databases or search engines, you can use Boolean operators to refine your results.

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In academic writing, your sources should be credible, up to date, and relevant to your research topic. Useful approaches to evaluating sources include the CRAAP test and lateral reading.

CRAAP is an abbreviation that reminds you of a set of questions to ask yourself when evaluating information.

• Currency: Does the source reflect recent research?
• Relevance: Is the source related to your research topic?
• Authority: Is it a respected publication? Is the author an expert in their field?
• Accuracy: Does the source support its arguments and conclusions with evidence?
• Purpose: What is the author’s intention?

Lateral reading

Lateral reading means comparing your source to other sources. This allows you to:

• Verify evidence
• Contextualize information
• Find potential weaknesses

If a source is using methods or drawing conclusions that are incompatible with other research in its field, it may not be reliable.

Integrating sources into your work

Once you have found information that you want to include in your paper, signal phrases can help you to introduce it. Here are a few examples:

Following the signal phrase, you can choose to quote, paraphrase or summarize the source.

• Quoting : This means including the exact words of another source in your paper. The quoted text must be enclosed in quotation marks or (for longer quotes) presented as a block quote . Quote a source when the meaning is difficult to convey in different words or when you want to analyze the language itself.
• Paraphrasing : This means putting another person’s ideas into your own words. It allows you to integrate sources more smoothly into your text, maintaining a consistent voice. It also shows that you have understood the meaning of the source.
• Summarizing : This means giving an overview of the essential points of a source. Summaries should be much shorter than the original text. You should describe the key points in your own words and not quote from the original text.

Whenever you quote, paraphrase, or summarize a source, you must include a citation crediting the original author.

Citing your sources is important because it:

• Allows you to avoid plagiarism
• Establishes the credentials of your sources
• Backs up your arguments with evidence
• Allows your reader to verify the legitimacy of your conclusions

The most common citation styles are APA, MLA, and Chicago style. Each citation style has specific rules for formatting citations.

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Scribbr offers tons of tools and resources to make working with sources easier and faster. Take a look at our top picks:

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• Knowledge Base : Explore hundreds of articles, bite-sized videos, time-saving templates, and handy checklists that guide you through the process of research, writing, and citation.