citation notes

NOTES ON USE AND CITATION OF SOURCES

With increasing availability of so many types of information and sources online, the rules for appropriate citation of sources may be less clear than in the old days of paper. Here are some guidelines regarding two important questions:
- WHEN do I need to cite sources?
- HOW do I cite sources?

I. WHEN to cite:

This is one of the most important questions in scholarly work; failing to cite appropriately can be one of the most serious scholarly sins (and can seriously affect your evaluation). There may be some gray areas around the edges, but the underlying principles are straightforward:

If your argument incorporates ideas, claims, evidence, or interpretations that you've drawn from some other source, then you must cite that source.
If you use passages of prose from another source (including your own writing!), such quotes must be identified and the source acknowledged.

Failure to adhere to these principles appropriately constitutes plagiarism and will affect your evaluation; egregious or repeated plagiarism may result in failure of the class. There must, obviously, be a threshold for these standards; you do not need, generally, to cite a supporting reference for statements of 'common knowledge' (e.g., that the earth is round -- unless, say, you were analyzing the history of this understanding, or some particular claim about it; then cite!). You do not need to cite a short, common phrase (like 'common knowledge') as a quotation, even though someone must have used it first... You must use your (informed) judgment. But, if you're unsure, ask -- or go ahead and cite source!

II. HOW to cite:

The basic principle here is straightforward. Your citation of a source should allow your reader to locate that source easily. However, the particulars of format, what information should be provided, etc. are trickier than they used to be when cited work was almost always published on paper. SO, here are some guidelines.

REFERING TO A SOURCE in your writing: There are lots of varying standards here, even within the world of scholarly work. Some use footnotes, some use endnotes, some insert author and date in text with a 'references cited' section at the end, etc. I ask you to choose a standard and use it consistently. The easiest approach, if this is new to you, might be to look at a scholarly publication (we'll be reading a variety of them), and imitate its style.
INFORMATION TO INCLUDED IN A CITATION: As noted above, your full citation (either in first foot/end-note to a source, or in list at end of paper) should include essential information for locating the citation. That will differ, however, depending on nature of source:

If you're citing a paper from a scholarly journal even if you found it on-line, include a) author's name, b) year of publication, c) title of paper, d) name of journal with volume and e) volumen and page numbers (or, in some newer digital-only journals, it may be a volume and paper number). DON'T JUST GIVE THE WEB URL. For this type of publication, it is NOT necessary to give the on-line database through which you found the paper or the date you accessed it; the information listed is definitive because the source is permanent. Including the DOI (digital object identifier) as well as standard citation info is good (eventually, DOI may be sufficient; we're not there yet).
Citation from 'traditional' news or popular publications/magazines should be similar: always include, if possible: author, publication date, title of article, source, pages.
If you're citing a book, it's similar; author, date, title (and edition if it's not 1st), and publisher.
Digital-only stuff can be trickier. You should attempt to include the same basic information -- an author (which might be an organization), a title, date of publicaton, publishing entity -- IF these things can be identified. Here, YOU MUST PROVIDE the full URL ('Uniform Resource Locator': what's in the address line of your browser). Again, for citations of journal articles and books, a URL is NOT required (even if you accessed them on-line), but if it makes you happy, go ahead!
In the case of 'web-only' sources that are 'fluid' (like wikipedia or some organization's website), it IS ESSENTIAL to give the DATE YOU ACCESSED THE INFORMATION, since these sources can change. (Needless to say, I hope, your use of such sources should recognize that information gleaned from them may not be there tomorrow and is only as reliable as the unknown individual who posted it!)
TO REPEAT: it's not required to include the data-base/search-engine you used to find the material if you give the full URL of the source itself (as you should).

Note that a 'references cited' list is not necessarily the same as a 'bibliography'. The latter may include sources pertinent to your writing even if you don't make explicit and direct use of them. You must give full references for things you cite; a bibliography is an option (unless specifically requested).
It's fine to incorporate hyperlinks directly in on-line material (like wiki articles) produced for class, but you should still provide explicit citation info as discussed here.

Here are a few examples of full citations for different types of sources and in different formats -- all acceptable -- just to give you a sense:

Dockrill, S. J., and J. M. Bond. 2009. Sustainability and Resilience in Prehistoric North Atlantic Britain: The Importance of a Mixed Paleoeconomic System. Journal of the North Atlantic 2:33–50. doi: 10.3721/037.002.0105.

Crosby, A. W. Germs, Seeds & Animals: Studies in Ecological History. ME Sharpe Inc, 1994.

Wright, Karen. 1998. “Empires in the Dust.” Discover (March): 94–99.

Anon. Atlas of the Biosphere. 2010. Available at: http://www.sage.wisc.edu/atlas/index.php. Accessed September 18, 2010.

“Progressive Forest Clearing, Bolivia.” Text.Article, December 22, 2008. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36245.

III. Managing bibliographic and citation information.

While you don't have to do this to meet expectations listed above, I'd recommend that you think about using some available tools for managing your reference/bibliographic resources. I use a very powerful and intuitive and FREE reference management package called ZOTERO. Zotero is open-source, and is very good at both 'capturing' reference information from on-line material and at generating in-text citations and references cited lists and bibliographies. You can also use it to store materials (including full pdf's of source) in the cloud and synchronize your database across machines.

-- KW, Feb 2013