College of Technological Innovation

It's important to cite sources you used in your research for several reasons:

• To show your reader you've done proper research by listing sources you used to get your information
• To be a responsible scholar by giving credit to other researchers and acknowledging their ideas
• To avoid plagiarism by quoting words and ideas used by other authors
• To allow your reader to track down the sources you used by citing them accurately in your paper by way of footnotes, a bibliography or reference list

You must cite:

• Facts, figures, ideas, or other information that is not common knowledge
• Ideas, words, theories, or exact language that another person used in other publications

  Publications that must be cited include:  books, book chapters, articles, web pages, theses, etc.

• Another person's exact words should be quoted and cited to show proper credit 

When in doubt, be safe and cite your source!

Citing a source means that you show, within the body of your text, that you took words, ideas, figures, images, etc. from another place.

There are two formats of citations, a bibliography, and an in-text citation.  

An in-text citation is used to tell the reader that you have taken information from elsewhere.  It contains information about a source in the text of your paper or assignment. It is enclosed in a bracket and it may include information such as:

• author's last name
• year
• page number

 A Bibliography, Reference List or Works Cited is at the end of your paper and it is a list of resources you have consulted or used.  

Different citation styles use different 'words' to describe a list of resources at the end of your paper.  

In general:  

Bibliography:  Contains all resources- even the ones you only consulted but did not cite.    

Reference List or Work Cited:  Contains resources that you cited in your paper (as in-text citations)

For more information about what to use for your citation style, please refer to the appropriate tab (APA or MLA) for your citation style on the top of this page.  

Here are parts of a citation that you should be aware of:  

• Author
• Publish date
• Title(s)
• Publisher
• Place of publication (for printed books and encyclopedia)
• Retrieve date (for electronic resources)
• Retrieved from (for electronic resources retrieved from a database or website)

Watch one of these short tutorials from CLIP or University of Sydney Library’s Referencing activities to learn about the parts of a citation. 

An in-text citation is used to tell the reader that you have taken information from elsewhere.  It contains information about a source in the text of your paper or assignment. It is enclosed in a bracket and it may include information such as:

• author's last name
• year
• page number

 A Bibliography, Reference List or Works Cited is at the end of your paper and it is a list of resources you have consulted or used.  

Different citation styles use different 'words' to describe a list of resources at the end of your paper.  

In general:  

Bibliography:  Contains all resources- even the ones you only consulted but did not cite.    

Reference List or Work Cited:  Contains resources that you cited in your paper (as in-text citations)

For more information about what to use for your citation style, please refer to the appropriate tab (APA or MLA) for your citation style on the top of this page.  

Here are parts of a citation that you should be aware of:  

• Author
• Publish date
• Title(s)
• Publisher
• Place of publication (for printed books and encyclopedia)
• Retrieve date (for electronic resources)
• Retrieved from (for electronic resources retrieved from a database or website)

Watch one of these short tutorials from CLIP or University of Sydney Library’s Referencing activities to learn about the parts of a citation.