This guide explains why good citation practice is critical, and help you create properly formatted bibliographies/work cited lists and notes.
Use the sidebars to choose the citation style you need to use, find out how to get help citing, and learn how to use citation managers such as Zotero.
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Why Cite?
Sources are cited in order to adhere to the principles of Academic Integrity and Plagiarism avoidance, which means that research is conducted with respect given to those who inform new work and honesty in acknowledging the work of those from whom we borrow and use for support.. Embracing academic integrity as a value ensures ensures respect for the academic reputation of Harrisburg University, its students, faculty, and staff, and the degrees it confers. The University expects that students will conduct themselves in an honest and ethical manner and respect the intellectual work of others by acknowledging when sources are used. Sources must be acknowledged in order to:
- Give credit to the original source of information
- Situate work within a broader scholarly conversation
- Strengthen arguments by lending credibility to our own work
- Avoid plagiarism
- Help readers find more information about a topic
Citing sources is not just about avoiding plagiarism. It's about building a body of scholarly work, allowing readers to easily locate sources, and demonstrating a command of the academic conversation.
What Are Notes and Bibliographies?
Acknowledging sources is a two step process:
- Notes/Citations: Academic projects require use of notes or citations, which are brief notations that acknowledge when you are quoting, paraphrasing, or otherwise referring to information found in another source. In the APA Style, the note/citation takes the form of an in-text parenthetical notation following each direct quote or paraphrased statement within the body of the work. (Other styles you may find in academic works may use footnotes, or endnotes.) An in-text note consists of the author's or creator’s name and the item’s publication date in parentheses immediately following quoted or paraphrased text.
- Bibliography: All projects, no matter the style, require the use of a bibliography. A bibliography, sometimes called a "works cited list" or a "reference list," is a detailed, specially formatted list of all the individual materials consulted for a research project. It is typically arranged in alphabetical order by authors' last names. In-text citations refer to the complete citation in the bibliography. The bibliography appears at the end of a project.
Citing Dos and Don'ts
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- Do no rely on AI generated citations. These are not checked for accuracy and will import incorrect capitalization or strange characters and may omit required information. They may sometimes be correct, but usually are not 100% accurate.
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- Learn the style you are using, and carefully proofread any citation you copy and paste or that you generate using a bibliographic tool such as EndNote, Mendeley, or Zotero.
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- Do not number or bullet your bibliography.
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- Do not arrange your bibliography in the order that you quote each source.
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- Arrange your bibliography alphabetically by authors' last names.
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- Do not assign subheadings to your bibliography.
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- Integrate all sources into your bibliography, arranged by author as noted above.
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- Do not guess at the formatting.
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Use of AI in Scholarly Publications and Writing
- Disclosure and Transparency: When using generative AI models to draft a manuscript, authors must disclose this use in the methods section and cite the tool. This includes using AI for generating content, ideas, or even for editing purposes. Transparency is a core principle.
- Authorship: An AI tool cannot be listed as an author of a scholarly publication. Authorship implies responsibility for the work, and APA policy states that human authors are responsible for the accuracy of all information, including any content provided by an AI.
- Verification: Authors are required to verify any information and citations provided by an AI tool by checking the original sources. AI models can hallucinate or produce biased, inaccurate information.
- Attribution and Citation: APA provides specific guidelines for citing AI-generated content. The citation should include the name of the organization that created the tool, the year, the tool name and version, and a URL. If the output is not publicly retrievable, the user should include the text of the AI-generated content in an appendix and reference it in the citation.
- Confidentiality: Journal editors and reviewers are prohibited from entering materials from submitted manuscripts into generative AI tools, as this would violate the confidentiality of the peer-review process. Similarly, authors should not enter confidential research data or other identifiable information into open AI tools.
- Documentation: Authors are encouraged to document their interactions with AI tools, including the prompts they used, and to save the AI's output in their private records in case it is requested during peer review or after publication.