Book Research Skills

Citations help others find information you used in your research paper.

Citing your sources accurately helps establish the credibility of your research.

Citations connect your work to the work of other scholars.

Citations are one way to honor and acknowledge the work of others who have made your own research possible.

To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use:

• another person's idea, opinion, or theory;
• any facts, statistics, graphs, images--any pieces of information--that are not common knowledge;
• quotations of another person's actual spoken or written words; or
• paraphrase of another person's spoken or written words.

To help with this, make sure you keep track of where you get your information. You can do this by typing up or writing down relevant information from physical materials, making sure to use quotes and note page numbers. Also keep all citation information together for a particular resource.

All scholarly writing needs to be properly cited. If you need help with citations, you can talk to your professor or a librarian.

You can also check out our citation style LibGuides:

• APA LibGuide
• Chicago LibGuide
• CSE (Council of Science Editors) LibGuide
• MLA LibGuide

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