An important element of academic writing is crediting the sources that you used in your writing. You do this by creating citations. In this module, you will discover why it is important to cite your sources, how to cite using APA style, and how to use a citation manager.
This chapter can help you cite the resources you use and avoid plagiarism. Explore the chapter to discover strategies for how to search for and access relevant, quality resources. You will learn how to do the following:
A citation or reference is a referral to an information source. Citing your sources is the best way to avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism can be deliberate - knowingly using someone else's work as your own. It can also be inadvertent. Sometimes plagiarism accusations are simply the result of not following a specific style properly. The particular citation style you use will dictate the details of how you should cite your sources. In this module, you'll learn more about the importance of citation and how to avoid plagiarism.
Become familiar with your college's Academic Integrity policy. Not knowing the policy will not prevent you from facing disciplinary action.
Make sure you know when it's okay to work in groups on an assignment and when you ought to work alone. Collaborating on a test, quiz, or assignment can get you into trouble if you are supposed to be working alone.
Using work from an old class on a new assignment is almost always against the rules. Instead, start fresh on every project with new ideas and up-to-date research.
When doing your research, keep a record of your information sources and learn to cite them accurately. Accidental plagiarism is still plagiarism.
Citing your sources lets your reader know what information you came up with yourself and what comes from someone else's work. In addition, it gives credit to the creators of the original works. There are many citation styles that you can use, including APA, MLA, and Vancouver. The most commonly used citation style in Nursing and other Health Sciences programs is APA style, but check with your professor if you're unsure. To learn more about citing in APA style, see the Cite Using APA Style module below.
Citing sources is a crucial element of academic integrity, specifically avoiding plagiarism. Explore the tabs in this box to learn more about the following topics:
Information has value, whether it is found in books or journals or freely available on the web. People work to create it, and that work should be acknowledged. When you cite your source, you acknowledge the original author/creator of the idea you are using in your research.
Citing your sources allows others to find them and benefit from what you've learned.
Citing other people's work gives authority to your argument/essay/creation.
Accurately citing other people's ideas wherever they occur in your research is the best way to avoid plagiarism.
Before we explain plagiarism and how to avoid it, it's important to understand that plagiarism is only one part of a bigger concept known as academic integrity.
Academic integrity means upholding our school's values concerning the production of your academic work and the completion of quizzes, tests, and exams. Every college in Ontario has an academic integrity policy. Read our college's academic integrity policy and be sure you understand your responsibilities as a student and scholar.
Here are some examples of academic integrity offences:
If you break the academic integrity rules (for example, if you are caught plagiarizing), there are a range of disciplinary actions that you could face, which are outlined in our college's policy. Depending on the severity of the offence and whether it is your first offence, you may face consequences such as the following disciplinary actions:
Plagiarism involves integrating another person's ideas and intellectual material into your writing without giving them credit or citing them. In nursing, you will cite sources such as peer-reviewed journals, textbooks, and websites.
It might seem funny, but you can also plagiarize yourself: self-plagiarism is a type of plagiarism where you don't reference ideas that you previously wrote about in other assignments.
Sometimes a writer plagiarizes work on purpose, for example, by copying and pasting or purchasing an essay from a website and submitting it as original work. For reasons such as those that follow, the writer can feel desperation, which leads them to take credit for someone else's ideas:
In other cases, a writer may commit accidental plagiarism due to carelessness, haste, or misunderstanding, such as in the following examples:
Both types of plagiarism have serious consequences that can affect your success in your program.
You can avoid plagiarism by following these simple rules:
Citing your sources is a process of wayfinding: you provide the “address”—the reference— so that the reader is able to find the original source. Following a specific citation style ensures that there is consistent information to help the reader find the information. The most commonly used citation style in Nursing and other Health Sciences programs is APA style. This module covers the basics of how to cite your sources in APA style.
Every single use of someone else’s work in your paper must be acknowledged with a citation.
Every in-text citation must match up with a full reference in the reference list. Every reference in the reference list must match up with at least one in-text citation.
Every type of resource (book, journal article, website, etc.) requires slightly different formatting, so look for an example that is relevant to the source you want to cite.
Use a citation manager to make it easy to keep track of the materials you’re citing.
Every single use of someone else’s work in your paper must be acknowledged. You do this by adding an in-text citation right before or after the use of someone else’s idea.
An in-text citation is a short indication of someone else’s work, embedded right in the body of your paper. In-text citations include the author, the year of publication, and the page number. You only need to include the page number if you are using a direct quotation.
Examples of in-text citations:
Every single in-text citation must have a corresponding full reference at the end of the paper. You have to have both an in-text citation and a detailed reference in order for the citation to be complete
The reference list contains detailed information about each source. These detailed references are on a separate page at the end of your paper. It is arranged alphabetically by first author’s last name.
Tips for creating a reference list page:
Sometimes it’s hard to know where to look to find the information you need to create a citation. Different types of sources require different information to be included in the reference page.
This information is usually one of the first things you can locate pretty easily. If you are looking at a book, the author(s) can be found on the front cover. Journal articles have author(s) listed on the first page of the article or on the title page if there is one.
When looking at websites, it’s hard to know where to locate the author. Do a bit of digging. Is there an about us/me section? Is the author listed by the last modified or copyright date on the bottom of the page. Is there a logo? Sometimes the author of a website can be a corporation or an organization. We call these corporate or group authors.
Sometimes publication dates can be found on the very first page of the article you are looking at. You may have to look around on both the top and bottom of the first page.
Books include this info by the copyright symbol on the verso.
Websites can be tricky. Sometimes a last modified date is found on the bottom of the page. This can also be a copyright date. If there is no identifiable date, it’s perfectly acceptable to put (n.d.). This indicates there is no date found on the page you are looking at.
This can get confusing for many people. You want to make sure you know what you are citing. Most of the time, you will want to record the title of what you are looking at whether it’s the title of the book or the particular page you are looking at on a website. Usually that’s all you need and these are italicized in the reference. However, when you are citing journal, newspaper and magazine articles, you have to include both the title of the article and the title of journal/newspaper/magazine. These are usually italicized on the reference page instead of the title of the article.
DOI stands for digital object identifier.
A DOI is a unique number assigned to journal articles only. It acts as a URL to that particular article. Not all journal articles have a DOI. DOI information is easily identifiable. It almost always includes the words DOI followed by a combination of letters or numbers. It’s usually on the first page of the journal article but can also be found beside the title of the journal.
Don’t panic if information is missing in a citation. Some citation styles are pretty flexible when it comes to missing information.
Sometimes a journal may not include a volume or an issue number, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s okay to leave that information out.
Work with what you have available to you. If it’s not there, no need to include anything.
This is not the case for publication dates. If there is no date, simply put (n.d.) in place of a year.
As you search and find resources for your paper, keeping everything organized can be a challenge. A citation manager is a software tool that will help you keep track of all the materials you’ve found. Once you’ve set up a citation manager, you can add articles and other resources with a single click. In addition, when it’s time to write your paper, the citation manager will help you format your citations in APA style.
Install your citation manager’s browser extension to make it easy to add online resources to the manager.
Use folders, tags, and other tools to organize your library of sources.
When working on a group assignment, create a group library to share with your teammates. Then, you can all add sources to your collective library and have access to the shared list.
Use your citation manager’s Microsoft Word integration to format and insert your citations into your document easily.
Citation managers aren’t perfect. Always double-check citations generated by your citation manager to verify that they follow the citation style rules.
Using a citation manager can help you avoid plagiarism by making it easy to credit your sources. If you add all of your materials to your library as you search, you will be able to find them when it’s time to write your paper.
Citation managers are tools that help you keep track of the sources you want to use in your paper and create draft citations for those sources. Using a citation manager can help you keep track of the sources you find and use. Every citation manager is different, so look at the features of each one to decide which one best fits your needs.
These are the most popular citation managers:
When choosing which citation manager to use, consider the following questions:
Every citation manager is different, but there are a few features that are common to most citation managers you might use. Watch the video or read the instructions below to learn the basics of how to use these features.
Here are some common functions of citation managers that can help you keep track of your sources and create citations.
At the core of every citation manager is the place where you keep your list of items; this is usually called your library. There are several ways to save items to your library, but the easiest way is to install your citation manager’s browser extension (there will be instructions on how to do this on your citation manager’s website). This extension will add a button to your browser.
To add items using a browser extension:
When you save an item into your library, it may or may not include the full text. Your citation manager will try to save the full text, if it’s available on the page, when you click the browser button. If this doesn’t work, you can save the full text onto your computer and then attach it to the item in your library. Attaching the full text in your citation manager will make it easy for you to read the article again.
Once you have some items in your library, you’ll want to keep things organized so you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for easily. You may want to organize your library based on different themes of a topic or based on different assignments you’re working on. Most citation managers offer the following options for staying organized:
If you’re working on a group assignment, using a citation manager makes sharing resources with your teammates easy.
To use a group library:
Once you’re ready to start writing your paper, a citation manager can help format your citations. Here’s how to add your citations and references into your documents in the following software:
Citation managers are not perfect, and they can make errors when formatting your references. Make sure that you check to make sure the references are correct. You will often find minor errors in any automatically generated references. Still, it is usually faster to fix a few minor mistakes than to create the references entirely on your own. Think of the reference that has been generated for you by the citation manager as a rough draft that you can then correct.