What is a citation?
A citation shows the location of your source—it tells you all of the important details about an information source to enable you to find it:WHO
- name of the author(s) who wrote it
- for books there may be an editor instead of or in addition to an author(s)
- for articles, the author is sometimes "staff" or "anonymous" (author unknown); when citing material where the author is unknown, use the "no author" citation format
- for music, an author may be the composer of the lyrics and/or musical sound
- for movies, an author may be the writer and/or producer
- for web sites, make sure you include actual author, not webmaster, unless they happen to be the same
- title of the book/article/movie/CD/etc.
- if an article, there will also be a journal/magazine/newpaper title in which it appears
- for an edited book, compilation or anthology, there will usually be a separate title (and author) for the chapter or selection
- for printed books:
- publisher name
- place of publication (city and sometimes state/country)
- copyright and/or publication date (in older works, the date of publication and copyright may not be the same)
- for articles from print periodicals
- periodical volume #, issue # (not all publishers use issue numbers—if used it will be in parentheses)
- year in which the article appears<.li>
- page numbers, e.g., 5 (2) 2005, 65-70 where 5 = volume, 2 = issue, 2005 = year, 65-70 = page numbers
- for all media (videos, CDs, DVDs, music): publisher, place of publication, copyright date
- for material taken from web sites: author, title, URL, and the date you retrieved the information
- for electronic articles or books: name of the database, publisher or archive you got it from, URL, and date of retrieval, in addition to the standard article or book citation information above
What is citing?
Citing is identifying and documenting when you have used another's work. You ALWAYS cite someone else's work when you use it in your own research, each and every time:- when you use an exact quotation, chart, table, photo, song lyric, image or other illustration from another's work (includes print, media, Internet, interviews, music, etc.)
- when you paraphrase or summarize another's words
- when you use an original idea/theory/conclusion/data from another's work
- you do not need to cite common knowledge—facts or information that anyone would know by being awake and reasonably aware, e.g., George W. Bush is the 43rd president of the United States. However, be very careful how you define "common knowledge;" if there is even the tiniest doubt, cite it!
Why do we cite?
- to show exactly where you got the information from, in case someone wants to find it or read more of the work
- to give proper credit to the person(s) who actually authored the work or came up with the idea (you wouldn't want someone to steal your work!)
- to provide credibility and evidence that you have read/researched widely to come up with your idea, theory, analysis, conclusion, etc.
- it's unethical, it's dishonest, and it's a punishable offense if you don't do it (if you fail to cite information you used from another's work, intentionally or unintentionally, it is called plagiarism). Forgetting to cite or claiming ignorance of proper citation procedures are not valid excuses (there is no justifiable excuse, just do it!)
How do we cite?
Generally, you will be told to use a specific citation style guide or manual, e.g., MLA (MLA Style Manual), or APA (The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association). There are others (Chicago, Harvard, etc.), but APA and MLA are the most widely used at ENMU. Style manuals standardize citation information and also include formatting criteria (how your paper should look).- For APA style: OWL's "APA Formatting and Style Guide"
- you cite "in text" (within your paper)—within or immediately following a quote/paraphrase/idea you use, or underneath a chart/illustration
- you cite in the "reference list" (at the end of your paper to show all sources you used)
- each source you cite in your paper (in text) must appear in your reference list, and each entry in the reference list must be cited in your text
- For MLA style: OWL's "MLA Formatting and Style Guide"
- you also cite "in text,"
- but you cite in a "works cited" page at the end of your paper to show all sources used
- each source you cite in your paper (in text) must appear in your works cited list, and each entry in the works cited list must be cited in your text
Plagiarism
Here are some examples of plagiarism, courtesy of Duke University Libraries:- Copying, quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing from any source without adequate documentation
- Purchasing a pre-written paper
- Letting someone else write a paper for you
- Paying someone else to write a paper for you
- Submitting as your own someone else's unpublished work, either with or without permission
Undergraduate Catalog (under Academic Integrity section)
Graduate Catalog (under Academic Integrity section)
Some famous examples of "musical plagiarism," and copyright infringement:
Adam Conner-Simons. "Picking
Up What They're Laying Down," Gelf Magazine, July 27, 2007.
Copyright
Copyright is a form of legal protection for authors of original works. Any original expression is automatically copyright-protected as soon as it is fixed in a tangible form (paper, disc/disk, web page, videorecording, computer file, canvas, photograph, etc.), even if the notice (copyright 2008, or all rights reserved) or the copyright symbol © is not evident. This protection includes the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, alter, and sell the material, barring a few exceptions for scholars and libraries (see Golden Library's Copyright Policy).Using someone's work without his/her permission, or without compensation (royalty fees), is called copyright infringement. Copyright is a federal law and infringement is punishable by fines and imprisonment. Plagiarism and copyright infringement are two distinct concepts, though related. The distinction has to do with:
- the amount of another's work you use
- how significant or important the part you use is to the whole work
- the type of use (whether the use is for research and scholarship or for your own financial gain)
- if the use would cause economic harm to the author
- You use a few sentences or a paragraph from another's work (book, journal article) in your research paper and fail to cite it. In all likelihood, such a use would not cause you economic gain or the author economic loss on the sale of his/her original work, so it would not qualify as copyright infringement but would constitute plagiarism (you are passing another's work off as your own).
- You use an image, song lyric or melody, part of a software program, or the main character in a book in a product you intend to sell and you do not ask for permission from the author of the original work or pay a royalty fee for the use of the material. This is an example of copyright infringement which could result in financial gain for you and financial loss for the author of the original work.
- You use a substantial amount of someone else's work or a critical portion of another's work in your paper, and then sell your paper to another student or on the Internet. This is copyright infringement—you are using another's work for your own financial gain.
- You create a major multimedia project for a class and use a very small excerpt from a film, song, web page, or other digital content in your project. You fail to cite the sources used (this would be plagiarism). Later on, you decide to publish or sell your project, but you fail to obtain permission or pay royalty fees to the original author; it then becomes copyright infringement because the intent is financial gain for you without compensation for the author.
- You download a song off of the Internet without paying the fees, or make copies of a CD/DVD and give it to your friends. While you are not gaining an economic advantage (except the cost of not purchasing the song/CD), you are causing financial loss to the author/composer, because you and/or your friends are not legally purchasing the song/DVD. This is copyright infringement.