Citing Sources

Citing or documenting the sources used in your research serves two purposes, it gives proper credit to the authors of the materials used, and it allows those who are reading your work to duplicate your research and locate the sources that you have listed as references.

Documentation styles offer standard and prescribed methods for citing references. Different academic disciplines use different documentation styles. Two of the most popular and widely used documentation styles are produced by the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA). APA is most often used in the behavioral and social sciences and MLA is widely used in the humanities. You should always ask your course instructor whether or not a particular documentation style is required for your research papers.

Resources and basic guidelines for using these two documentation styles are provided at APA citation style and MLA citation style.

What to document

In general, you should document all information that originates in someone else's work, whether you are directly quoting that information, paraphrasing it, or summarizing the material. The Code of Academic Integrity defines Cornell University's official guidelines concerning honesty in academic pursuits. One example of violating this code is stated as "knowingly representing the work of others as one's own." It is very important for you to properly cite the work of others if you use or refer to it in your work. You will need to decide which ideas you can claim as your own and which should be attributed to others. A good way to determine what you should document is to ask yourself how you would want your own ideas to be cited in someone else's work.