Citing Rules: Teach Me to Format Research Paper References

Citation is very important part of your research paper. If you fail to cite a source in your paper and forget to give credit to the author intentionally or unintentionally, this will be is plagiarism and theft. If plagiarism is detected in your paper, you will have to face worst consequences. Your professor might give you an F grade in that paper or in the worst situations may even suspend you from the university. It is also ethically and morally wrong to use someone else’s work under your own name, therefore you must be very careful while including other’s work in your research paper.

Apart from this, there are several other important reasons for citing your research paper.

  • It shows that you have carried out research by yourself and have put in many efforts for composing this paper.
  • Citations are also a great way of giving authenticity and reliability to your paper.
  • If a reader wants to carry out further research on the subject and use your work, he can easily trace out your research process and places.
  • You can also cite sources which give alternative approaches to your subject so that the reader can get help from them too

Rules for citing references in research papers

  • Whenever you take an idea or an inspiration from somebody’s work, you must acknowledge it and give credit to him or her.
  • You should of course give references when you use a direct quotation
  • Even when you rephrase the quotation or use it in a different way you need to cite its source and give credit to the real author
  • All kinds of sources need to be cited, this means you need to give credit to books, articles, newspapers, any print material, electronic media, internet, emails, and even verbal communications in case of scientific research papers
  • When you use an image, graph, statistic, illustration, picture or clip art from any other source in your work, it is important that you give credit to them in the citations portion of your research paper
  • You should address the author by their last name in the citation
  • Always remember to include the date of publication in parenthesis followed by the name
  • If you include a direct quote, make sure it is without a slightest change. Always remember to put quotation marks.
  • Include page numbers in your citations.