A citation (or reference) is a short, multi-part description of a source. When you are engaged in scholarly discourse, which you are, as a student of the University of Arkansas, you are required to produce research documentation that is clear and concise, so that anyone can retrace your steps to replicate and validate your research. A good citation will lead the reader to the source of the information. Each of the fields of study have agreed on a citation style that meets the needs of their research community.
See our video on How to Read a Citation for assistance in understanding the parts of a citation.
Many academic databases have a citation generator built in. When you are looking at the detailed information for an item that is of interest to you, look for a link or button for citing (often a quotation marks icon). If the link is available, you will see a screen which provides you with a handy citation generator for various style manuals. Choose the style manual that your instructor has specified for this project, then cut and paste into your bibliography, reference, or works cited page.
Since it is sometimes difficult to retrace your steps to find an article citation, it is much easier to create your reference list by gathering citation information while you are doing your research! Taking good notes now saves a lot of time later.
Each subject and discipline has different methods, or styles, of acknowledging another person's work when you write or present. Below are some links to the more common style guides. Some have been purchased by library and are available electronically.
Many electronic resources offer citation creators and there are some that are freely available on the web. Make sure you carefully edit the results because not all tools can do all styles and not all resources provide all the necessary details to cite correctly.
Most databases provided by the libraries have a "Cite" feature built in. When you are looking at the detailed information for an item, look for a link or button for citing. If the link is available,you will see a screen which provides with a citation in your preferred format that you can cut and paste into your bibliography. Just remember to verify all the information you need is included. Automatic citation generation is only as good as the details made available from the database.
Citation managers are software programs that help you save and organize citations. They are helpful for large research projects using 20 or more citations, but are not really a time saver for smaller projects. Here are some commonly used citation managers.
