A citation or reference is the information given in a bibliography or a database about a particular title, which often includes:
Citations give credit to those whose ideas have contributed to your research and give your readers enough information to locate the sources you used. There are many ways to format citations. The style you choose depends on your field and the requirements set by your professor or publisher.
Bibliography: A list of sources about a single topic. Each discipline has its own style for creating and formatting bibliographies.
Plagiarism: Using another's words, ideas, or other original work without giving proper credit (usually through citation).
Citation Manager: A web-based tool, such as Zotero, Mendeley or EndNote, that helps you manage citations, create bibliographies, and import references from databases. It can convert stored citations into formatted bibliographies. Formatting styles include APA, Chicago, and MLA as well as specialized formats for academic disciplines and publications.
Works Cited: A list of sources you have cited in your paper.
When you find an article online, you can often find all the citation information you need on the article's landing page. If you search for an article in a database, you can use the citation elements from the search results. Remember to always verify the database's citation with the information from the full-text or PDF of the article!
You can often find all the information you need for a journal article citation on the first page of that article. Occasionally, you may have to look at the title page of the journal to determine the date or volume number of that particular issue.
When citing a book, you'll usually find the information you need on the title page and the back of the title page (title page verso).