Public Health: Understanding Citations

Citations are an extremely important component of any writing assignment, but they are frequently misused and/or incorrectly done. Many researchers over the years have glossed over their citations in some way, only to have their careers and reputations ruined by accusations of plagiarism. Citations need to be taken seriously.

But besides avoiding plagiarism, why should you bother? Citations are important for several reasons:

• To show that you've done your research and are not just pulling claims out of thin air
• To give proper credit to others' work that you've used to build your case
• To allow others to fact-check your evidence and arguments
• To put your ideas into context with the ideas of those you've cited
• To allow others who are interested in your topic to find out more from the sources you've used

You may have been asked to use a few different citation styles for different classes, and you may be wondering why so many styles exist in the first place. Certainly it would be easier for everyone if there was a single standardized way of citing information, but unfortunately, virtually every field has a preference for a specific style. English classes tend to want you to use MLA (Modern Language Association) style, chemistry tends to ask for ACS (American Chemical Association) style, etc. The primary components that are included are generally the same; the primary differences tend to be the location in the citation of certain elements, or capitalization rules, or punctuation in between elements. 

This can lead to many students feeling frustrated, especially when they miss points for a missing comma or something small like that. Unfortunately, this is the system we all have to work within, so it's important that you understand the main elements that are included in almost every citation style so that you can verify you are properly citing your sources, as well as read and interpret any unfamiliar styles you encounter in your research.

Another unfortunate thing: public health is a discipline that has no standard citation style. You will encounter many different styles in the literature, and your professors may ask you to use different styles for different classes. That's why it's so important for you to understand how to identify the building blocks of a citation, because it makes it easier to translate and read all the different styles you will be exposed to.

Every time you reference an outside source in a paper, you will need to include two citations: a short in-text citation within the body of writing that clearly indicates what information you are citing, and a longer end-of-text citation that is grouped with all the other sources you've used in the paper.

In-text citations

The in-text citation in many styles only consists of the author's last name and the date the source was published. This information is typically seen at the end of the sentence containing the information being used and enclosed in parentheses. Up to two authors can be explicitly included; any more than that and the in-text citation becomes large and annoying to read around. So if a source you're citing has three or more authors listed, the in-text citation will include the first author's last name followed by "et al." and then finally the year of publication. "Et al." is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase "et alia" which means "and others". Note the placement of the period; some people are very picky about that being correct and will take points if it is misplaced.

A major thing to note with in-text citations: You should only rarely be including direct quotations from sources in your papers, if ever. Direct quotes are commonly seen in disciplines like English and law where your argument can hinge upon the exact wording used to express an idea, but this is NOT the norm in the sciences. In STEM, it is the ideas that are important and not the exact words used to express them. You will need to rely on paraphrasing to complete your writing assignments.

End-of-text citations

End-of-text citations are also called end references or just references. This is a complete list of every source that you cited in the text of your paper. (The term "bibliography" is often used interchangeably but is slightly different, in that a bibliography also includes sources you may have read but not actually cited.)

End references include more information than in-text citations. Instead of just the last name of the author(s) and the year, end references will also include detailed source information.

There are four main scholarly resource types you will encounter in the sciences:

• For journal articles, you will see an article title as well as where the article was found (journal name, journal volume and issue, page range for the article in that issue).
• Book chapters are very similar; you will see a chapter title and page range, book editor information if this is different than the author of the chapter, book title, and publisher information.
• For books cited as a whole (usually only if the chapters are all written by the same author, instead of a collection of chapters written by many different people and edited together), you will see a book title and publisher information.
• Conference proceedings are a weird beast. Sometimes they are published in the form of an edited book, in which case you will need to cited them like book chapters. Other times they will be published as a special issue in a journal, in which case you would cite them as a journal article. The good news is that you will not encounter very many of these, so you may never have to worry about how to cite them yourself. However, you will likely see at least a few pop up in the end references of your assigned readings.

You will also encounter one other non-scholarly resource type fairly frequently: websites. These are distinct from peer-reviewed papers that are published online. Websites in this context are things like product pages, blogs, product reviews, professional organization sites, etc. These should be cited infrequently at best, and always in comparison to peer-reviewed research that either supports or refutes the information you find.