A citation or bibliographic citation is a reference to a book, article, web page, or other published item with sufficient details to uniquely identify the item. Unpublished writings or speech, such as personal communications, are also sometimes cited. Citations are provided in scholarly works, bibliographies and indexes. The word citation may be used of the act of citing a work as well as to a reference itself. Bibliographies at the University Library of Graz Bibliography (from Greek βιβλιογραφία, lit. ...

Ruminations are used in scholarly works to give credit to or to acknowledge the influence of previous works or to refer to authority. Citations permit readers to put claims to the test by consulting earlier works. Authors often engage earlier work directly, explaining why they agree or differ from earlier views. Ideally, sources are primary (first-hand), recent, with good ethos, credentials, and citations.

Citations of web pages or other electronic information are often seen as problematic, because of their ephemeral (shortlived) nature. A consortium of editors and publishers therefore recommends the use of WebCite [1] when citing web material, which allows prior archiving (taking a snapshot) of the cited material. An ephemeral river is one in which lasts only a few days. ...

Varying rules and practices for citations apply in science, law, the theological citing of authority (e.g. the isnad which "back" the hadith in Islam), the prior art that applies in patent law, and marks applied in copyright. Definitions of plagiarism, uniqueness or innovation, trustworthiness or reliability vary so widely among these fields that the use of citations has no simple common practice. Scientific citation is the process by which conclusions of previous scientists are used to justify experimental procedures, apparatus, goals or theses. ... Legal citation is the style of crediting and referencing other documents or sources of authority in legal writing. ... Theology (Greek θεος, theos, God, + λογος, logos, word or reason) means reasoned discourse concerning religion, spirituality and God. ... The isnad (Arabic اسناد or in Quranic era Arabic اسند) are the citations or backings that establish the legitimacy of the hadith, which are the sayings of Muhammad, Prophet of Islam. ... Hadith (Arabic: ‎ translit: ) are traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. ... For other uses, including people named Islam, see Islam (disambiguation). ... In most patent laws, prior art or state of the art is all information that has been disclosed to the public in any form before a given date. ... A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a government to an inventor or applicant for a limited amount of time (normally maximum 20 years from the filing date, depending on extension). ... Copyright symbol. ... Plagiarism is the practice of dishonestly claiming original authorship of material which one has not actually created, such as when a person incorporates material from someone elses work into his own work without attributing it. ...

Citations may be made in the body of text as parenthetical citations, in footnotes at the bottom of pages, or in endnotes at the end of the document. They are generally also listed in a works cited page or section - also called the bibliography, source list or list of references. The recording, use and re-use of citations on computers is facilitated by reference management software, also known as citation management software. Definition: A reference at the end of a sentence before the fullstop/period that refers to a source stated in the Works Cited Page. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... An EndNote library and an individual reference. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Citation. ... Bibliographies at the University Library of Graz Bibliography (from Greek βιβλιογραφία, lit. ... In general, a reference is something that refers or points to something else, or acts as a connection or a link between two things. ... Reference management software, citation management software or personal bibliographic management software is software for scholars and authors to use for recording and utilising bibliographic citations (references). ...

Citation indexes list published citations of a given work. In addition to being used for bibliographic discovery, they are used in bibliometrics for citation analysis and calculation of citation impact. The OpenURL standard is the basis for hyperlinks from citations in electronic published works or databases through to electronic copies of the full text of the cited work. A citation index is an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which documents cite which other documents. ... Bibliometrics is the study, or measurement, of texts and information (Norton, 2001). ... When scholars and scientists use the published work of other scholars and scientists in their own published work, they cite it, giving the author, year, title, and locus of publication (journal, book, or other). ... OpenURL is a type of URL that contains resource metadata for use primarily in libraries. ... A hyperlink, or simply a link, is a reference in a hypertext document to another document or other resource. ...

Content

Citations to a book generally include at least author(s), book title, publisher and date of publication. Citations to a journal article generally include at least author(s), article title, journal title, volume, date of publication and page numbers. Citations to a work on the Internet usually include at least a URL and a date that the work was accessed.

Format styles

There are a number of different guides which set styles for the format of citations.

Some works are so long established as to have their own citation methods: Stephanus pagination for Plato; Bekker numbers for Aristotle; line numbers in poems; bible citation by book, chapter and verse; or Shakespeare notation by play, act and scene. Stephanus pagination is the system of reference and organisation used in the works of Plato. ... For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation). ... Aristotelis Opera Omnia from year 1837. ... Aristotle (Ancient Greek: , AristotélÄ“s) (384 BC – March 7, 322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ... A Bible citation is usually referenced with the book name, chapter number and verse number. ... William Shakespeare—born April 1564; baptised April 26, 1564; died April 23, 1616 (O.S.), May 3, 1616 (N.S.)—has a reputation as the greatest of all writers in English. ...

Various organizations have created systems of citation to fit their needs. Some of the most important are:

• The ACS style is the American Chemical Society style format and is often used in chemical literature.

• The APA style is the American Psychological Association style format which is most often used in social sciences. APA style lists sources at the end of the paper, on a References Page. Listing electronic sources of information is more detailed in APA style than in MLA style. APA style uses parenthetical citation within the text, listing the author's name and the year the work was made. These work much like the MLA style's parenthetical citations.

• The American Political Science Association (APSA) publication on citation is the Style Manual for Political Science, which is a system often used by political science scholars and historians. It is largely based on that of the Chicago Manual of Style.

• The Bluebook is the citation system traditionally used in American academic legal writing, and the Bluebook (or similar systems derived from it) are used by many courts. The dominance of the Bluebook is currently being challenged by the newer ALWD Citation Manual. At present, academic legal articles are always footnoted, but motions submitted to courts and court opinions traditionally use inline citations which are either separate sentences or separate clauses. Inline citation is controversial among lawyers, because it is thought to be one of the reasons why most laypersons find legal writing hard to read.

• The CBE style is the Council of Biology Editors style format, which is most often used in scientific papers and research.

• The Chicago Style was developed and its guide is The Chicago Manual of Style. Some social sciences and humanities scholars use the nearly identical Turabian style.

• The Columbia Style was made by Janice R. Walker and Todd Taylor to give detailed guidelines for citing internet sources. Columbia Style offers models for both the humanities and the sciences. More information can be found in The Columbia Guide to Online Style.

• The MHRA Style Guide is the Modern Humanities Research Association style format and is most often used in the arts and humanities, particularly in the United Kingdom where the MHRA is based. It is fairly similar to the MLA style, but with some differences. The style guide uses footnotes that fully reference a citation and has a bibliography at the end. Its major advantage is that a reader does not need to consult the bibliography to find a reference as the footnote provides all the details. The guide is available for free download [2].

• MLA style was developed by The Modern Language Association and is most often used in English studies, comparative literature, foreign-language literary criticism, and some other fields in the humanities. MLA style uses a Works Cited Page to list works at the end of the paper. Brief parenthetical citations, which include an author and page (if applicable), are used within the text. These direct readers to the work of the author on the list of works cited, and the page of the work where the information is located (e.g. (Smith 107) refers the reader to page 107 of the work made by someone named Smith). More information can be found in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.

The ACS style, a standard method of citation in academic publications, originated with the American Chemical Society (ACS). ... The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a learned society (professional association) based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. ... Please wikify (format) this article as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... The American Psychological Association (APA) is a professional organization representing psychology in the US. It has around 150,000 members and an annual budget of around $70m. ... The social sciences are groups of academic disciplines that study the human aspects of the world. ... The American Political Science Association, founded in 1903, serves more than 15,000 members in more than 80 countries, bringing a variety of services to political scientists both inside and outside academic institutions. ... The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation is a style guide and a widely used legal citation system in the United States. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... An inline citation (or inline reference) is a citation placed at the end of a sentence or paragraph for the purpose of cataloging where the said information came from. ... The Council of Science Editors (CSE) is the organization that publishes Scientific Style and Format: The CBE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, an influential style guide for scientific papers. ... The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) is a style guide for American English published by the University of Chicago (from which it receives its name). ... Turabian is the popular name of a format for the writing style of research papers (such as the arrangement and punctuation of footnotes and bibliographies). ... The MHRA Style Guide (formerly the MHRA Style Book) is a widely-used style guide for academic essays and publications in the arts and humanities published by the Modern Humanities Research Association. ... The Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) is an international organisation that aims to encourage and promote advanced study and research of humanities. ... The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Sixth Edition The MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (2d ed) The Modern Language Associations (MLA) style manual is an academic style guide. ... The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Fifth Edition The Modern Language Association of America (MLA) is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of literature and literary criticism. ... English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, India, South Africa, and the Middle East, among other areas), English linguistics (including English phonetics, phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics... Comparative literature, colloquially abbreviated comp. ... Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. ... The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view. ...

See also

• Acknowledgment (creative arts)
• Bekker numbers for citations of Aristotle
• Citation impact
• Citation signal
• Citationality
• Credit (creative arts)
• Scholarly method
• Stephanus pagination for citations of Plato
• Bible citation
• Case citation
• Legal citation
• Webciting and WebCite
• Citing Wikipedia How do I cite Wikipedia? (authors, editions and so forth)
• Cite sources How to put citations in to wikipedia articles

In the creative arts and scientific literature, an acknowledgment (also spelled acknowledgement) is an expression of gratitude for assistance in creating a literary or artistic work. ... Aristotelis Opera Omnia from year 1837. ... When scholars and scientists use the published work of other scholars and scientists in their own published work, they cite it, giving the author, year, title, and locus of publication (journal, book, or other). ... A citation signal indicates how a writer views the relationship of a citation to some statement being made. ... In general, the term credit in the artistic or intellectual sense refers to an acknowledgement of those who contributed to a work, whether through ideas or in a more direct sense. ... Scholarly method - or as it is more commonly called, scholarship - is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public. ... Stephanus pagination is the system of reference and organisation used in the works of Plato. ... A Bible citation is usually referenced with the book name, chapter number and verse number. ... // Case citation is the system used in common law countries such as the United States, England and Wales, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and India to uniquely identify the location of past court cases in special series of books called reporters or law reports. ... Legal citation is the style of crediting and referencing other documents or sources of authority in legal writing. ...

References

• American Psychological Association (2001) Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fifth Edition. American Psychological Association. ISBN 1-55798-791-2
• Gibaldi, J. (2003) MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (6th Ed). Modern Language Association. ISBN 0-87352-986-3
• Walker, J and Taylor, T. (1998) The Columbia Guide to Online Style. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-10789-7
• Gunther Eysenbach and Mathieu Trudel (2005). "Going, going, still there: using the WebCite service to permanently archive cited web pages". Journal of Medical Internet Research 7 (5).

External links

Guidelines

• Radford, Robert, How to write footnotes or endnotes.
• Psychology with Style: A Hypertext Writing Guide
• General Guidelines for Citing Government Publications
• Guide to Citation Style Guides

Style guides

• A Guide for Writing Research Papers Based on Modern Language Association (MLA) Documentation
• AMA Citation Style
• An online guide to different citation formats
• APA Style.org
• Citation Styles Handbook: APA
• Citation Styles Handbook: MLA
• Citing Electronic Documentation (APA, Chicago, MLA)
• Using American Psychological Association (APA) Format (Updated to 5th Edition)
• The Columbia Guide to Online Style
• Chicago/Turabian Documentation
• Citation Guide - Turabian (.PDF file)
• Sociology style (ASR)
• Introduction to Basic Legal Citation - Martin

Tools

• WebCite, a site which allows authors who want to cite web pages to permanently archive a cited web page, to prevent linkrot. Instead of citing the original URL, authors [webcite] a web page by citing the WebCite URL in combination with a unique identifier (snapshot ID)
• Inflight Referencer, software that creates APA, Harvard and custom citations and bibliography lists.
• Citastic, a site which creates full and partial MLA citations and Works Cited / Bibliographies
• The Citation Machine, a site which generates full MLA and APA citations.
• The Citation Functions: Literary Production and Reception by The (In)Citers, featuring full position statements and citation bibliography
• CiteULike.org - 'CiteULike: Everyone's library' (citation compilation wiki)
• [3], a site that presents the format used by the APSA.
• [4], the page on the APSA site listing its publications, including the Style Manual for Political Science (for purchase)
• StudentABC - Citation Machine Automatically generate an APA or MLA citation from a URL
• Citation Builder Create and manage MLA, APA, CMS, and CSE bibliographies, footnotes, and endnotes.

Link rot is the process by which links on a website gradually become more irrelevant or broken as time goes on, because the websites that are linked to disappear, change content or redirect to a new location. ...

Other

• Unread citations