Citing Sources of Information

The following set of guidelines was written by Dr. Nathan Trueblood, with minor modifications by me. I would like you to follow these guidelines for citing sources of information used in this BIO 2 Activity section, particularly on your genetic disease poster.

You, like other scholars, must cite the sources of information you use. Citing others' work

fulfills a number of purposes:

• it can be a way of recognizing the contributions of pioneers in a field

• it identifies the original publications in which an idea or concept was first presented

• it provides access to other readings on the topic of the work at hand

• it can be used to identify a methodology

• it is a way to refer to work of one's own or others that is being critiqued or corrected to indicate track record of decent work (believability, etc)

Guidelines for deciding when to cite:

You don't need to cite if you use information that seems to be common, background knowledge

You DO need to cite if:

• you mention specific results/data obtained by reading someone else’s work (either electronic or paper media)
• want to incorporate a figure, table, or photograph from another source

Avoid plagiarism in scholarly writing:

• Do NOT cut and paste text from an electronic source with the intention of paraphrasing the text after copying it as this practice makes it easy to accidentally plagiarize by following the original text too closely
• Do NOT use direct quotations; in Council of Biological Editors (CBE) style, you express the information and ideas you have taken from other sources IN YOUR OWN WORDS, rather than how the author says it
• Always THINK about the information that you're using from another source and when you understand it sufficiently, you'll be able to say it IN YOUR OWN WORDS

The Name-Year System

In the text of your papers/posters/presentations, refer to a source of information by the last name of the author and the publication year.

• Put name and year in parentheses at the end of the sentence (before the period)

• Or use the author's name as part of the sentence and the year in parentheses just after the name.

• For example:

Bird nests located in vegetation are protected from adverse weather conditions (Montevcchi 1979). Dunn and Davis (1976) note that chick survival is increased when there is shrub coverage around the nest. The coverage can result from dense leaf cover (Wininger 1987a) or from a thick pattern of branching (Hagberg and Perrera 1989).

Creating a Literature Cited List

Create a list of references to all the documents that you have cited in your work. This is usually presented at the end of your work.

• Only include the sources that you directly cited in the text of your paper or assignment; do not include background reading you didn't specifically cite or an author's work that was cited in an article that you read, but that you did not read yourself.

• List references by the last name of the first author, and place these sources in alphabetical order.

Variations

If there are several works by the same author

List in order of the oldest to the most recent.

Iverson, JB. 2001. Reproduction of the river cooter, Pseudemys concinna, in Arkansas and across its range. Southwest. Nat. 46 (3): 364-370.

Iverson, JB. 2002. Reproduction in female razorback musk turtles (Sternotherus carinatus: Kinosternidae) Southwest. Nat. 47 (2): 215-224.

If an author has written more than one work in the same year

Distinguish the works from each other by using letters. For example,

Iverson, J. B. 1995a. Natural History Notes: Heterodon nasicus (Western Hognose Snake): Reproduction. Herp. Review 26(4):206.

Iverson, J. B. 1995b. Podocnemis lewyana. Cat. American Amphib. Rept. 605:1-3.

Author writes alone and also with other authors

List all works written by an author alone before listing articles that the author has co-written with others. List the additional works alphabetically by the name of the second author. For example:

Iverson, J. B. 2002. Reproduction in female razorback musk turtles (Sternotherus carinatus: Kinosternidae). Southwestern Naturalist 47(2):215-224.

Iverson, J. B., and E. O. Moll. 2002. Turtles. In: Halliday, T. R. and K. Adler (Eds.). The New Encyclopedia of Reptiles and Amphibians. Oxford University Press, Oxford, England.

Iverson, J. B., and R. C. Vogt. 2002. Peltocephalus tracaxa. Cat. American Amphib. Rept. 744:1-4.

Formatting References

A correctly formatted reference begins with the author(s), followed by the publication date, then the title of the reference, and finally further publishing information about the reference. Each of these elements of information is separated from the others by periods. Commas and colons are used to make further separations.

Variations

No author Use Anonymous as the name for an article lacking an author

More than 10 authors

For an article with multiple authors, include the first 10 names. For more than 10, list the first 10 followed by and others.

Names and initials

Only the first author's name is written in the form: last name followed by initials. All the other names start with initials followed by the last name.

Electronic Resources

Website:

basic format

Websites vary tremendously in terms of the "bibliographic information" that they provide: for examples, authors or dates may or may not be noted. You may have to hunt for this information!

Due to this variability, it is difficult to exactly define the proper format for a reference. Your goal should try to fulfill the two-fold goals of providing a reference: giving credit to the author of the source and enabling another person to locate the source. These are the basic elements and the order in which to provide them.

Author's name (if known)

Date of publication or last revision

Title of document

Title of complete work (if relevant)

URL, in angle brackets

Date of access

Use periods to separate the elements.

If some of the information is missing (no author, no date...), omit those elements from your reference.

Professional Website

Curtis, R. 1998 February 25. Princeton environmental reform committee (PERC) home

page. <http://www.princeton.edu/~perc/> Accessed 2004 November 1.

Personal Website

McLarnan, T. 2004 September 23. Tim McLarnan's home page. <http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~timm/> Accessed 2004 October 12.

Website with no author or no date

World wide recycling sites.<http://www.recycling.org> Accessed 2004 November 1.

[Title of the web page becomes the first element and no publication/revision date is included. When citing this in the text of your paper, use an abbreviated title to direct the reader to this source, for instance: (World wide recycling)]

Part of a website

Schiro, S. 2002 December 8. Hymenoptera: Formicidae. In Senior seminar 2002.

Introduced species in Hawaii. <http://www.earlham.edu/~biol/hawaii/> Accessed 2003

June 30.

HGCI Programs Green Campus Loan Fund. 2002. In Harvard Green Campus

Initiative. <http://www.greencampus.harvard.edu/programs/GCLF.shtml> Accessed

2003 May 27.

When there is no author, use page title in place of author:

Electronic version of Print Journal article retrieved from an online database

Emerson, D. 2004. In composting and recycling, WSU gets "A" for effort. BioCycle

45(9):22-24. From Academic Search Premier. <http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,url,uid&db=aph&an=14437592>

Accessed 2004 November 1.

Electronic version of Print Journal article retrieved from the online version of the journal

Petracco, M . Our everyday cup of coffee. The chemistry behind its magic. Journal of Chemical Education 82:1161-1168. Available from Journal of Chemical Education Website

<http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/Journal/Issues/2005/Aug/PlusSub/V82N08/p1161.pdf>

Accessed 2005 August 9.

Put a reference in the style for a print journal, then put the "persistent URL," if one is given (otherwise URL for journal website) and date when retrieved.

Part of an electronic journal article, such as figure or table

Bluhm, C.K. and P.A. Gowaty. 2004. Social constraints on female mate preferences in mallards, Anas platyrhynchos, decrease offspring viability and mother productivity. Animal Behaviour 68:977-983 . Available from Animal Behaviour Website <http://www.animalbehaviour.org> Table 1. Fitness components of successful mothers. Accessed 2004 November 19.

Article from journal ONLY online, not in print

Gilchrist, G. , M. Mallory, and F. Merkel. 2005. Can local ecological knowledge contribute to wildlife management? Case studies of migratory birds. Ecology and Society. 10(1): 20. <http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol10/iss1/> Accessed 2005 August 3.