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Engineering Resources: Citing Sources

What is a Citation and Citation Style?

A citation is a way of giving credit to individuals for their creative and intellectual works that you utilized to support your research. It can also be used to locate particular sources and combat plagiarism. It is important to document every idea, statistic, quote or paraphrase that you use from somewhere else, to give credit to authors, let your reader know the basis for what you're saying, avoid plagiarism. This is called citing or referencing your sources.  Typically, a citation can include the author's name, date, location of the publishing company, journal title, or DOI (Digital Object Identifier).

In science and engineering, we cite each source in two places:

  1. In-text citation: a short citation in the body of the paper at the point where your paper relies on it. If you are using or writing about a source in multiple places in your paper, you'll need to repeat your in-text citation multiple times.
  2. Complete citation: the full details at the end of the paper, in the bibliography.

A citation style is a particular way of arranging and presenting references and how the information is ordered, as well as punctuation and other formatting.

Formatting citations properly for a particular style

To cite a source, you can't just paste the URL into your paper - you need to include specific information in a specific order. The information to include depends on what kind of source you are citing - a book, journal article, news website, etc. So it's important to know what kind of source you have!

There are different styles used in science and engineering, so it's important to consult your professor about which specific style they require. With this said, the two most common citation styles in science and engineering are APA style (an 'author-date' style) and IEEE (a numbered style). -Definition provided by uOttawa Civil and Environmental Engineering LibGuide.

APA and ChatGPT

If your instructor allows you to use ChatGPT, they may want you to cite it.

You can find out how to cite ChatGPT in APA Style on the:

APA Website

Citing OERs in APA

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain, or are under copyright but have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.

---definition provided by UNESCO

The official APA (American Psychological Association) Style Guide says:

  • Create a reference to an OER only when the materials are available for download directly (i.e., the materials are on the page and/or can be downloaded as PDFs or other files). If you are directed to another website, create a reference to the specific webpage on that website where the materials can be retrieved. Use this format for material in any OER repository, such as OER Commons, OASIS, or MERLOT.
     
  • Cite OERs with the same format as webpages, which are covered in Section 10.16 of the APA Publication Manual, Seventh Edition.

EXAMPLES:

Fagan, J. (2019, March 25). Nursing clinical brain. OER Commons. Retrieved January 7, 2020,

            from https://www.oercommons.org/authoring/53029-nursing-clinical-brain/view

  • Parenthetical citation: (Fagan, 2019)
  • Narrative citation: Fagan (2019) 

For more information on citing OERs see APAStyle.apa.org.

Note that there are no current APA instructions for citing Creative Commons (CC) licensed works. Cite them the same way you would cite any work. Please check with your instructor for guidance.

IEEE Citation Format

IEEE citation style is used primarily for electronics, engineering, telecommunication, computer science and information technology reports.  If your professor prefers students to cite sources with the IEEE style, click here for IEEE Citation Guidelines.  -Description and guidelines from the University of Pittsburgh Library System.

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