What is a citation?
The definitions can vary but a practical definition would be
“Enough information to identify a specific work so someone else could find it.”
A citation normally includes
- Author(s)
- Title of the article, chapter in a book, conference paper, etc.
- Title of the journal, report, book, conference (normally with location and dates)
- Publication or copyright date
- Volume number, issue number, page number (depending on the source)
The exact things to be included will vary by the kind of work it is. Some works do not have authors listed, only publishers. You will find many other examples of “unusual” items.
Citations are used routinely as part of the descriptions of research activities. They can be informal (just make sure to include the essential information) or formal (follow specific rules from the publisher or required style guide.)
You will find citations in email and letters, in the results list from Engineering Village 2, IEEE Electronic Library, or ScienceDirect, in footnotes, bibliographies and reference lists.
Whenever you are writing formally for publication, to apply for a grant, or to meet an academic requirement (like writing a thesis or dissertation), you will discover that there are specific rules that must be followed for citations.
The order for the various parts of a citation, the punctuation, spacing, use of italics, underlining, bolding, and indentations can all vary by the required style guide or publisher.
Here are some examples that come from different places and follow different style guides:
A journal article:
Page, E. (1968). The use of the computer in analyzing student essays. International Review of Education, 14, 253-263.
A book:
Beer, David F. A Guide to Writing as an Engineer. New York: Wiley, 1997.
A record in Engineering Village 2:
Development of an aggregate indicator to assess the machinability of steels
Boubekri, Nourredine (Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Miami); Rodriguez, Jaime; Asfour, Shihab Source: Journal of Materials Processing Technology, v 134, n 2, Mar 10, 2003, p 159-165
A record in ScienceDirect:
Particle-laden gas flow in horizontal channels with collision effects • ARTICLE
Powder Technology, Volume 168, Issue 2, 11 October 2006, Pages 89-103
Alexander Kartushinsky and Efstathios E. Michaelides
Here is an article that was cited in that paper by Kartushinsky and Michaelides in Powder Technology. (from the ScienceDirec record):
Y. Tsuji and Y. Morikawa, LDV measurements of an air–solid two-phase flow in a horizontal pipe, J. Fluid Mech. 120 (1982), pp. 385–409.
Watch Out for These Known Problems:
- Look for and recognize the full name of a journal. Many publishers use journal abbreviations in reference lists, like that last example from Powder Technology. This can be quite confusing because in most cases you cannot locate a journal by its abbreviation. In fact, there is no standard across publishers or disciplines for journal abbreviations. So, is J. Fluid Mech. really the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, the Journal for Fluid Mechanics (the prepositions do make a difference!) or something else? My first choice was right but it is very easy to make a mistake when guessing. You can check the abbreviation in Google or use the TIP below.
- And, there is another kind of confusion: IEEE likes to invert its journal titles in bibliographies and in IEEE Electronic Library. Look at the example below from IEEE Electronic Library:
Unidirectional byte error detecting codes for computer memory systems
Dunning, L.A.; Dial, G.; Varanasi, M.R.;
Computers, IEEE Transactions on
Volume 39, Issue 4, April 1990 Page(s):592 – 595
The title of this journal is really IEEE Transactions on Computers. To find a print copy of this journal, you would use “IEEE Transactions on Computers” as the search term, not “Computers, IEEE Transactions on.” Of course, for the online version, just use IEL
- TIP: When in doubt, look for the full name of the journal on the pdf version of the article. The full name of a journal is normally found at the top or bottom of each page, on the first page of the article, on the front cover, or on the page with the table of contents.
- For online resources, include the URL and the title of the page. Watch for web pages that are really alternate versions of an article published in a journal or a conference proceeding. The URL will tell you where the server that contains the paper is located. Papers may be posted on a university web site and/or as a preprint version on the author’s web site or elsewhere. If the online version appears to be a duplicate or pdf of a print source, try to verify it in print and then use the information from the official journal or conference; this is considered the most reliable version. Many publishers, including Elsevier, do give an author permission to post his/her paper on their own website, as long as the official Elsevier version is used.
What is not included in a citation?
A citation does not contain:
- an abstract or summary
- subject headings, classification codes, or anything created to help locate the article in a database or print index
- the reference list or bibliography from the article.
However, any of these extras may be provided along with the citation, depending on the situation.
