Abstract
An abstract is the short summary at the head of a journal article or a dissertation, usually 150 to 250 words, that states the question, the method, the findings and the conclusion. Reading it is the quickest way to decide whether a source is worth reading in full.
Annotated bibliography
An annotated bibliography is a list of sources in which each reference is followed by a short paragraph, the annotation, that summarises the source and usually judges its quality and its use for the project.
How to write an annotated bibliography
APA style
APA style is the author-date citation and formatting style of the American Psychological Association, now in its 7th edition. It is the usual style in psychology, nursing, education and the social sciences.
Cite in APA 7
Author-date citation
An author-date citation names the author and the year in the text, as in (Okafor, 2021), and the full reference is found in an alphabetical list at the end. APA, Harvard and Chicago author-date all work this way.
Bibliography
A bibliography is a list of everything consulted for a piece of work, whether or not it was cited in the text. A reference list, by contrast, holds only what was cited.
Reference list, bibliography or works cited?
Chicago style
Chicago style is the citation style of The Chicago Manual of Style, now in its 18th edition. It has two systems: notes and bibliography, common in history and the humanities, and author-date, common in the sciences.
Cite in Chicago
Citation
A citation is the short pointer in the text of a paper, such as (Okafor, 2021) or a number in brackets, that tells the reader which source a statement comes from. Each citation leads to one full reference in the list at the end.
Citation generator
A citation generator is a tool that formats a reference in a chosen style from details it is given or looks up. Its output is only as good as the details behind it, which is why a reference built from the publisher’s own record is more reliable than one built from a web page.
Cite a source
Common knowledge
Common knowledge is a fact that is widely known, easily checked and not disputed, such as the year a war ended. It needs no citation. An interpretation, a statistic or a finding is never common knowledge.
Container (MLA)
In MLA style a container is the larger work that holds the source being cited: the journal that holds an article, the website that holds a page, the book that holds a chapter. An MLA reference lists the source, then its container.
MLA 9 Works Cited guide
Crossref
Crossref is the not-for-profit agency through which most scholarly publishers register DOIs for journal articles, books and conference papers. Its public record of each work is what a reference can be checked against.
DOI
A DOI, or digital object identifier, is a permanent identifier for a published work, such as 10.1038/nature12373. Put after https://doi.org/ it always leads to the work, even if the publisher’s website changes.
What is a DOI?
Et al.
Et al. is short for the Latin et alia, “and others”. It shortens a citation with several authors to the first author’s name: (Kucsko et al., 2013). Each style sets its own number of authors at which it applies.
When to use et al.
Fabricated reference
A fabricated reference is one that points at a work that was never published. Language models produce them because they write text in the shape of a reference without looking anything up.
Verify references
Grey literature
Grey literature is research and information published outside commercial and academic publishing: government reports, working papers, theses, policy documents. It is often real and useful, and often missing from the indexes that reference checkers use.
Hanging indent
A hanging indent sets the first line of a reference at the margin and every following line half an inch (1.27 cm) in. APA, MLA and Chicago reference lists all use it.
Harvard referencing
Harvard referencing is a family of author-date styles with no single official manual. Many universities in the United Kingdom and Australia follow the version in Cite Them Right, and each university’s own guide decides the details.
Harvard referencing guide
Ibid.
Ibid. is short for the Latin ibidem, “in the same place”. In footnote styles it refers to the source cited in the note just before. The Chicago Manual now prefers a shortened citation to ibid.
In-text citation
An in-text citation is the citation placed in the sentence where a source is used, either in brackets, as in (Okafor, 2021, p. 14), or worked into the sentence, as in Okafor (2021) found.
APA 7 in-text citations
ISBN
An ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is the 10 or 13 digit number that identifies one edition of a book. Each edition and format has its own, which is why it is the surest way to cite the edition actually read.
MLA style
MLA style is the author-page citation style of the Modern Language Association, now in its 9th edition. It is the usual style in literature, languages and many secondary-school English classes.
Cite in MLA 9
Numbered citation
A numbered citation marks a source with a number in the text, [1] or a superscript, and lists the references in the order they were first cited. IEEE and Vancouver work this way.
Open access
An open access work is one that anyone may read online without paying or logging in, legally, because the publisher or the author has made it so.
Paraphrase
A paraphrase restates a passage from a source in new words and a new sentence structure, at about the same length. It still needs a citation, because the idea is the author’s.
Paraphrase, quote or summarise
Peer review
Peer review is the checking of a manuscript by independent experts in the field before a journal accepts it. It is the main reason a journal article is treated as more reliable than a web page.
PMID
A PMID is the number PubMed gives to each record in its index of biomedical literature. Like a DOI, it identifies one article exactly.
Primary source
A primary source is the original material: the study that collected the data, the historical document, the literary text. A secondary source describes or interprets primary sources, as a review article or a textbook does.
Reference list
A reference list is the list at the end of a paper that gives the full details of every source cited in the text, and no others. APA calls it References, MLA calls it Works Cited.
Reference manager
A reference manager is software that stores a personal library of sources and inserts citations into a document as it is written. Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote are reference managers.
Generator, manager or checker?
Retraction
A retraction is a journal’s formal withdrawal of a published article, for serious error or for misconduct. The article usually stays online, marked as retracted, and should not be cited as evidence.
Retracted papers in your reference list
Secondary citation
A secondary citation cites a work that was read about in another source and not read itself, as in (Rahman, 1998, as cited in Okafor, 2021). Only the source actually read goes in the reference list.
Vancouver style
Vancouver style is the numbered citation style used across medicine and the health sciences, set out in the United States National Library of Medicine’s Citing Medicine.
Cite in Vancouver
Works Cited
Works Cited is the MLA name for the list at the end of a paper that gives every source cited in it, in alphabetical order with a hanging indent.
MLA 9 Works Cited guide