Health Administration: Citations

Have a lot of citations you want to enter in your works cited/references list? Try a citation manager.

Do you need the Web or Desktop version?

• Organize your research Include citations while you write your paper
• Build a bibliography in a variety of formats
• Import references from library databases and Google Scholar.

Use these online resources to help cite sources for your research assignments or to check the accuracy of auto-generated citations. They are notorious for having errors, such as capitalization or punctuation errors!

Purdue OWL - APA

APA Style has a tutorial on the basics of APA and a helpful blog.

The Concise APA Handbook (7th ed.) - library ebook

This very handy button appears on the right side of the screen once you have opened an article in a research database. Click it and citations in various styles will be generated for the article that you have opened. Remember: This is just a starting point for adding the citation to your research paper.  Double check the citation for accuracy.  There are often mistakes!

When you are writing your paper, you can use several ways to present information you have found in the body of your paper, and consciously avoid plagiarizing.

1. Direct quote -- If you want to use a sentence or a passage exactly as it was written, you can include a direct quote, surrounded by quotation marks, and either using an inline citation, or a sentence before the quote referencing the author and work of origin.
    
2. Summary -- You can also write a summary (in your own words of course) of the ideas or text you want to use. It helps to write the summary from your memory rather than looking directly at the passage.
    
3. Paraphrase -- Paraphrasing is similar to a summary. It just means taking what you have read and rewriting it in your own words.

See this super helpful quick reference sheet that concisely covers the differences between quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing, has a flow chart for determining when and what to cite, and also clarifies what is common knowledge. 

For more in-depth information on plagiarism and avoiding it see these resources provided by the University: avoiding plagiarism, how not to plagiarize, paraphrasing and using quotations.

See also Student's Guide on Avoiding Plagiarism - this is a helpful, comprehensive guide.