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Environmental Public Health / Health Inspector: Citing

Cite, you must...

    To give credit to authors and acknowledge their ideas (whether you quote them or not).

    To avoid plagiarism.

    To allow others to track  the sources you consulted, so scholars can have conversations about your topic.

 

"Paw Print Cat Free Photo" by George Hodan is licensed under CC0 Public Domain

 Watch the 2 minutes video Citation: A (Very) Brief Introduction, created by NCSU Libraries. This video is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-SA US license.

APA Citing -- 7th edition

A citation or reference is the information given in a bibliography or a database about a particular title, which often includes:

  • article title or chapter title
  • periodical title or book title
  • author(s) or editor(s)
  • date of publication
  • publisher name
  • volume/issue (articles) or edition (books)
  • page range
  • electronic access (URL or DOI)

There are many ways to format citations. The style you choose depends on your field and the requirements set by your Instructor.

Template

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of Publication). Title of article: no capital after colon. Title of Journal, Volume(Issue), Page Range. URL or DOI

Examples

Print Article

Ellery, K. (2008). Undergraduate plagiarism: a pedagogical perspective. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(5), 507-516.

Online Article

Herbst-Damm, K. L., & Kulik, J. A. (2005). Volunteer support, marital status, and the survival times of terminally ill patients. Health Psychology, 24, 225-229. doi: 10.1037/0278-6133.24.225

Adapted from UWM Libraries

You can often find all the information you need for a journal article citation on the first page of that article.

**click on image to enlarge it**

Adapted from UWM Libraries

 

1. Database Citation Tools

Many library databases have built-in citations tools that auto-create a citation. The major citation styles are available choices in the databases citation tools.

These citations tools should only be considered a starting point, as they may contain formatting errors - always review auto-created citations to ensure they are correct.

2. Citation managers are tools that can help with your research process, including:

Organize and save citations/articles.

Create in-text citations.

Share citations/articles with colleagues.

Generate Reference Lists in a wide range of styles.

with thanks to MCPHS University

Examples of free citation management tools are: Mendeley and Zotero

For full details, please read the APA blog post.

ChatGPT and other Large Language Models are useful tools for developing a research question or drafting preliminary text, but the results it produces are not reproducible or retrievable -- therefore, the "chat" produced is more analogous to a personal conversation. 

When citing ChatGPT, use the same citation standard as that used for algorithms and similar software. Authors should also describe the use of ChatGPT in the introduction section of their papers. 

ChatGPT may not be authoritative, even when providing "sources" upon request. 

Example Citations
In-text Narrative citation
When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain real or a metaphor?” OpenAI (2013) responded with the ChatGPT generated text that, although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notion that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth”.​
In-text Parenthetical citation
When given a follow-up prompt of “What is a more accurate representation?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that “different brain regions work together to support various cognitive processes” and “the functional specialization of different regions can change in response to experience and environmental factors” (OpenAI, 2023; see Appendix A for the full transcript).
Reference
OpenAI.  (2023),  ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model].  https://chat.openai.com/chat

From Michener Institute of Education at UHN

Plagiarism

Citation Managers

Both Mendeley and Zotero have group sharing options.yesAdapted from University of Florida Library

Mendeley logo

Mendeley is both a reference manager and an academic social network.  A free account will provide you with 2GB of online storage; additional storage may be purchased for your account.  All you ever wanted to know about Mendeley can be found with their helpful online guides or by watching the Mendeley training videos

Zotero logo

ZoteroBib quickly generates a citation and then converts it to APA, MLA, etc.

Zotero is a flexible reference manager.  All the information for learning Zotero is provided through their online documentation or their screencast tutorials.

  • It's free, so you'll be able to use it forever, even after you leave BCIT.
  • It saves your digital files to your computer and backs them up in the cloud.
  • It works seamlessly with Microsoft Word.
  • It can also be used with Google Docs, LibreOffice, LaTeX, and other text editors.
  • It automates a lot of processes, like attaching PDFs, that require extra steps in RefWorks.