How to cite and prepare a bibliography
If you are writing an academic or research paper (such as a Bachelor's Final Degree Project, master's thesis, or dissertation), you need to know how to cite sources and prepare a bibliography or reference list.
To cite means to reproduce or refer to the ideas and/or words of another author.
When writing an academic work, you will often consult various sources of information (books, journal articles, databases, etc.).
If you include a passage or ideas from these sources in your work, you must cite the authors. This acknowledges that the ideas are not original and belong to someone else’s work.
Scientific work requires documentation, and citing the sources used is necessary in order to:
- Acknowledge the work of other authors and define responsibilities.
- Strengthen your own argumentation with the research and theories of other authors.
- Demonstrate that you are familiar with the state of the art or broaden the bibliography on the topic.
- Locate the cited sources of information and make it easier for the reader to expand on the information with the documentation we have used.
- Avoid plagiarism.
A citation is the link between your text and the ideas, phrases, or documents of another author. By extension, a citation is also a brief note that refers to a bibliographic source, which is generally listed at the end of the document in the form of a bibliography.
Thus, a citation allows you to identify the source of information from which the cited ideas, text fragments, tables, images, etc., have been taken.
Bibliographic citations are usually presented as a number, asterisk, or note in parentheses within the text.
- Any information that is not your own work (texts, photographs, maps, graphs, tables, research data, etc.).
- Any specific information that is not common knowledge.
- Any sentence written by another author.
- Any idea that belongs to another person.
There are many different citation styles: we will choose one style or another depending on our field of study and the purpose of our work.
For example, if it is for publication in a specific scientific journal, we must follow their guidelines. If it is for a class assignment, we should ask the professor.
In the following table, we show the most commonly used citation styles in different fields of knowledge according to EndNote (we have added some areas):
| CITATION STYLE | FILED OF STUDY | BASIC GUIDE |
|---|---|---|
| ISO-690 | Multidisciplinary | Basic guide ISO-690 |
| ACS | Chemistry | Basic guide ACS |
| AIP | Physics, Astronomy | Basic guide AIP |
| APA | Communication, Law, Psychology, Economics | Basic guide APA |
| APSA | Political Sciences | Basic guide APSA |
| ASA | Sociology | Basic guide ASA |
| Chicago | Economics, Humanities | Basic guide Chicago |
| Council of Science Editors (CSE) | Life Sciences, Veterinary | Basic guide CSE |
| Harvard | Sciences, Economics | Basic guide Harvard |
| IEEE | Engineering | Basic guide IEEE |
| MLA | Language and Linguistics | Basic guide MLA |
| NLM | Health Sciences, Veterinary | Basic guide NLM |
| Vancouver | Health Sciences | Basic guide Vancouver |
There are several programmes available to manage your bibliography and citations automatically. A comparative table with the features of the main reference managers available to you is provided: Mendeley, Zotero, and EndNote Web.
At UAB, as well as at other public universities in Catalonia, we support Mendeley Institutional and Zotero.
Plagiarism involves concealing the sources used and passing off ideas or text fragments copied from other works as your own. This constitutes a violation of intellectual property rights. You can find more information in:
- Bibliography in the UAB and the CCUC catalogues (subject: bibliography methodology)
- Good practices in research data management: citing your research data. CSUC Guide
- Guide: 'How to Cite and Avoid Plagiarism' by the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology at the UAB for students.
Tutorials and pages from other universities:
- How to cite. University of British Columbia website.
- How to create citations and bibliographies. Biblioguide from the University of Deusto.
- How to cite and create bibliographies. Biblioguide from the University of Lleida.
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