Citations: An Insight

After an extensive research, it all boils down to writing a fully furbished research paper. Most of us overlook certain elements of research like citations, which later come to haunt us.  J-Gate has gone one step ahead and integrated the various citation formats in the platform itself. All you got to do is, copy and paste the citation format that you require. Now let’s look more closely as to what is a citation and what is its significance.

What is a Citation?

A Citation is a representation of sources from where you have utilized content or ideas to support your article.A Citation generally includes source information like author’s name, publisher’s name, date of publication, place of the publication etc.

What is a Citation Format?

A citation format specifies a particular style in which a citation needs to be written. Say there is an article where the author has mentioned a quote picked from the novel – The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.

“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”

The author can cite the details of a source from where this quote was picked from in a format that is specific to Literature. If you consider MLA (Modern Language Association) format – the citation can be mentioned as follows:

Rudyard Kipling, John L. Kipling, W H. Drake, and Paul Frenzeny. The Jungle Book. London: Macmillan, 1898. Print.

This speaks of the Author’s Name, Illustrators’ names, Name of the Book, Place of Publication and the Year of Publication.

In the J-Gate platform, on clicking the citation icon, a pop-up will open up which will display the citations in different formats.

Why do you need a Citation?

Citations are useful in the following situations:

-To a reader who wants to know more about the content or ideas expressed in your article or where they were sourced from.

-To showcase the effort taken to procure information from various sources.

-To avoid plagiarism by giving due credit to the original author.

How do you choose a citation format?

Choosing a citation format depends on which academic discipline the content is related to. Also, once you choose the citation format, the specifics of the format can vary depending on the type of source. For example, if you want to cite the source for a Literature related content, then you’d choose an MLA citation format.

Next step would be to refer an official Citation Format Manual to look up for the specifics under MLA depending on the kind source from where the content was referred to. The source could be a book, an article or an e-mail correspondence. Each of these sources has a different specification under MLA.

Some of the commonly used citation formats are:

1) APA (American Psychological Association)

Used across all Social Sciences like Social Work, Psychology etc.

2) MLA (Modern Language Association)

Used in Humanities and Literature.

3) Chicago/Turabian

Used in History, Fine Arts, and Business.

4) Vancouver

Commonly used in Medical Sciences.