Imagine that you have come up with an exciting, new theory and publish it in a journal article. Then someone else writes an article including your theory, but doesn’t give you credit for your idea. How would you feel? You’d probably feel it was unfair for someone else to take credit for your work.
In academics, it is considered worse than unfair when credit isn’t given to the creator of a work or an idea; it is considered unethical. The term for representing someone else’s work as your own, even if unintentionally, is plagiarism. At UNT and all universities, plagiarism is a serious violation of the academic code; see the Student Academic Integrity section of the UNT Policy Manual.
So, whenever you paraphrase or directly quote from someone else’s work, you must provide a citation. It’s the fair and ethical thing to do! Visit the Plagiarism library guide or Plagiarism.org to find FAQs, examples of plagiarism, and more.
Most people know that when you are citing a source, you put a full reference for the work on the Works Cited page or Reference List at the end of your paper or project.
There’s also a second part to citing called the in-text citation. It is a parenthetical reference within or after the sentence in which you paraphrased or directly quoted an author. These citations are in the body of the paper. Here’s an example in APA style:
The ship, The Beagle, first landed at the Cape Verde archipelago after leaving England (Darwin, 1996).
The UNT Libraries provide print manuals and online style guides to assist you in correctly formatting papers and citing references. The links below take you to manuals and guides for the major citation styles. To see all styles available, visit the Citations and Style Guides webpage.
Need help? Then use the library's Ask Us service. Get help from real people face-to-face, by phone, or by email.
