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Citing Sources Ethically

You must give credit to the authors and researchers who influenced your work and document any data or other information you use that is not considered common knowledge.

Are you old school?

The 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association has changed the format for some citations, revamped the look of student papers and added a section on bias free and gender neutral language. Consult the APA Style Blog for more detailed information.

New to APA 7

DOIs are formatted the same as URLs
URLs are no longer preceded by “Retrieved from.”
URL example
For ebooks, the format, platform, or device (e.g. Kindle) is no longer included in the reference
Sample reference for kindle book
The singular “they” or “their” is endorsed as a gender-neutral pronoun
Descriptive phrases are preferred to using adjectives as nouns to label groups of people
Exact age ranges are used instead of broad ranges

Bibliographic citation generators

MyBib: Free. Saves your projects on site. Can copy and paste into Word or save as a separate Word document. Can also upload into Zotero, BibTex, or Mendely. Or you can share via a link or email.

Opendemia: Free. (For $10/year you can use it without ads.) Can use it to take notes as well as create citations, which you can then copy and paste into your paper.

Mendeley Cite: Free plug-in for Microsoft Word that lets you cite sources without leaving your document. The plug-in appears in the references tab in Word which allows you to automatically add in-text citations and generate bibliographies. Compatible with Office 365, the latest versions of Word including the Word app for iPad.

Zotero: Free. Downloadable desktop app. Lets you collect research material, organize them, and create references and bibliographies.

EndNote: One time purchase of $115 for student license or $250 for a full license. (Can also be purchased for a group or an institution.)  EndNote offers reference management software that allows users to Insert in-text citations while simultaneously creating a bibliography in Word as well as other features.

Paperpile: Subscription-based ($2.99/month academic) reference management system that lets you store, organize, and share your research all from one place. The paid version includes beta version of Word plug-ins for Mac and Windows. Also offers a free reference manager for Google Docs.

Citation Machine: Free online citation generator. Completed citations are added to your online bibliography, which you can then copy and paste to a document or export to Word. However, in order to save a bibliography, you need to upgrade to Citation Machine Plus ($9.95/month). The free version also requires that users watch an ad after every 48 hours to continue citing material.

CiteFast: Free. Easily copy and paste your citations or export.