AAS 101: Research Methods for African American Studies: Citing

How do you cite sources?
The means to identify sources is to provide citations within your text linking appropriate passages to relevant resources consulted or quoted. This can be done through in-text parenthetic notes, footnotes, or endnotes. In addition, a bibliography or list of works cited, is almost always placed at the end of your paper. The citation system and format you use will be determined by the citation style you choose.

Below are links to guides for the three major styles used for most academic papers or research in the humanities, social sciences, and some scientific disciplines:

• APA Style Guide (Purdue) - From the American Psychological Association. Often preferred in the fields of psychology and many other social sciences.
• MLA Style Guide (Purdue) - From the Modern Language Association of America. Often preferred in the fields of literature, arts, humanities, and in some other disciplines.
• Turabian & Chicago Styles Guide (Purdue) - From the work of Kate Turabian at the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Press. Often preferred in history and many other disciplines.

Citation managers (also called reference managers or bibliographic management software) offer a way to save, organize and manage references. 

All citation management programs let you:

• Add citations from databases like PubMed, Web of Science, etc.
• Organize your citations into folders or groups
• Add PDF files of articles to the references
• Format citations in Microsoft Word (and other document programs such as Google Docs) to create bibliographies in any of 1000s of styles
• Share all or part of your database, with various degrees of permissions, and collaborate with others on documents

Four popular citation managers are listed below. The Manage Your Citations guide provides more information about the differences between them. 

Zotero  [guide]

Mendeley  [guide]

​Endnote  [guide]