Citation Help & Academic Honesty

Hello! This guide is designed to assist creating and using citations. The guide has lots of information, which you can navigate using the tabs on the left-hand side.

• Home: an explanation about why and how to cite, and an overview of citation management tools 
• Academic Honesty & Plagiarism: an overview of Binghamton University's academic honesty policy, an explanation of plagiarism and how to avoid it, who and went to cite, as well as examples of plagiarism 
• APA Style: how to cite using APA 
• MLA Style: how to cite using MLA 
• Chicago and Turabian Style: how to cite using Chicago and Turabian styles 
• Citing Images: how to cite images 
• More Style guides: resources for other citation styles 
• Citation Managers: a link to our guide on citation management tools 

Citations give credit to the the author as well as enable other researchers (or your instructor) to locate the cited item. 

All sources should be cited in a bibliography or reference list and in the text or footnotes of a research paper.

In addition to this guide, Binghamton University Libraries  has several interactive tutorials on the Online Tutorials page under the Citations and Academic Integrity section.

Citation styles provide rules for writing and formatting in-text citations (i.e., parenthetical citations, footnotes, or endnotes) and source lists (e.g., bibliography, works cited). These styles also provide guidance on how to format the text of the paper (including use of graphs, charts, and images) and writing conventions for the field.

Common styles include APA, MLA, and Chicago Manual of Style, but many subjects and journals have their own styles.

Your instructor may require the use of a specific style or allow students to choose. Either way, what's important is that you use the style  consistently throughout your paper.

Citation managers (sometimes called reference managers) are tools that allow you to:

• Import citations from databases and Find It! as you research
• Save and organize citations
• Attach pdfs of articles and chapters, when available
• Create bibliographies in a variety of formats
• Insert footnotes and parenthetical citations as you write
• Collaborate with others using shared folders

Binghamton University Libraries provides supports for three free citation managers: Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote Basic.  For more information about these tools and assistance, please see our Citation Managers page.