*Human Development

All students at Binghamton University are obligated to abide by the University Academic Honesty Code, which is available online in the University Bulletin.  The code expressively prohibits acts of academic dishonesty (such as, but not limited to, plagiarism, cheating on exams, multiple submissions, unauthorized collaboration, fabrication, misrepresentation, forgery, sabotage, and bribery).    (from the University Bulletin)

Plagiarism is taking credit for others' work as your own, from entire papers, to unacknowledged quotations or phrases, using data or images without attribution, or using a method or critical theory without giving credit.   Giving credit strengthens your work by proving that you know how to draw upon others research to build your own arguments; which is an essential building block in becoming a scholar. 

For more information, read "Part V: Academic Honesty" of the  Ethics and Integrity Policy of the CCPA.

For tips and tools on how to avoid plagiarism and pitfalls in your own work, see  the Academic Honesty page. 

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.

The Human Development department generally requires that students use the APA Style manual, but it may be up to the students' choice if they use the 6th or 7th edition (released October 2020).  Whatever style you use (or edition of a manual) it is important that you stay consistent throughout your work. 

For help with APA 7th edition, see the Libraries' APA Style Help page on the Citation Help page.

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. 

For assistance in using these citation managers, you can reach out to librarians that will help you with the tool of your choice, via email, chat or in person assistance: 

EndNote Basic - Aleshia Huber

Jen Embree - Mendeley 

Megan Benson - Zotereo 

As a general rule, many "cut and paste" free citation tools such as the citation tool in Word, MyBib, CiteThis and citation generations with Google Scholar and article databases are at best, unreliable. 

Do not ever assume the information gained from these is correct, reliable, or even complete enough to generate a citation.