As such, this article should serve as your guide on how to cite a research paper in popular formats: APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, and the IEEE style. One of the most important ones is that you can easily establish to your reviewers and readers the context around and relevancy of your work.īut, creating a reference section for your paper or dissertation can be a tedious task. Citing your sources properly is also important for many reasons. Thus, it is best for graduate students and aspiring researchers to know how to cite a research paper and other sources in their works.

And, publication venues like journals and conferences are quite strict about their formats. In academic research, it is standardized by many bodies.

Within MLA style, the format of the citation also tells you 'what'-that this source is a journal article that you accessed through an online database.Citing your sources is an important practice when it comes to any type of publishing. In MLA style, a citation also often indicates how it was accessed. What if your reader doesn't have access to Geisel Library's databases? (This is the URL to the PDF view of a journal article in the database ProQuest Science Journals.)Ī good citation makes it easy for the reader to figure out the who, what, when, and where of the source.It does technically indicate where you found it, and someone might be able to find it again. If you cite a source in your bibliography simply like this: Citing your sources consistently and accurately helps you avoid committing plagiarism in your writing.It allows those who are reading your work to locate your sources, in order to learn more about the ideas that you include in your paper.It gives proper credit to the authors of the words or ideas that you incorporated into your paper.Citing or documenting the sources used in your research serves three purposes:

How to insert a citation to a source