Mary Westervelt, Director, Technical Communication Program
The Penn Library provides tutorials on many subjects having to do with searching for published information on a topic. A discussion of issues regarding use of references is at the following web link:
http://gethelp.library.upenn.edu/PORT/
This site discusses issues such as what makes a source credible, and how to find sources. Links at the site also give samples of references in various citation formats, including MLA, APA, Chicago, and ACS (American Chemical Society).
The Purdue Writing Center website has a good discussion of the tension between needing to cite reliable sources and needing to do creative, original work. The discussion is followed by useful exercises to help you develop a sense of when you need to give credit to a source. The link to the lesson is this:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/
The following site, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has a good discussion with examples of plagiarism, effective paraphrasing and appropriate quoting:
http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/
Follow links to Documentation/Quoting and Paraphrasing Sources.
Reference formats are basically of two types: Name-date, or citation-sequence.
Name-date style
Note: MLA, another name-date style, is not generally used in scientific and technological papers.
Citation-sequence style
Note: Superscript reference numbers can be confused with numbers referring to footnotes. A footnote is a note at the bottom of a text page which comments on the text of that page. In modern editorial style, footnotes are not used for citation information. (Using letters rather than numbers to indicate footnotes eliminates the possible confusion of footnotes with references.)
IEEE Style (combines name-date and numerical order)
This style is described in the IEEE Style Manual, beginning on page 6. See http://www.ieee.org/portal/cms_docs_iportals/iportals/publications/authors/transjnl/stylemanual.pdf
CSE recommended style (used in The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers: Scientific Style and Format, Seventh Edition, 2006)
Choosing a style. Your professor may specify a particular style. However, if the instructions are “use a citation-sequence style” or “use a name-date style”, it’s up to you to choose one style and to use it consistently throughout your paper and in your list of references. Do not just copy source information from a journal without making sure the style conforms to that of your chosen style.
If your professor leaves the choice of style completely up to you, consider these factors:
Examples using APA style (a name-date style)
From a lab report, Determination of Facet Capsule Failure Strains (2004)
In-text citation (note that all authors are listed the first time a source is cited; et al. is used in later references):
The maximum principal strain at catastrophic failure reported by Winkelstein, Nightingale, Richardson, and Myers (2000) was 1.09 ± 0.83, which is similar to the 0.94 ± 0.85 strain observed here. The sub-catastrophic strains observed in our data (0.35 ± 0.21) (see Table 2) were lower and more narrowly distributed than the sub-catastrophic strains observed by Winkelstein et al. (0.67 ± 0.77).
List of References entry (note the hanging indent):
Winkelstein B.A., Nightingale R.W., Richardson W.J., & Myers, B.S. (2000). The cervical facet capsule and its role in whiplash injury: A biomechanical investigation. Spine, 25(10),1238-1246.
Examples using CSE citation-sequence style (CSE notes that, in citation-sequence style, either superscripts or numbers in parentheses may be used (CSE Manual, p. 496*), but that the author must distinguish parenthetical citations from other numbers in parentheses. For example: “In a report of multiple cases (37 incidents), Jones (12) found….”)
*Source (given using CSE style): Council of Science Editors, Style Manual Committee. Scientific style and format: the CSE manual for authors, editors, and publishers. 7th ed. Reston(VA): The Council; 2006.
In-text citation:
The maximum principal strain at catastrophic failure reported by Winkelstein et al. [1] was 1.09 ± 0.83, which is similar to the 0.94 ± 0.85 strain observed here. The sub-catastrophic strains observed in our data (0.35 ± 0.21) (see Table 2) were lower and more narrowly distributed than the sub-catastrophic strains observed by (1) (0.67 ± 0.77).
List of References entry:
The Penn Library has electronic resources for many citation styles. Go to
http://www.library.upenn.edu/cgi-bin/res/sr.cgi
On that page, click on Reference and News Sources à Citation Guides and Style Manuals.
APA examples and tutorial
Some SEAS professors require APA style. Examples can be found at the Penn Library PORT link:
http://gethelp.library.upenn.edu/PORT/documentation/documentation.html
The following link provides access to a tutorial in the use of APA style.
http://gseacademic.harvard.edu/~instruct/articulate/APA/player.html
Information from the Penn Library, 1/14/08, introduces the following new electronic resource:
APA Style Guide to Electronic References
http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/48037
“Up-to-date information about how to format electronic references in APA style, expanded and updated from the Electronic Resources section of the fifth edition of the Publication Manual.
“Among the new examples are dissertations and theses; bibliographies; curriculum and course material; reference materials, including Wiki; gray literature, such as conference hearings, presentation slides, and policy briefs; general interest media and alternative presses such as audio podcasts; and online communities, such as Weblog posts and video Weblog posts. Students and writers will find this guide indispensable as well as convenient to download and use when citing electronic references.”
CSE style. Some SEAS professors require that you use this style, either in the name-date format or in the citation-sequence format (for definitions of these, see Deciding which reference format to use). CSE ‘style’ can be confusing to use: rather than specifying one set of guidelines, CSE instead gives general principles for use of a name-date system, a citation-sequence system, or one which alphabetizes references and then numbers them in alphabetical order for in-text references (CSE’s recommended system).
Guidelines based on CSE appear in many writing handbooks, but these often contradict one another on details. The U. Wisconsin site has examples of how to create a list of references using CBE (the earlier name of CSE) style, in both name-date format and citation-sequence format. Go to this website:
http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/
Follow links to Citing References in Your Paper. Select CBE (Council of Biology Editors), now referred to as CSE (Council of Science Editors).
Software for formatting citations
If your paper is formatted in LaTex, you can use BibTex to format your list of references in a standard style, such as Chicago or APA, or in one of the BibTex styles. Go to the following Reed College link for more information: