CITATION & DOCUMENTING
INFORMATION SOURCES
According to Wikipedia (2013), a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source (not always the original
source). More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression
(e.g. [Newell84]) embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an
entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of acknowledging
the relevance of the works of others to the topic of discussion at the spot
where the citation appears.
When we are using someone’s information, we have to cite the
information taken, if failure to do so, it will cause plagiarism or also can be
considered as stealing someone’s information. There are a few styles that have
been introduced to cite information; the common well-known style is APA style.
So, what is APA stands for? It stands for American Psychological Association
(APA), was established in 1928 by Social Science professionals to provide
guidelines for publication in Social Science Journals such as Psychology,
Sociology, Education, and Nursing. There are rules that we have to follow in
order to cite the information which are for authors, titles, and documentation.
In order to cite the information, we have to follow the format of each of the
categories such as, books, edited books, journal articles, article from
internet, chapter from books, translation books, magazine articles, and many more.
Refers to the References list at the end of the paper
þ The List
ü is
labeled References (centered, no font changes)
ü starts
at the top of a new page
ü continues
page numbering from the last page of text
ü is
alphabetical
ü is
single spaced
ü Uses a
hanging indent (1/2 inch – can be formatted from the Paragraph dialog box in MS
Word)
þ Reference contains the
following components:
ü -
author names or names
ü -publication
date
ü -title
of the work
ü Publication
data
Sawyer, C.,
McCarty, P., & Parkin, G. F. (1994). Chemistry for environmental
engineering. (4th ed.). New York :
McGraw-Hill.
Documenting Authors (Books)
v One Author: Koch Jr., R. T. (2004).
format: Author. (Year). Title
of Book. Place of Publication : Publisher.
v
Two Authors: Stewart, T., &
Biffle, G. (1999).
Format: List all the authors.
Use ampersand (&) before the last author.(Year). Title of the book.
Place of Publication : Publisher.
v Three to Six Authors: Wells,
H. G., Lovecraft, H. P., Potter, H. J., Rowling, J. K., & Kirk, J. T.
(2005).
Format:
List all the authors. Use ampersand
(&) before the last author. (Year).Title of the book. Place of Publication : Publisher.
v More
than Six Authors: Smith, M., Flanagan,
F., Judd, A., Burstyn, E., Bullock, S., Knight, S., et al. (2002).
Format: First author until
sixth author, et al.
(Year). Title. Place of publication : Publisher.
The availability and growth of
the Internet offers all of us, the opportunity to find information and data
from all over the world. Internet resources, in particular World Wide Web
resources, continue to proliferate at an astonishing rate. Also, some experts
say that a new site is placed online every 3 seconds! And it is possible for
almost anyone to place anything on the Internet. What I learnt from Information
Analysis is about the criteria to evaluate sources which are purpose and scope.
Why we have to evaluate? When we use a research or academic library, the books,
journals and other resources have already been evaluated by a librarian or by a
mechanism set up by a librarian. When we use an index or a database to find
information on any given topic, the index or database is often produced by a
professional or scholarly organization that selects the journals to be indexed
on the basis of their quality. Then, every resource we find has been evaluated
in one way or another, before we ever see it. When we are using the World Wide
Web, none of this applies, because there are no filters in between us and the
Internet. Now that anyone with access to a server and a passing knowledge of
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) can put information on the Internet, the
problem has become one of sifting through a mass of advertising material and
vanity publications in order to find
information of high quality. Moreover, information can be spread over the
Internet by anyone without regard to accuracy, validity, or bias. So, using and
citing information found over the Web is a little like swimming on a beach
without a lifeguard. What we need is to check the accuracy, currency and
uniqueness of the information. By doing these steps, we can rely on whether the
resource is accurate or not. In addition, we also can analysis an information
by looking at their quality of writing, design and layout, organization,
navigability, style and functionality, color, multimedia, acces or workability,
ease of use, search-ability, brows-ability, software reliability, connectivity,
charging policy, copyright, censorship, language, documentation and many more.
