Project Management: Citation

Citation is giving credit to the original creator of something. We need to use citation every time we reuse another person's work in our own work. Any time you use an idea, quote, image, piece of music, video, etc. - anything that you did not come up with yourself - it requires a citation.

APA style is a citation style often used in business assignments. APA style provides us with a list of rules to help us give credit to others in a standardized and detailed way.

1. Remember why we cite: Credit your sources, build your credibility, and save time (yours, if you want to find things again, and your instructors' if they need to check)

2. Ask yourself 'what am I actually referencing?'. Is it an article? A book? A chapter? A video? The way you cite something depends on the type of source it is.

3. Follow an online guide to help you make your citations.

3. Use a citation tool: Many of our databases will format the references for you! Find the video on the right to learn more. But check an APA guide to make sure there are no mistakes!

4. Use citation tools in Microsoft word, such as the hanging indent tool, case tool, and alphabetization tool. See the Microsoft Word Citation Tool videos on this page to learn more.

6. Do you have a lot of assignments requiring reference lists or works cited lists? You might want to try a citation manager to do the formatting for you!

Zotero quick guides: text and screengrabs showing how to use Zotero

What happens when you are reading an article and the authors are citing somebody else's work, but you want to use that information too?

Ideally, you should try to find the original source and cite that. Try your best to locate the source the authors are citing. However, sometimes it’s just not possible to find a source, and that’s ok too! Here is an example of what this looks like:

Example

Imagine the paper I am reading is written by Smith. Within this paper, Smith is citing is a different paper that was written by Jones. I am trying to find the paper by Jones to read for myself, but can’t get access to it. Here is how to cite that. 

Jones (2010, as cited in Smith, 2019) argued that VCC students think apples are the most delicious fruit.

VCC students think apples are the best tasting of all fruits (Jones, 2010, as cited in Smith, 2019).

If I am quoting what Jones said, use the page number from the Smith article. Iit would look like this:

“VCC students simply love apples” (Jones, 2010, as cited in Smith, 2019, p. 22).

Cite the Smith paper in the reference list as normal. Do not cite the Jones paper in the reference list.