Horticulture

Why Citations are Important

In science communication, include citations to external and reliable sources in order to:

• increase the credibility of your own work
• provide your reader with additional sources of information
• acknowledge the work of others who have gone before you
• ensure that your work is transparent and unbiased

Direct Quotation, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing

There are certain conventions in science writing that make it a little different from other academic and non-academic writing:

• Rarely, if ever, are direct quotations taken from other work. This is largely because the actual words an author uses is not so important, whereas their findings and theories are.
• Paraphrasing the work of others is done by carefully altering sentence structure and terminology while adhering to the original meaning.
• Most often, when writing your lab reports and research papers, you will be summarizing the works of others.

To find out more, please visit the library's Academic Integrity and Plagiarism guide.

Summon citation tool

The library's Summon search, as well as many of its research databases, have built-in citation generators for creating citations and permanent folders for saving your search results.

In Summon, look for the quotation marks next to the result in the search results list. Be sure to select the appropriate citation style from the drop-down.

Use the tool to copy and paste the entries into your reference list, but make sure to double-check for accuracy and completion. Consult the Library's citation guides when you are preparing your final draft to make sure the formatting and details are correct.

Zotero citation tool

For a free tool that will help you collect, organize, cite, and share research, consider using Zotero. The library has a Zotero guide for installing and getting started using Zotero on your own device. 

Verify your sources

If you have used generative AI to help find sources for your assignment, you will need to go the extra step and verify that they actually exist. You've probably heard about "hallucinations" and fake sources that might appear in the search results of some generative AI tools. In some cases, the journals themselves may be legitimate, but the articles or authors don't exist.

Be suspicious! It is up to you to ensure that the sources you include in your assignment exist and are credible!

If you cite sources that don't exist, you will be in violation of KPU's policy on Academic Integrity.

Here's how you can check:

1. If the article citation includes a DOI, check to make sure it leads to an article on a journal or publisher's platform. 

• You can do this using the Crossref search tool. Copy the DOI (without the https://doi.org/) into the search box. You should be directed to the article on the publisher's site. 
• Double check the author and title to make sure it's the same article.

2. Put the entire title of a book or article into the Library's Summon search.

• Refine the results to "scholarly and peer review articles" or "books/ebooks". Your item should be at the top of the list. 
• Double check using the authors' names: are the authors of your article or book the same as the ones listed?
  Still not sure?

3. Copy the entire title into Google Scholar.

• Again, verify this is the same article cited by the generative AI tool.

Your instructor will offer guidelines as to the acceptable use of Artificial Intelligence for your course assignments. Refer to Academic Integrity's infographic on ChatGPT and Other AI Tools at KPU. Or review KPU Library's guidelines on our Artificial Intelligence guide.