Why should you cite your sources?
To give credit to ideas that are not your own
To provide support for your argument (professor's love that!)
To enable your reader to find and read the sources you used -- this makes your research process transparent
To avoid Honor Code infractions and/or plagiarism!
There are quite a few different ways to cite resources in your paper. The citation style usually depends on the academic discipline involved. For example:
Check with your professor to make sure you use the required style. Whatever style you use, be consistent!
A great one-stop shopping resource is THE PURDUE OWL. This has easy-to-follow examples of the major style guides.
The Chicago Manual of Style Online
Zotero Citation Management Tool: a free reference management software that allows you to collect, organize and cite your references with ease. The best feature of Zotero is its integration with Word (and other word processors), it creates the reference list in the style of your choice.
Mendeley: A desktop and web program that stores document PDFs. Free, with additional storage and premium features available for purchase. Mendeley is particularly strong working with articles in the sciences.
EndNote: EndNote is the most elaborate and well-established citation management tool, with many advanced features. It must be purchased, and has a steeper learning curve than the other tools listed here.
Other citation formatting tools merely help you word your citations in the appropriate format (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.). These tools are useful when you won’t need to return to your list of sources after completing an immediate project.
Citation Machine: Free web tool for MLA and APA style citations.
EasyBib: Free MLA citation formatting, with APA and Chicago/Turabian formatting for a paid subscription.
NoodleBib: Part of Noodletools, a suite of tools for note-taking, outlining, and other writing tasks. Noodle tools requires a paid subscription, but has limited functionality with a free “MLAlite” account.
Citation management tools allow you to download citations from databases and websites, and to store, organize, and format those citations.
These are good choices for large research projects with many sources, for ongoing research into an area of interest, and for any research where you want to save sources that you might wish to refer to at some point in the future