LibGuides: African History: Citation

Organize, Write, & Cite - Why do we cite?

Organizing your research can help make the writing and citing process easier. Use tips from this page to guide you in this step.

Why do we cite? Several reasons!

It makes us look good. Seriously, it's ethical and responsible to help readers differentiate our ideas from those we are using from others.
It helps us point our readers to our sources where they can more deeply engage with the scholarly conversation.
It helps us to learn how to communicate formally within our discipline/major.
We avoid plagiarism by quoting the words or paraphrasing ideas of other scholars.

Citation Formats

Different citation formats are used by different academic disciplines. Professors will often require a particular format, but if they have no preference these guidelines may be helpful:

APA - psychology, education, and other social sciences
MLA - literature, arts, and humanities
Turabian - designed for college students to use with all subjects
Chicago - used with all subjects in the "real world" by books, magazines, newspapers and other non-scholarly publications

Citation Management Tools

EndNote Web
Endnote Web is a scaled-down version of EndNote that comes with the library's subscription to Web of Science. Sign up via Clarivate
Mendeley
Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network that helps you manage, discover and share the latest research.
RefWorks (ProQuest)
A subscription tool that helps you manage, share and cite your sources. All UC Merced students, faculty and staff can create a RefWorks account. Note: UC Merced's subscription to RefWorks will end December 31, 2025.
Zotero
An open source app and browser extension that helps you gather, organize, analyze and share sources.