Spark: Visual Piety (Tran)

• Citations let your readers know where you got the information you used in your writing.
• They give credit to your sources and situate your work within the context of your field.
• Citing sources accurately and thoroughly demonstrates that you understand where your work fits in scholarly discourse and that you have reviewed literature relevant to your topic.

An article citation might be available in UC Library Search.  This search tool includes basic citing capability.

• Search for the article.
• If found, click on the article title.
• Click on Citation.
• Click on the citation format needed. (APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, and Turabian are available.)
• Copy and paste the citation.
• Note: There is also a RefWorks export.

To cite an article found in an EBSCOhost database:

• When you've found an article you want to cite, look to the right side of the screen. You'll see a row of icons. Choose the "Cite" icon. It looks like a page with writing on it.

• Clicking "Cite" will take you to a menu with article citations in various formats. Scroll down to find the citation format you want, then copy the citation you need to a document.

To cite an article found in a ProQuest database:

• When you've found an article you want to cite, look to the upper right corner of the webpage. You'll see a "Cite" button.

• Clicking the "Cite" button will open a small box with a menu from which you can choose the citation in the format you wish. Copy to a document.

• To get citation information in Google Scholar, search for your article title or the article's author.
• Click on the quotation mark icon under the information about the item that interests you.

• From there, copy and paste the citation information you need, or click the links at the bottom to send citation information to a citation management tool such as RefWorks. RefWorks is a tool that the UC Merced Library pays for the University's faculty, students, and staff to use for their research.
• Make sure to double-check the citation Google Scholar generates; while using this tool can save you time, it is not perfect.

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