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AGRI 215 Agro-Ecosystems Field Course

When do you need to cite?

1. You use another person's ideas, opinions, or theories.

2. You use facts, statistics, graphics, drawings, music, etc., or any other type of information that does not comprise common knowledge.

3. You use quotations from another person's spoken or written word (don't forget to place quotation marks around direct quotes)

4. You paraphrase another person's spoken or written word.

You must cite all sources used in all your assignments, that includes your presentation and your blog post. 

The only exception is when something is common knowledge. "Common knowledge generally refers to any well-established, uncontroversial fact about the world, or a fact that cannot be attributed to a single source." If you are not sure if something is common knowledge or not, cite it!  Also the Internet is NOT considered common knowledge. If you use something you found on the Internet, you still need to cite.

 

Adapted from: Indiana University. (2014). How to recognize plagiarism. https://plagiarism.iu.edu/.
Haigh, J. (2019). Research skills tutorial. Columbia College. https://columbiacollege-ca.libguides.com/research_skills/home
.

Citation and citation management software

Citations always come in pair: you have an in-text citation which corresponds to the references section at the end of your assignment. You need to cite also for your presentation (in your slides) and in your blog post. If you cite a source that you found online (iincluding ebooks and journal articles), you must include the URL. 

There are many citation styles you can choose from. For this class, you'll have to use APA 7th. If you're familiar with 6th only, then you'll have some tweaking to do. If you don't want the hassle of writing your references yourself, feel free to use a citation management software, such as Zotero or EndNote (select your OS on the left-side menu to have the right EndNote version). Both are free. If you've never used a citation management software, I'd suggest Zotero as it's more user-friendly (the "grab and go" thing I mentioned in class). There are many videos to help you learn how to use Zotero/EndNote and the library offers workshops as well. If you have questions, problems or need help, please contact me :)

Citation style - APA 7th

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