FSCI 198 Climate Crisis and Climate Actions

It's important to cite your sources for a variety of reasons. Citing your sources:

• Gives your work credibility by showing you've done your research
• Gives credit to the authors/creators of the sources you used
• Allows readers to go back to the original source
• Ensures you won't be accused of plagiarism!

Now you know why it's important to cite, check out the flow chart below for information on when to cite.

Discussions around how and when to cite sources happen regularly in university settings, but we rarely consider who is being cited. And yet, in our current systems of Western academia, citation metrics have huge impacts on people's career advancement at all levels.

It's important to recognize that there are systemic inequities with regards to the under-representation of minoritized scholars. Citation justice aims to begin addressing this problem by inviting us to diversify the range of sources we engage with and cite.

Not only do underrepresented scholars benefit from citation justice, but students to as well! Increasing diversity in syllabi, lectures, and reading lists can promote a sense of belonging among students, which can lead to profound impacts on student success and engagement.

Check out the Citation Justice in STEMM guide for more information about why this is important and how to do it!

"...just as citational practices have the potential to reinforce power structures, they also have

tremendous potential to undo them." (Andrea Eidinger, 2023)

Citations describe information resources (ex. journal articles, books, web pages, etc.) in a standard format. Citations styles differ in how they present information, but they all include the following basic elements: the title of the resource, who wrote it (author and/or editor), when it was published, where and by whom it was published (journal name, city, host of web page, etc.).

The McGill Library Citation Guide has loads of additional information including choosing a style based on your subject, information about citation managemenet software including EndNote and Zotero, and an FAQ on Citing and Referencing.

Below are some basic examples of citations in APA 7 style for different types of resources. The APA official site has a much more extensive list of examples.

Journal Article

Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185

Newspaper Article

Carey, B. (2019, March 22). Can we get better at forgetting? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/health/memory-forgetting-psychology.html

Podcast Episode

Hannah-Jones, N. (Host). (2019, September 13). How the bad blood started (No. 4) [Audio podcast episode]. In 1619. The New York Times. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-4-how-the-bad-blood-started/id1476928106?i=1000449718223

PowerPoint Slide from Class Website

Mack, R., & Spake, G. (2018). Citing open source images and formatting references for presentations [PowerPoint slides]. Canvas@FNU. https://fnu.onelogin.com/login

Report by Government Agency, NGO, etc.

National Cancer Institute. (2019). Taking time: Support for people with cancer (NIH Publication No. 18-2059). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.cancer.gov/publications/patient-education/takingtime.pdf

Wikipedia Entry

Oil painting. (2019, December 8). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oil_painting&oldid=929802398

Citing Information from Traditional Knowledge or Oral Traditions of Indigenous Peoples

• If the information has been recorded and is recoverable by readers, cite it in the text and include a reference list entry in the correct format for that type of source. It's important to maintain the integrity of Indigenous perspectives. 
• For Traditional Knowledge or Oral Traditions that are not recorded, provide as much detail in the in-text citation as is necessary to describe the content and to contextualize the origin of the information and use a variation of the personal communication citation. Capitalize most terms related to Indigenous Peoples. Because there is no recoverable source, a reference list entry is not used.

ex. We spoke with Anna Grant (Haida Nation, lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, personal communication, April 2019) about traditional understandings of the world by First Nations Peoples in Canada. She described . . .

• More information on citing Personal Communications and Traditional Knowledge or Oral Traditions in APA 7.