Research Methods Essay and Discussion

Semester Project: In-Text Citations & Reference Page PRACTICE 

Attached Files:

• In-Text-Citations-Practice                                                                       (11.382 KB) 
• Reference-Page-Practice                                                                       (11.247 KB) 

Creating correct in-text citations and your Reference page in the APA style are the last elements you will need for your final Semester Project submission in Week 14. 

Refer to Chapter 9 of our text for guidance on how to format in-text (pp.169-171) and full (Reference page) citations (pp.172-175).

Finally, use the “In-Text Citation” and “Reference Page” practice sheets attached above to practice creating in-text citations with direct quotes and Reference page citations for your actual Semester Project. Follow the instructions on each practice sheet and submit for Professor input via attachment to this assignment.

Please submit assignments via Blackboard by Monday, January 13 at 11:59pm.

Week 12 Discussion

Chapter 12 discusses continuing the “scholarly conversation.” After reviewing this Chapter, comment on this concept from the perspective of what it means to you post-LIB100, as you continue to move forward both scholastically and professionally. Consider the following in your comment:

• What does the term, “scholarly conversation” mean to you?
• How successful do you feel you were in creating new information with your Semester Project? Why, or why not?
• How do you see yourself as a current and continuing information creator, not just an information consumer?

As always, be sure to post one primary post and comment on at least two of your colleagues’ posts to receive full participation credit in this week’s Forum. 

Please have all your postings to the Forum complete by Monday, January 13 at 11:59pm.

CHAPTER

9:

Organizing the Information You Evaluated, Part II

LIB100 Professor Lisa Anderson with Merve Uludogan, Business Administration

164

Here’s What We Know from Chapter 8

 How to finalize your Semester Project thesis statement, research

questions and keywords

 How to organize your Semester Project presentation mode

 How to utilize time management skills to effectively organize your

Semester Project

 How to create an effective outline based on your selected mode of

presentation

By the End of This Chapter Here’s What You Will Know

 How to determine when, where and how you need to cite a source

 How to create an APA-style in-text citation

 How to create an APA-style full citation

 How to cite print books

 How to cite print periodicals

 How to use database citation tools

 How to use open-web citation tools

 How to cite websites

 How to cite social media sites

165

 The Cold, Unforgiving World of Citations

In Chapter 8, you determined who your audience is for your Semester Project and

locked down your presentation format. You also finalized your thesis statement, research

questions and primary keywords for database searching.

As Travis Bickle would say, you are getting your Semester Project “organizized.”

In this chapter, we will continue our organization process by applying the formal

rigor of APA-style citations. Citations are both unforgivingly precise and very important.

Learning when and how to correctly cite research papers and projects is an essential skill

that will reach well beyond this course. You will need this skill not only for the remainder

of your academic career, but throughout your professional career as well.

COME BACK AND READ THIS WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT

WINGING IT: Citation style and formatting is a very precise and specific process. The

final grading of your Semester Project submission is

rubric-based, and a significant part of that rubric evaluates

the levels of success in your citation proficiency.

Your LIB100 professor will review your citations for

precision and accuracy and score accordingly. In short,

166

there is no faking the correct formatting and placement of citations!

Too often, students undervalue the importance of correct citations and formatting

style, waiting until the very last moment to slap something together and hope no one

notices. It never works; they do.

In short, when it comes to citations, you can’t just fake it.

Don’t fall into this trap! As you will soon see, there are many tools, templates and

even entire websites that will help you correctly format citations. It is very important to the

overall success of your Semester Project that you invest the time and effort into learning

the proper execution of research paper/project

citations.

 The Three Leading Citation Formats

A number of organizations and institutions offer their own citation styles. For

example, the American Medical Association (AMA) has its own style. So does Harvard

University and the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Specialized sub-groups aside, there are generally considered to be three main

citation styles, all of which you are likely to encounter at some point during your academic

and professional careers.

The three main citation style formats are:

167

 APA: From the American Psychological Association, this style is used

primarily in the hard and Social Sciences and in Education

 Chicago/Turabian: Developed by the Chicago University Press in the early

20th century, this style is used primarily in areas of Business and History

 MLA: From the Modern Language Association, this style is used primarily

in the field of Humanities

Rather than set your head spinning by requiring you to learn three different citation

styles for your various research papers and projects (Chicago for your Accounting class,

MLA for English and APA for Sociology), ASA adopted the citation style used most

frequently for all courses at the College: APA.

If there is a nice thing about citation styles, it is that they are all pretty much the

same. Once you learn one, you can adapt pretty easily to others.

Just What Is “APA Style” Anyway?

The term “APA style” covers two basic areas:

 The overall look: From the width of the margins down to where to place a

semi colon and what to italicize, the style sets the consistent look of your

research paper or project. Each style has its own identifiable features. The APA

168

style, for example, is known for it’s particularly spare (some would say boring)

layout and peculiar aversion to upper case (capital) letters.

The shout-out: Where you give credit where credit is due, signifying when

you have drawn upon the work of others in support of your own. In the APA

style, this acknowledgment is indicated in two ways – with the in-text citation

(which, true to its name, is placed in your text) and the bibliographic citation

(which is listed on your sources, or “Reference,” page at the very end of your

paper or project.

In-text and bibliographic citations both play a role in the crediting, or

acknowledging, of your sources and are connected to one another.

How? Glad you asked!

Maybe an old fairy tale will help explain things here …

169

 In-Text Citations: The Why, The When & The How

In the classic fairy tale, “Hansel & Gretel,” Hansel

leaves a trail of breadcrumbs as he and Gretel trek through

unfamiliar woods. Hansel’s plan is that, on their return trip, the

crumbs will lead them back to where they began and out of

the woods, keeping them from getting lost. Unfortunately,

birds eat the breadcrumbs and Hansel and Gretel get

seriously lost and almost eaten themselves by a crazy witch,

but that’s another story. Our point here is that the idea of the

breadcrumbs as a guide leading you back to an important

place is a good one.

In-text citations are a lot like Hansel’s

breadcrumbs. In-text citations consist of two to three

little pieces of information inserted into your text

(hence the name) that act like little breadcrumbs to

guide your reader or audience back to the full

citation on your Reference page.

Nice try, H

170

An APA-style in-text citation consists of two to three components – author’s last

name, date of publication, and the page number or numbers the excerpt you are using

appears on in the original text, if you are including it as a direct quotation. If you are

paraphrasing or summarizing the source content, you need include only the author and

date of publication.

As an example, for our research project on e-cigarettes and marketing to minors,

say we have chosen a passage from the article, “Marketing E-Cigarettes to Teens” by

Rita Rubin that appeared on page 1389 of the October 8, 2014 issue of the Journal of the

American Medical Association.

We’ve decided we want to include the following

direct quote from this article as part of our Semester

Project paper on the tobacco industry’s practice of

marketing electronic cigarettes to minors.

We selected the following quote to include:

“A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) raises
‘the sound of an alarm’ about marketing electronic cigarettes to adolescents, according
to an Aug. 29 statement from members of Congress who wrote a report last year on the
subject. The new CDC data show that the number of US middle school and high school
students who have tried e- cigarettes but not tobacco cigarettes tripled between 2011 and
2013, for an estimate of 260,000 young people” (Rubin, 2014, p.1389).

171

Note the in-text citation at the very end of this chosen quote. It consists of just three

pieces of information – the author, the year of publication, and the page number the

quoted excerpt appears on in the original document (REMEMBER: page numbers need

to be included only when you are using a direct quotation, as we did in the example

above). An in-text citation identifies for your audience the source of the information you

are using in as unobtrusive and economical way as possible.

Because no world is perfect, including that of publication information, you will

encounter sources you want to use that are missing one or more of the three pieces of

information included in in-text citations. Particularly when using material published on web

sites, you may well find your article is lacking a stated author. Or date of publication. Or

a page number.

Not to worry! APA has an in-text

citation answer for just about any combination

of information you may have, and your

LIB100 professor can guide you with specifics

on a case-by-case basis.

Now, how do in-text citations serve as “breadcrumbs”? Read on …





172

Reference Page Citations: What’s The Connection?

Whenever you use outside sources in your research paper or project, be it by direct

quotation or through paraphrasing, it is important that you acknowledge or credit the

original source with a citation.

However, using the full source citation every time you need to credit a source in

the text or body of your project could quickly become cumbersome.

Imagine having to drop in something like this every time you drew from the source:

Rubin, R. (2014). Marketing e-cigarettes to teens. Journal of the American

Medical Association, 312(14), 1389.

This would get pretty ridiculous pretty fast. Yet you still need to be transparent

about your sources. What to do?

Enter the in-text citation. Brief and compact, the in-text citation guides your

audience to the full citation with just two to three pieces of information:

 Author(s) last name: as citations are listed alphabetically by the primary

author’s last name on the Reference page, this tells your reader where to look

on your full listed bibliography.

173

 Year of publication: this tells your reader when your source was published

(in the event you include two or more articles written by the same author in the

same year, include an alphabetical add-on following the year – 2014a, 2014b,

etc.).

 Page number(s): this will tell your reader where within the article page range

your direct quote was taken from. The full citation will indicate the full page

range of the article. Your in-text citation indicates only the specific page number

or numbers your direct quote appears on. If no direct quote is used (if you are

summarizing or paraphrasing source content in your own words), you need

include only the author and publication year.

As we noted earlier, publication information, like many other things in this world, is

imperfect and often incomplete, especially when you move from scholarly articles to open

web sites. The APA citation style recognizes this and has an application for about any

variation of the author / year / pages combination when you encounter missing

information. Your LIB100 professor can help you through this, depending on what you

encounter.

Author. Year. Page number (as applicable). Little breadcrumbs that don’t take up

much space but guide your reader out of the forest and back to your full source.



174

 Now For Some Help

Following are general guidelines for citing the most commonly-retrieved sources

for your Semester Project.

Examples shown here are drawn from Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab, or OWL.

You can access the APA-style portion of the OWL website by Googling:

purdue owl apa

Only basic formatting guidelines are provided here. Consult with your LIB100

professor and/or check the Purdue OWL APA website or other reliable online sources

(such as the APA website at https://www.apastyle.org) for help with any variations you

may encounter.

 Citing Print Books

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle.

Location: Publisher.

175

Example

Wilson, G. (2015). 100% information literacy success. Boston: Cengage

Learning.

 Citing Articles in Print Periodicals

I. Journal Article

Author, A. A. (Date of Publication). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume

number (issue number), pages.

Example

Scruton, R. (1996). The eclipse of listening. The New Criterion, 15(3), 5-13.

II. Magazine Article

Author, AA. (Year, Month Day of Publication). Title of article. Title of Periodical,

volume number, pages.

Example

Henry, W. A., III. (1990, April 9). Making the grade in today’s schools. Time, 135,

28-31.

III. Newspaper Article

Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day of Publication). Title of article. Title of Publication,

page numbers.

Example

Schultz, S. (2005, December 28). Calls made to strengthen state energy

policies. The Country Today, pp. 1A, 2A.

176

 Using Database Citation Tools

Among the many ways databases can be your very good friend is in the area of

citations. Databases will provide citations for any article contained within it, in the citation

style of your choice.

Let’s look briefly at the citation-generating process with each of the ASA library’s

three main database vendors.

 Generating Citations in EBSCO Databases

First, locate the article you wish to cite from the database. For this example, we

are using an article for our e-cigarette marketing research project titled, “Electronic

cigarette and traditional cigarette use among middle and high school students in Florida,

2011-2014” (Fig. 1), next page.

177

Fig.1

Click on the title of the article, which will take you to the full record page. In the

right column under “Tools” you will see a “Cite” button. Click on this button (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

On the Citation Format page, scroll down until you see the “APA” format citation

option and select that (Fig. 3).

178

Fig.3

You can now paste this database-generated citation onto your Reference page,

add the hanging indent and double spacing courtesy of MS Word and … done! Right?

Well … almost, but not quite. Let’s look at what we have at this point, direct from

the database:

Porter, L., Duke, J., Hennon, M., Dekevich, D., Crankshaw, E., Homsi, G., &

Farrelly, M. (2015). Electronic Cigarette and Traditional Cigarette Use

among Middle and High School Students in Florida, 2011–2014. Plos

ONE, 10(5), 1-7. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0124385

Even when Word has done its part with the hanging indent and double spacing,

there is still something wrong with this picture. Can you spot it?

179

Let’s look again:

Porter, L., Duke, J., Hennon, M., Dekevich, D., Crankshaw, E., Homsi, G., &
Farrelly, M. (2015). Electronic Cigarette and Traditional Cigarette Use
among Middle and High School Students in Florida, 2011–2014. Plos
ONE, 10(5), 1-7. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0124385

That’s right, EBSCO blew the APA lowercase rule and we will need to touch it up

so that it looks like this:

Porter, L., Duke, J., Hennon, M., Dekevich, D., Crankshaw, E., Homsi, G., &

Farrelly, M. (2015). Electronic cigarette and traditional cigarette use

among middle and high school students in Florida, 2011–2014. Plos

ONE, 10(5), 1-7. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0124385

The takeaway here? As we noted earlier in the text, database citations are created

by humans and humans do make errors. When it comes to citations, it seems EBSCO

makes errors more frequently than our other database vendors, Gale and ProQuest, but

it is important that you double-check all database-generated citations just to make sure

the formatting is correct.



180

 Generating Citations in Gale Databases

As Fig. 4 below shows, generating citations through Gale databases is similar to

using EBSCO. To access the citation for your selected article, you first click on the

“Citation Tools” option on the right.

Fig. 4

Similar to EBSCO, but with one very important extra step you need to take.

As shown on the following page, citation results in Gale databases default to the

MLA, not APA, citation style (Fig. 5).

181

Fig. 5

When using the citation tool in Gale databases, it is very important that you

remember to select the “APA 6th Edition” option from the drop-down menu (Fig. 6). Then

you can select your properly-formatted citation and import it into your Reference page.

Fig. 6

182

 Generating Citations in ProQuest Databases

ProQuest also positions its citation button on the right side of the document full

record page (Fig. 7).

Thoughtfully, ProQuest citations default to APA 6th edition, so no additional

attention is needed here.

Overall, it seems ProQuest makes the fewest input errors when transcribing

citations.

 Using Web-Based Citation Tools

Out on the open web, databases can’t help you with citations. You are on your

own. Fortunately, there are a number of web-based, free citation formatting templates to

Fig. 7 Fig. 7

183

help you. While it may at first seem like “cheating” using these aids, formatting templates

are actually little formatting proficiency exams.

How’s that? Think of it this way – in order for the template to generate a correctly-

formatted citation, you must enter the correct information into each of the template’s

fields. The templates will format whatever information you enter, wherever you enter it.

Enter the publication title into the article title field? You get a whack looking citation.

Templates are not going to fix that. So it is important that you can correctly identify each

part of a citation when using formatting templates.

Two leading free, web-based, easy-to-use citation formatting templates are

Noodletools Express: APA (Fig. 8) and Citation Machine (APA) (Fig. 9). NOTE: when

using Citation Machine, be sure to select the “Manual Entry Mode.”

Fig.8

http://my.noodletools.com/noodlebib/citeone_s.php?style=APA

184

Fig. 9

http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-book/manual

 Citing Websites

Citing websites is often so simple you may find it easier to just create them yourself.

Here is the standard format for citing a website in the APA style:

Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of document. Retrieved from http://web

address

Where website citing can become challenging is when information is incomplete

or completely missing. If, for example, no author is listed for the web page or web page

185

article you are citing, lead with the title of the document. If there is no date, indicate this

as “(n.d.)” (without the quotation marks) where the date should go. If you encounter other

variations of incomplete information, consult with your LIB100 professor.

 Citing a YouTube Video

Author, A. A. [Screen name]. (year, month day). Title of video [Video file]. Retrieved

from http://www.youtube.com/xxx

Example

Apsolon, M. [markapsolon]. (2011, September 9). Real ghost girl caught on video

tape 14 [Video file]. Retrieved from

Sometimes with YouTube videos, there is a screen name only. If so, cite as follows:

Example with Screen Name Only

Markapsolon. (2011, September 9). Real ghost girl caught on video tape 14

[Video file]. Retrieved from

For information on citing other forms of media, such as motion pictures and

television broadcasts, check this Purdue OWL page:

186

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/ref

erence_list_other_non_print_sources.html

This link from the APA website provides guidelines for citing tweets and other

Twitter-spawned material:

http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/cite-twitter.aspx

 So What Just Happened Here?

In this chapter, you concluded your work on Step 4 and organizing your Semester

Project by knowing when and how to apply in-text and full citations in the APA style. You

learned how to cite print books and periodicals and how to use database citation tools to

create citations. You learned also where to find web-based citation templates for citing

websites, how to proofread them and where to find additional help on correctly citing just

about anything you may have selected as a source for your Semester Project.

 Show What You Know

In this week’s exercise, you will have the opportunity to practice and perfect the in-

text and full Reference page citations for your Semester Project in a penalty-free

environment. This practice environment will allow you to correct any citation errors before

you submit your final Project.

187

 What’s Next

In Chapter 10, we will take the final step of the five-step research process with a

look at communicating your Project and acknowledging your outside sources – including

intellectual property, copyright, fair use … and how to avoid the “P-word.”

Yes, that’s right …

Reflections

When you write a research paper, it is mandatory to give credit to the authors of the

materials that you use. In this manner, your professor will be able to follow the track

of your research process. This chapter provides you with a thorough explanation of

the citation process and a list of online tools to assist your work. Please review the

following questions:

 Why do we cite the information we use from research sources?

 What are the three main citation styles and in what academic fields are they

used?

 What is the purpose of an “in-text” citation?

 How can databases assist you in the citation process?

 What feature on the ASA College’s website can help you with citation?

LIB100

Semester Project

In-Text Citations Practice Sheet

In the space below, practice using at least three direct quotations from your six sources. Follow these direct quotations with an in-text citation in the APA format.

References

In the space below, provide at least three full citations from your six Semester Project sources.