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Citation Style Help: Start Here

This guide will point you to citation style guides to help you with in-paper citations and reference/works cited styles for MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian, etc.

General Information

Why Should I Cite?

  • To give credit to the author's work (avoid plagiarism)
  • To help other researchers find your sources
  • To help support your ideas
  • To add to the body of knowledge in your subject
  • To show that you know your subject in-depth
  • To adhere to the university's academic integrity and honesty policy
  • To hopefully get cited yourself one day

How to Find a DOI Number

A Digital Object Identifier is a unique number assigned to an article (not books at this time). Not all articles have DOIs. To get DOIs, a publisher has to choose to be a member of one of the DOI registration agencies, a process that requires a membership fee, and not all publishers choose to do this.

If an article has a DOI, it will usually be found on the first page of the article, in the citation, or on the publisher's page for the article. You can use the CrossRef Simple Text Query Form form to see if an article has a DOI (email registration required).

Citation Generators

Always check with your professor first before turning in a paper with your references or works cited after using a generator or other source from this site if you are not sure. They will be the ones grading it, so make sure you are using the style properly.