How to Do Library Research

This page provides general information on citations, including how to identify the citation elements of a library source. For assistance with APA and writing, explore your help options in the Writing Center. 

What is a Citation?

A citation is a direct quote, a paraphrase or a summary of someone else’s information in a work written by someone else. When you write a paper and reference someone else’s work, you must cite them as a source.

Why Should I Cite?

Citing your sources is important for many reasons, with some of those at the forefront being:

• giving credit to the author(s) who influenced your work,
• enhancing your research by using credible sources,
• helping your readers locate the source material, and
• helping you avoid plagiarism.

Note! Plagiarism can be both intentional and unintentional. Plagiarism is failing to properly acknowledge an author's work in your paper, which means you are claiming their work as your own. Therefore, if you do not cite, you may be subject to a charge of plagiarism per Chamberlain University's Academic Integrity Policy. You should review the section on plagiarism (pages 31-32) for further details on what qualifies as plagiarism within the university.

When Do I Cite?

In-text citations are required every time you quote, paraphrase or summarize information or an idea from an author’s work in your paper.

• Direct quoting is when you use more than one of the referenced author’s words.
• Paraphrasing or summarizing is when you use your own words to describe the referenced author’s ideas.

To create a citation for a source, you first need to know what type of source it is. You can identify a type of source by becoming familiar with the parts of a citation. If you cannot find what you need from the database result, open the document to help determine the type of source.

Consider the image of a record from CINAHL below: The first lines contain the reference. You can see the title [1], the authors/creators [2], the name of the journal [3], when it was published [4], the volume and issue [5], and the page numbers [6]. You have everything you need to create an accurate citation. If the source also contains a DOI, the reference may need that for completeness. Check your reference manual for guidelines on references for articles, books, newspapers, and more.

RefWorks is the premier citation management tool of ProQuest's ExLibris Knowledge Center. To use this tool, you will have to create an account. 

Create a RefWorks Account

1. Go to the library homepage.
2. Select the R in the Databases A to Z alphabetical list below the library search box.
3. Select RefWorks from the alphabetical list. 
4. From the login page, select Create Account. Make sure to use your Chamberlain email address to set up an account.
5. After you fill out the required information, you should receive a confirmation email with a link. Select the link to activate your account. 

Once you create an account, you will be able to do the following:

• build and manage citations
• collect, manage, and organize full-text documents
• collaborate by sharing collections 
• import citations from EBSCO, ProQuest, and OVID and perform an RIS import from PubMed