Citing Your Sources
Proper citation is an essential aspect of scholarship! Citing allows your reader or audience to locate the materials you have used. Most importantly, citations give credit to the authors of quoted or consulted information. Failure to acknowledge sources of information properly may constitute plagiarism.
For an explicit definition of plagiarism, see the Boston University Academic Conduct Code.
In the School of Social Work we use the American Psychological Association (APA) style. This guide features directions on:
- Creating in-text citations
- Citing books and ebooks
- Citing journal articles
- Citing videos
- Citing web resources
- Creating a reference list
The website at http://www.apastyle.org/ offers extensive information on guidelines for citing. An online resource and style guide from Purdue OWL is also available here. Or, consult the physical guides at the Mugar Library.
Keeping Track of Your Sources
BU Librarians often recommend 
RefWorks as the best tool to manage citations. Accounts are free for the BU community, and most importantly RefWorks can automatically create a bibliography in hundreds of styles. There are other such tools.
