18 Why We Cite

When we engage in conversations with other people, we often say things like, “I heard on the news today that…” or “The cashier at the store said…” When we do this, we not only back up and further support the point we are trying to make, but we also give more credibility to what we are saying by letting others know the origin of the information.

It is also a good idea to let others know where our information came from when engaging in a scholarly conversation. A citation is a mention to another source and the phrase “citing your sources” means you’ve communicated the sources of information that you’ve used in your own work.

It is unethical to use somebody else’s information in your own work and not cite where you got that information, which you will learn more about in the next section. As long as you give credit to others’ intellectual property, using information from others’ to support your own thoughts, opinions, and research findings is good practice.

Not only does it acknowledge the hard work of others, but it also shows that you did your research on the topic, you know what information exists about it, and you can integrate your knowledge into the existing research and contribute to the scholarly conversation.

The following video by the Linscheid Library at East Central University has a great summary of what citations are and why we use them:

Sources

This section includes material from the source book, The Insiders Information Literacy for Okies Everywhere, as well as the following:

“Why Cite?” YouTube, uploaded by Linscheid Library, 14 June 2023. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.