Public Health: Citing Sources

Check out these helpful books on citing in the library's collection!

APA Style

There are many citation styles out there but the style generally used by psychology researchers is APA style. The official handbook outlining this style is called Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th Edition).

Why Cite?

1. To give fair credit to the creator(s) of a particular work (avoid plagiarism!)
2. To help you to develop yourself as both a college-level thinker and writer
3. To build on the intellectual work of others, which contributes to the flourishing of the academic subjects you study
4. To help readers of your work better understand the points you're arguing
5. To provide readers with the publication information for sources you've used in case they want to locate it on their own

By learning the principles of a citation style like APA you have the tools needed to properly cite resources used in your research papers. Documenting the ideas and quotes you've borrowed from other authors helps you to uphold legal and ethical obligations of research.

When you cite you avoid plagiarism, which is the failure to credit authors whose work you use in your own writing. Plagiarism leads to very serious consequences if detected in student work.

As of June 2014 the library no longer provides access to the citation manager RefWorks. We now recommend using two free tools to manage your citations: EasyBib and Zotero. These tools allow you to create and save citations from various sources, format manuscripts and turn them into bibliographies in any style (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.). 

You can create a free EasyBib account through LIU here. You can check out this guide created by LIU Brooklyn librarian Ed Keane for information about using EasyBib.

LIU Brooklyn librarians have created a helpful guide which will explain to you how to use Zotero.