Prepare citations and bibliographic references

When are writing an academic paper, reference must be made to the sources of information used. This way:

• The work of other authors is recognized and valued.
• It contextualizes and gives rigor to the work and strengthens the arguments.
• The reader is given the ability to search the sources of information cited in your work.
• Plagiarism is avoided.

Links of interest:

• Referencing guide at the University of Manchester. The University of Manchester Library
• Guide how to cite  UNED Library

Basic concepts

• Textual quote:  Verbatim transcription of the text of another author's work. If it is less than 40 words, it is inserted in our text between quotation marks. A major quote is transcribed in a separate paragraph and indented.

• Bibliographic citations are a form of short reference that must be included in the text, when mentioning a work by another person from which information has been taken. Identifies the source unambiguously.  Depending on the citation style used, this short reference is either the author's last name and the year of publication, or a serial number.

Example with the ISO standard:

Velayos, 2007

• Bibliographic references are more extensive descriptions that describe the source of information consulted (arranged alphabetically at the end of the document or by serial number). They include fundamental elements to identify exactly the cited document: author, title, date, publisher...

Example with the ISO standard:

VELAYOS, JL Anatomy of the head: for dentists. Buenos Aires: Médica Panamericana, 2007. 320 p. ISBN 978-84-9835-068-5.

• Citation methods:  There are different ways to relate the citations within the text and the corresponding bibliographic references.
  • Numerical method : Numbering inserted in the text, by means of parentheses, brackets or subscripts after the author or concept referred to, which refers to a bibliographic reference.

• • Note method: The note calls in the text refer to ordered notes, located at the foot of the page, at the end of the chapter, or at the end of the work, which contain either the abbreviated quote or the bibliographic reference.

• • Author/year method: Following the cited information, the name of the cited author or authors, the year of publication of the cited document, and, in some cases, the pages appear in parentheses. At the end of the document, the complete list of references appears, with the authors in alphabetical order. When an author has different citations corresponding to different works, these are arranged chronologically.

Bibliographic styles

The scientific manuscript must be structured in such a way that it presents its message without ambiguity, with clarity and precision. It is a fundamental factor in the long process until its publication, during which it must go through the evaluations and approval of different reviewers. It is to achieve this clarity of communication that editors and scientific communities of the main branches, over time, have developed their citation styles. These style rules are designed to ensure a clear and consistent presentation, conforming to standards with uniform use of elements such as:

• Punctuation and abbreviations
• Selection of headings
• Reference quotes
• Construction of tables and presentation of statistics

When you are writing a paper, you must follow the rules of the publisher or the entity to which our manuscript is addressed. Within the text, we will have to take special care of the presentation format of citations and bibliographic references, which vary according to the requested style. For this task, the bibliographic managers will be of great help.

Another very useful tool, if the publication we want to cite has a DOI, is the DOI Citation Formatter which, in a simple way, allows you to automatically extract the metadata and build a complete citation in different styles and languages.