How to Cite Books, Websites, Conferences, and Journals in a Research Paper?

Academic papers are required to be cited by using citation formats or styles. Citation is a way to tell the readers that you have taken certain material from another source. Through citation, the reader can get the information about that source like author, company, and date of publication.

If you have to write a research paper and want to know how to cite websites, conferences, and journals in a research paper, we are here to guide you in this regard. Just keep reading this article.

Why are citations important

Citations are important:

 

  1. To avoid unethical claims and plagiarism
  2. To respect the property rights of others
  3. To help the reader in tracing the sources of your material
  4. To give evidence from others’ work and support a claim

When to cite a source

You should cite when you:

 

  1. Refer to data or data sets
  2. Quote the words of authors
  3. Reprint a text passage or any copyrighted test item
  4. state or Paraphrase others’ ideas in your words
  5. Reprint a table or a figure, including free diagrams and images from the internet.

Formats of citation

Following are the formats of citation:

  1. APA (American Psychological Association)
  2. MLA (Modern Language Association)
  3. NML (National Library of Medicine)
  4. ASA (American Sociological Association)
  5. IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
  6. AMA (American Medical Association)
  7. CHICAGO

Basic citation elements:

Following are the basic citation elements.

  1. Title
  2. Author
  3. Editors
  4. Page numbers
  5. Source or venue
  6. City and country
  7. Volume and editions
  8. URL for online sources
  9. Date or year of publication 
  10. Publisher or university for theses
  11. DOI

How to cite books

First of all, we are going to talk about how to cite books. 

  • How to cite a whole book

When the whole book is written by the same author and chapters are not contributed by authors, then it is considered the whole book as one source. This is citing the whole book. If you use four different chapters from one book, it still counts as a single source.

  • How to cite the individual chapters

If the book is compiled or edited and each chapter is written by a different author, then you will cite each chapter separately. When you will use four chapters, then each chapter will count as a separate source.

 

Information you need for a book

Following are the information you will in the citation:

 

  1. The author
  2. The title
  3. Edition
  4. Publisher’s name
  5. Publication place
  6. Viewed date (in case of an electronic book)
  7. URL (in case of an electronic book)  

 

Information you need for chapter

If you are going to cite chapters separately of an edited book, the following information will be required:

 

  1. The author 
  2. The editors
  3. The title of the chapter 
  4. The title of the book
  5. Publisher’s name
  6. Edition
  7. Publication place
  8. The page number of the chapters 
  9. Viewed date (in case of an electronic book)
  10. URL (in case of an electronic book)

How to cite  websites

Now you will come to know how to cite a website.

  • Webpage from a website (pdf, word doc)

Write the name of the editor or author and the year of the document. Then mention the title of the document or page in Italic. After this, write the name of the sponsor and date, month, and year, then write URL.

  • Website (complete)

First write the author of the page, (organization or person). Then mention the year in which the page was created or revised. Now write the title of the page in Italic. Write sponsor, host, or publisher of the webpage. Then publication place of the webpage. Also, mention viewed date and URL.

How to cite conferences

Following are the ways to cite conferences.

  • Conference paper (presented at a conference)

First, write the name of the author and year of publication. Then the title of the paper. After this, write the name and place of the conference. Then mention the date of the conference.

  • Conference paper (published in proceedings)

Write the author’s name and year of publication. Then the title of the paper. Now mention the title of the conference proceedings. Also, write the place of publication and publisher name.

How to cite journals 

In journals, we are going to talk about:

  1. Journal articles
  2. Journal electronic
  3. Journal article numbers
  4. Preprint articles
  5. Journal print
  • Journal articles

The style of a citation is different according to the number of authors. Make sure the formatting is right while mentioning the authors of the resources. 

  • Journal – electronic

Following things are written while citing a journal if this is electronic:

 

  1. The name of the author
  2. The year of publication
  3. The title of the article
  4. The title of the journal
  5. Volume number
  6. Issue number
  7. Viewed date
  8. URL

  • Journal – article numbers

If there are no page numbers in electronic journals, you can write article numbers. The format will be as follow:

 

  1. The name of the author
  2. The year of publication
  3. The title of the article
  4. The title of the journal
  5. Volume number
  6. Article no
  7. Viewed date
  • Preprint articles

These are the articles that are available online but are published yet. These are advanced online publications. The format is:

  1. The name of the author
  2. The year of publication
  3. The title of the article
  4. The title of the journal
  5.  Preprint
  6. Viewed date 
  7. URL

  • Journal – print

The format of the journal print is:

  1. The name of the author
  2. The year of publication
  3. The title of the article
  4. The title of the journal
  5. Volume number
  6. Issue number

These are the ways to cite books, websites, conferences, and journals in a research paper. It will help your readers and users to get more information from the source.