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Avoiding Plagiarism

Citing and Referencing Tools

There are many online tools that can help you create citations and/or references. However, it is important to keep in mind that they are rarely correct, so it is up to you to crosscheck with the appropriate style guide and make changes as needed. 

Read more about some common citing and referencing tools, as well as their benefits and drawbacks, below. 

Use Zotero if you want to automatically import citation details for sources you find on the library's website or online and insert them into your research paper. To use this free service, you must sign up for a web account and download a desktop application.

Benefits:

  • Automatically integrates with Microsoft Word for streamlined citing and referencing
  • Produces higher quality references than other tools 
  • Saves your citations for future access

Drawbacks:

  • Requires installation, setup, and some time to learn
  • Does not produce perfectly accurate references, but is the best automated option

Resources:

You can also use Microsoft Word's built-in Citation and Bibliography tool to add citations and create references in a document.

Benefits:

  • Convenient and familiar
  • Saves your citations for future access

Detriments:

  • Manual input of citation details for each source used
  • Reference quality is not as accurate as Zotero
  • Uses an outdated edition of APA

Resources:

 

 

These tools allow you to manually enter in the citation details for a source, then have the generator create the reference/bibliography entry for you. 

Benefits:

  • Relatively quick and easy

Drawbacks:

  • Not as accurate as other tools such as Zotero and MS Word
  • Manual input of citation details for each source used

Resources: