Copyright and Empowerment for Students!: Home

There are 5 empowering reasons to cite covered in this guide:

1. Show off your research
2. Attribution = empowerment
3. Authority and context
4. Replicability
5. Avoid Plagiarism

See also:

1. Show off your research!

Part of how your academic work is evaluated is on what sources you decide to bring forward. This is your time to shine, and provide your unique view on a topic. Some of your evidence may be controversial, or use scholarship from historically less represented voices. There is so much to show off.

Your paper is your engagement of the sources you decide to include, and your interaction with them.

Here, academic integrity and truth matters.

2. Cite your sources and be empowered.

Citation aka attribution is a powerful act!

• You (as the student researcher writing a paper) make choices about what authors and sources you will highlight. You choose the voices to bring forward for your argument, and you add your own voice to the conversation.
• You give credit where credit is due. You cite so that your readers know where you found information and they can independently evaluate your conclusions, as you have done in your own research.
• This is the cycle of research and scholarship as conversation. Engaging with the words of published articles by paraphrasing and directly quoting, always citing when it is not your own words.

3. Authority and Context

The experts you gather evidence from serves as a basis for your argument. The more credible, influential, and evidence-based research you cite in your work, the more reliable your argument, and influences readers to believe you and enhances your credibility.

• Cite authors who are experts in their field
• Rely on peer-reviewed sources
• Evaluate each and every source you use. Even non-peer-reviewed sources may be powerful to your argument and used in certain contexts.

4. Replicability

When you provide full citations as your sources and cite them properly, you provide readers a way to look up those sources themselves, so they can make up their own minds about the study or assertions you are making. This only strengthens your voice. This is scholarship.

5. Avoid Plagiarism

Cite the sources you used to write your paper; it is ethical and academically honest to cite every time you summarize, paraphrase, or directly quote.

While this reason usually receives much emphasis, it is one small part of the cycle of scholarly conversations. You don't want to deny credit where it is due. And, you'd expect the same treatment for your words!

This guide was created with the help of the following resources:

Citation as Empowerment, slides by Christine Fena, Stony Brook University