Referencing: Credit Where Credit is due

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Section Home Referencing: Credit Where Credit is due Scientific Databases

There's one simple rule of of deciding whether you need to give credit to the source where you got information from or not: if the idea isn't yours, you need to credit its source. Remember that "source" means anywhere you found your information, whether it's a book, the internet, your mentors, or even your friends! In fact, not giving the right credit is bordering the lines of plagiarism, which is (besides illegal) never tolerated at Science Fairs.

You don't need to make specific references to where you find common information (such as chemical properties, for example), but be prepared to tell your judges where the information came from in case they think it's wrong. Other information, in particular, things you find from your "sources" that you didn't know before, needs to be credited the right way. Read on to find out how.

Contents 1 During your Presentation 2 In Your Report 2.1 Reference List 2.1.1 APA (American Psychological Association) 2.1.2 MLA (Modern Languages Association) 2.2 In-Text Citations

During your Presentation

It's important to informally mention your sources during your presentation. If talking about someone else's research, you can mention the name and/or paper by saying "According to so-and-so, ...". If you're going to mention an individual who helped you in your research or gave you ideas, you can say something along the lines of "Based on a conversation with so-and-so, I decided to take this direction in my research..." or "So-and-so gave me a hint on the best approach to take in conducting this experiment...". The important thing is not to make someone else's ideas and work seem like your own.

Be honest about what is and isn't your work: this adds to your credibility as a researcher and makes you sound more believable! Make sure to highlight the research you've done independently, as well. For more tips on presentation, you can take a look at Lookin' Good (and Sounding Even Better).

In Your Report

Reference List

The Reference List (otherwise knows as List of Works Cited, or Bibliography) is a very important part of your project, because it lets your judges know that you're actually doing background research on your project, and not pulling information out of "thin air". You reference list should be in your report as well as on your display board.

When in comes to formatting your Reference List, there are a few commonly-used styles. You can find out with your science fair if there's a specific one that should be used, but the CWSF doesn't specify a particular format.

APA (American Psychological Association)

The general format for writing your references in APA style is:

Author-Last-Name, First-Name. (Year) Title of Article. Title of Journal. Volume# (Edition#). Page Numbers.

More detail on how to reference other kinds of sources can be found here.

MLA (Modern Languages Association)

The general format for the MLA style is:

Author-Last-Name, Author-First-Name. "Article Title." Journal Title. Issue# (Year). Page Numbers.

You can get more detail on MLA here.

There are also some other citation styles, such as the Chicago Style or the Turabian Style. Feel free to use any of these, but be prepared to say which one if you have an extremely curious judge!

In-Text Citations

An In-Text Citation is when you reference an idea directly in your report (kind of like bringing it up during your presentation). If you've done research in scientific papers for your project, you would have run into this a lot: paper very often reference other people's papers through footnotes or in-text citations.

These kinds of citations are basically formatted the same for all citation styles. After you've stated someone's idea, you need to put (Last-Name, Page #) in your writing. If you're using more than one paper by the same author, you can also use (Last-Name Year, Page #).