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This guide will help you create citations for your research papers. Proper citations allow you to give credit to those whose work you're using and help you avoid plagiarism.
If you still have questions about citations, your librarians can help! Click the Get Help from a Librarian tab and start a chat or schedule a research appointment with a librarian.
It's best to avoid using online citation generators like EasyBib (from Chegg). Citation generators are only as good as the information you give it to start with!
The format always defaults to "webpage," so when you find the information on a website, it makes sense to leave it set to webpage, right?
Where you found it might be on a website, but that's not the format of the information. You might actually have a book chapter, a blog post, a government publication, or any number of options.
When you copy and past the URL for a library database article into a citation generator, it will create a citation with a link that goes to a database login page, not the article you're trying to cite. Citation generators also often fail to include page numbers, volume, issue, or any number of other important citation details.
One of the best features of any library database is the Cite tool. Every database has one! Use it to get the citation for the database article you want to use for your research. Make sure you choose the correct citation style then copy and paste it into your Works Cited page. Just note that you might have to fix some minor formatting things, like shading or the hanging indent.