CE 451W: Civil Engineering Seminar

Why Cite?

Citation and the lack thereof, plagiarism is the academic version of copyright. Plagiarism occurs when you borrow another's words (or ideas) and do not acknowledge that you have done so. In this culture, we consider our words and ideas intellectual property; like a car or any other possession, we believe our words belong to us and cannot be used without our permission. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to cite your sources - both within the body of your paper and in a bibliography of sources you used at the end of your paper.

You must cite:

• Facts, figures, ideas, or other information that is not common knowledge
• Ideas, words, theories, or exact language that another person used in other publications
• Publications that must be cited include:  books, book chapters, articles, web pages, theses, etc.
• Another person's exact words should be quoted and cited to show proper credit 

When in doubt, be safe and cite your source!

Below, you will find ther ASCE manual, which is generally used for academic writing in the engineering sciences. 

Some tips for citing your sources in ASCE style include:

• Do not include “EBSCO host,” “vmiexproxy,” or web addresses that contain “research.ebsco.com” in your citations.
  • If the source is a journal article, use the page numbers or DOI instead.
• When citing a website, trim off the extra parts of the website address.
  • These extra parts come directly after the .com, .edu, or .gov in a website address.   
  • For example, use https://infoweb.newsbank.com not https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/documentview?p=AQM.