There are three ways to use academic literature in your text: 

• Citing and a reference
• Paraphrasing and a reference
• A reference without citing or paraphrasing

Citing means repeating or copying out someone else’s words. You should cite when a formulation is so precise that it would lose its meaning or significance if worded differently. When you cite someone else’s work, you must put the text between quotation marks and provide a literature reference.

Paraphrasing means describing passages from other people’s publications in your own words. When paraphrasing you are not copying the text but re-writing it. It is very important in terms of linking the work to your own text and ideas. If you do not use paraphrasing, your text will give the impression of being ‘cut and pasted’. 

Paraphrasing should not be used to make texts ‘read better’, and certainly not to conceal the fact that a text is actually someone else’s work. You always have to provide a literature reference, so also when you paraphrase.

The reference list or bibliography is placed at the end of the text to provide an overview of the information sources you have consulted. There are strict rules for compiling these lists, and there are different styles for different disciplines (APA, MLA, Chicago, Vancouver, Harvard).

Some citation styles do not use a bibliography, but footnotes to indicate the literature that is used. This means that the references appear at the bottom of each page instead of at the end of the text.

In the academic world there are strict rules for setting out literature references. Each discipline has its own citation style. Also, references are set out differently depending on whether you use them in a bibliography, in the text itself, in a footnote or in an endnote. During your study you will learn which citation styles should be used for your discipline. 

Beneath you will find some examples of citation styles, referring to a journal article in this case: 

APA-style:

HAUCK, MARKUS. (November 01, 2009). Global warming and alternative causes of decline in arctic-alpine and boreal-montane lichens in North-Western Central Europe. Global Change Biology, 15, 11, 2653-2661.

Chicago-style:

HAUCK, MARKUS. 2009. "Global warming and alternative causes of decline in arctic-alpine and boreal-montane lichens in North-Western Central Europe". Global Change Biology. 15 (11): 2653-2661.

Harvard-style:

HAUCK, M. 2009, "Global warming and alternative causes of decline in arctic-alpine and boreal-montane lichens in North-Western Central Europe", Global Change Biology, vol. 15, no. 11, pp. 2653-2661.

MLA-style:

HAUCK, MARKUS. "Global Warming and Alternative Causes of Decline in Arctic-Alpine and Boreal-Montane Lichens in North-Western Central Europe." Global Change Biology. 15.11 (2009): 2653-2661. Print.

Turabian:

HAUCK, MARKUS. 2009. "Global Warming and Alternative Causes of Decline in Arctic-Alpine and Boreal-Montane Lichens in North-Western Central Europe". Global Change Biology. 15, no. 11: 2653-2661.

Play the citation game!

When you are using academic literature, you have to do this accurately and in an above-board way. 

Ownership
When you use other people’s work, you must state the exact literature source and author(s). Scientific advances are seldom achieved by one person alone. They are the result of work by many people, who deserve to be named when their contribution is used.

Verifiability
You use literature references so that others can see what you have based your work on. They must be able to access the same information. This is why you should only use published sources.