SikhiWiki:Citing sources

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This page is a Sikhiwiki style guide, describing how to write citations (or references or quotations) in articles. Providing sources for articles is mandated by Sikhiwiki:No original research and Sikhiwiki:Verifiability, which are strict policy.

This means that any material that is challenged and has no source may be removed by any editor. Attribution is especially needed for direct quotes, concepts or philosophical ideas, information that is contentious or likely to be challenged, and superlatives and absolutes (such as statements that something is the best, first or only one of its kind). If you don't know how to format the citation, others will fix it for you. Simply provide any information you can.

Quotes from Gurbani must give pages number from SGGS and it is preferred if an approved translation of the quote is used. It is accepted that this may not always be possible but one should try and follow approved translations if at all possible. If you choose to use your own translation, please make sure that it is in keeping with the meaning of the original Gurbani text. It may help if the meaning is explained in the discussion page of the article to clarify why the approved translation was rejected in preference to one's own translation.

Why sources should be cited

  • To show that your edit isn't original research.
  • To ensure that the content of articles is credible and can be checked by any reader or editor.
  • To help users find additional reliable information on the topic.
  • To improve the overall credibility and authoritative character of Wikipedia.
  • To reduce the likelihood of editorial disputes, or to resolve those that may arise.
  • To credit a source for providing useful information and to avoid claims of plagiarism.
  • To ensure that material about living persons is reliably sourced and complies with Standard rules for Biographies of living persons.

Content

A citation or bibliographic citation is a reference to a book, article, web page, or other published item with sufficient details to uniquely identify the item. Unpublished writings or speech, such as working papers or personal communications, are also sometimes cited. Citations are provided in scholarly works, bibliographies and indexes. The word citation may be used of the act of citing a work as well as to a reference itself.

Ruminations are used in scholarly works to give credit to or to acknowledge the influence of previous works or to refer to authority. Citations permit readers to put claims to the test by consulting earlier works. Authors often engage earlier work directly, explaining why they agree or differ from earlier views. Ideally, sources are primary (first-hand), recent, with good ethos, credentials, and citations.

Citations of web pages or other electronic information are often seen as problematic, because of their ephemeral (shortlived) nature. A consortium of editors and publishers therefore recommends the use of WebCite [1] when citing web material, which allows prior archiving (taking a snapshot) of the cited material.[citation needed]

Varying rules and practices for citations apply in scientific citation, legal citation, the theology citiation of authority (e.g. the isnad which "back" the hadith in Islam), the prior art that applies in patent law, and marks applied in copyright. Definitions of plagiarism, uniqueness or innovation, trustworthiness or reliability vary so widely among these fields that the use of citations has no simple common practice.

Citations may be made in the body of text as parenthetical citations, in footnotes at the bottom of pages, or in endnotes at the end of the document. They are generally also listed in a works cited page or section - also called the bibliography, source list or list of references. The recording, use and re-use of citations on computers is facilitated by reference management software, also known as citation management software.

Citation indexes list published citations of a given work. In addition to being used for bibliographic discovery, they are used in bibliometrics for citation analysis and calculation of citation impact. The OpenURL standard is the basis for hyperlinks from citations in electronic published works or databases through to electronic copies of the full text of the cited work.

External links

Guidelines

Style guides

Tools

  • WebCite, a site which allows authors who want to cite web pages to permanently archive a cited web page, to prevent linkrot. Instead of citing the original URL, authors [webcite] a web page by citing the WebCite URL in combination with a unique identifier (snapshot ID)
  • Inflight Referencer, software that creates APA, Harvard and custom citations and bibliography lists.
  • Citastic, a site which creates full and partial MLA citations and Works Cited / Bibliographies
  • The Citation Machine, a site which generates full MLA and APA citations.
  • The Citation Functions: Literary Production and Reception by The (In)Citers, featuring full position statements and citation bibliography
  • CiteULike.org - 'CiteULike: Everyone's library' (citation compilation wiki)
  • [1], a site that presents the format used by the APSA.
  • [2], the page on the APSA site listing its publications, including the Style Manual for Political Science (for purchase)
  • StudentABC - Citation Machine Automatically generate an APA or MLA citation from a URL
  • Citation Builder Create and manage MLA, APA, CMS, and CSE bibliographies, footnotes, and endnotes.

Other

See Wikipedia Guidelines