Academic Mentoring at SEBS

A citation is "quotation from or reference to a book, paper, or author, especially in a scholarly work", according to the Oxford Dictionaries. 

It's important to cite sources you used in your research for several reasons:

• To show your reader you've done proper research by listing sources you used to get your information
• To be a responsible scholar by giving credit to other researchers and acknowledging their ideas
• To avoid plagiarism by quoting words and ideas used by other authors
• To allow your reader to track down the sources you used by citing them accurately in your paper by way of footnotes, a bibliography or reference list

Source: LibGuides at MIT Libraries - Citing