Great Resources to Teach Students about Plagiarism and Citation Styles

November 7, 2014
One of my favourite sources for information and guidelines regarding referencing and citation styles is the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL). I have heard several professors (in the humanities, at least) recommend it to graduate students. But there are also several other resources student researchers and academics can draw on to hone in their research writing skills. This page from Plagiarism.org features a plethora of excellent materials and citation sources that are all available online or in the form of PDF documents , free to download and use.

Here are some of the examples of the citation materials you will find there. These resources are arranged under three main categories: Humanities, Sciences, and Social sciences.

• Writer's Handbook: Chicago Style Documentation
• Writer's Handbook: Chicago Style Documentation
• Writer's Handbook: MLA Style Documentation
• Writer's Handbook: MLA Style Documentation
• Writer's Handbook: APA Style Documentation
• Writer's Handbook: APSA Documentation

There are also other sections in the page that provide some useful information on a variety of topics related to writing and plagiarism such as : how to paraphrase, how to quote materials, definition of a footnote and bibliography, tools to check for plagiarism, and many more.
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Top 5 Citation Manager Tools for Academics and Student Researchers

October 22 , 2014
The first thing you want to start thinking of when you start your graduate studies is to find a suitable citation manager to help you organize and store your references. This is something that will save you a lot of time and effort down the road. In this post, I want to share with my fellow student researchers some of the top citation managers out there. Most of universities worldwide support one of them. Check out your university library and see which of the citation managers below it supports. That will make it easy for you to organize and store the references you come across in your university library.

1- Mendeley

Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research. Here is what you can do with Mendeley:

• Automatically generate bibliographies
• Collaborate easily with other researchers online
• Easily import papers from other research software
• Find relevant papers based on what you’re reading
• Access your papers from anywhere online
• Read papers on the go, with our new iPhone app

2- Zotero

Zotero is the only research tool that automatically senses content, allowing you to add it to your personal library with a single click. Whether you're searching for a preprint on arXiv.org, a journal article from JSTOR, a news story from the New York Times, or a book from your university library catalog, Zotero has you covered with support for thousands of sites.

3- Endnote

EndNote gives you the tools you need for searching, organizing and sharing your research. It allows you to easily create bibliographies while writing your next paper with features like Cite While You Write . Maximize your time with features like finding full text for your references and automatically updating records. Whether you’re on your desktop, online, or iPad, EndNote’s syncing capabilities let you access all of your references, attachments, and groups from anywhere.

4- RefWorks

This is an online research management, writing and collaboration tool. It is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies.

5- EasyBib

Create accurate MLA, APA, and Chicago style citations in seconds by scanning a book bar code or by typing the name of a book. Build and manage your works cited. Once done, email your citations and then export your citations to EasyBib.com's popular bibliography management service.

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A Handy MLA Poster for Your Class

August 20, 2014
OWL (Online Writing Lab) is one of my favourite academic resources I often have recourse to when working on research papers. OWL provides excellent guides to help student researchers improve their academic writing style. It also features some state-of-the-art guidelines on referencing and citations using both the APA (American Psychological Association) and MLA (Modern Language Association) styles. OWL has two useful posters on APA an MLA that have been particularly designed for classroom use. I have already featured the APA poster in a previous post and today I am sharing with you the MLA version.

The MLA poster is based on the updated version of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research  Papers ( 7th ed). This poster is available for free download from this link. You can also print it "in different sizes for use in classrooms, writing centres, or as a octet reference."

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