Literature Cited

*The purpose of this section is to give credit to your sources, and to give readers enough information to be able to find the sources on their own.

As stated before, and also in the ‘plagiarism’ section, all facts and pieces of information that are not your own must be referenced to an original document by an in-text citation. Failure to do this results in breach of academic freedom.

While the basic format of a scientific paper is relatively consistent between journals, the format of literature cited is almost always different. This is unfortunate, but there are a number of ways to navigate the changes and peculiarities with relative ease. Endnote is available to you through the TWU library. This online program can:

• import or capture references from a webpage
• organizing citations online, access from any internet-connected computer
• export your citations, automatically formatted to the desired journal style
  

Some things to keep in mind as you write the ‘Literature Cited’ section:

• Refer to your syllabus to select the style of reference used in your particular class
• References should be ordered alphabetically by the first author (unless you are required to use a sequential number format)
• Only include references that are cited in your actual paper
• Table 1 of this guide provides suggested (minimum) number and type of sources, depending on your year of study
• If a reasonably diligent scholar 20 years in the future could not be assured of finding a particular source, it would not be acceptable as literature cited – so avoid personal communication, class notes, course packs, etc.
• The notation et al. is an abbreviation of the latin et alii meaning ‘and others’. They are italicized because they are in a foreign language.
  

Personal communication

In particular situations a student may want to cite information/ideas from a conversation they had with an individual. Bear in mind that the intent of citations is not only to give credit but also to provide verifiability. As such, personal communications should be reserved for information that is not otherwise available, since it is not permanent information and not easily verified. It would be unwise to use personal communication as an in-text citation for the following:

• instructor powerpoints
• brief un-authoritative conversations
• information which is otherwise available in journals and authoritative sites

It would be beneficial to use personal communication in the following cases:

• citing information from an employee at TWU who knows in what year a particular tree was planted
• citing unpublished research from preliminary studies on campus
• citing specific knowledge garnered from an expert in which there is no other published material (ex. types of bird species found at TWU in this current season)
  

Common Knowledge

There will be times to discern whether a particular fact/information needs a citation or can be excluded from citations based on common knowledge. While this topic is not easy to define, two rules presented here will give you a basis for understanding when a piece of information does not need a citation.
Quantity: The more independent sources that contain the information, the more common the knowledge becomes. For example, every biological text book would contain the fact that DNA is made up of a sugar phosphate backbone and thus it could be considered common knowledge. But the fact that methylated DNA will prevent enzymes from cutting DNA would only be published in specific textbooks dealing with DNA manipulation and genetics (Bloom et al. 1996).
Ubiquity: Facts that are well known by large groups of people can be considered common knowledge. For example the population of Canada (~33Million) is a piece of information that is common enough to Canadians to be considered common knowledge. On the other hand, the population of Langley (104,177) is a fact that would be more limited information and therefore needs an in-text citation (Stats Can, 2011). Therefore if the majority of your classmates would consider a piece of information common, then it can be implied as common knowledge.

Here are some examples of journal reference formats you may come across:

Canadian Journal of Botany

http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/page/cjb/authors#Themanuscript
Journal Article:
Clements, D.R., Feenstra, K.R., Jones, K. and Staniforth, R. 2008. The biology of invasive alien plants in Canada. 9. impatiens glandulifera royle. Can. J. Plant Sci. 88(2): 403-417.
Book:
Pojar, J., and MacKinnon, A. 2004. Plants of the Pacific northwest coast: Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Alaska. Lone Pine Publishing USA.
Web site citation:
TWU. 2009. Ecosystem Study Area [online]. Available from http://twu.ca/sites/ecosystem/ [accessed 21 May 2013].
In-text citation:
(Clements et al. 2008)
(Pojar and Mackinnon 2004)
(TWU 2013)

Ecology

http://www.esajournals.org/loi/ecol
Journal Article:
Clements D. R., K. R. Feenstra, K. Jones, and R. Staniforth. 2008. The biology of invasive alien plants in Canada. 9. Impatiens glandulifera Royle. Canadian Journal of Plant Science 88:403-417.
Book:
Pojar J., A. MacKinnon. 2004. Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast: Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Alaska. Lone Pine Publishing USA.
Web site citation:
TWU. 2009. Ecosystem Study Area. Trinity Western University. http://twu.ca/sites/ecosystem/.
In-text citation:
(Clements et al. 2008)
(Pojar and MacKinnon 2004)
(TWU 2009)

Cell

http://www.cell.com/authors#sections
Journal Article:
Stringham, E., Pujol, N., Vandekerckhove, J., and Bogaert, T. (2002). unc-53 controls longitudinal migration in C. elegans. Development 129, 3367-3379.
Book:
Alberts, B., Bray, D., Hopkin, K., Johnson, A., Lewis, J., and Raff, M. (2010). Essential Cell Biology (New Jersey: Taylor & Francis Group).
Web site citation:
WormBase. (2013). Unc-26. Accessed on May 21, 2013 at < http://www.wormbase.org/db/get?name=WBGene00006763;class=Gene>
In-text citation:
(Stringham et al., 2002)
(Alberts et al., 2010)
(WormBase, 2013)

Genetics

http://www.genetics.org/site/misc/ifora.xhtml#REFERENCES
Journal Article:
Venema, D. R., T. Zeev-Ben-Mordehai and V. J. Auld, 2004 Transient apical polarization of gliotactin and coracle is required for parallel alignment of wing hairs in_ drosophila_. Dev. Biol. 275: 301-314.
Book:
Griffiths, A. J. F., S. R. Wessler, R. C. Lewontin and S. B. Carroll, 2008 Introduction to Genetic Analysis. W. H. Freeman. Web site citation:
FlyBase, 2013 version FB2013_03, released May 7, 2013. Available at: http://flybase.org/. Accessed: May 21, 2013.
In-text citation:
(Venema et al. 2004)
Griffiths et al. 2008)
(FlyBase 2013)

Science

http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/contribinfo/prep/res/refs.xhtml
Journal Article:
1. B. A. Siame, S. F. Mpuchane, B. A. Gashe, J. Allotey, G. Teffera, Occurrence of aflatoxins, fumonisin B1, and zearalenone in foods and feeds in Botswana. J. Food Prot. 61, 1670-1673 (1998).
Book:
2. A. L. Lehninger, D. D. L. Nelson, M. M. Cox, Lehninger principles of biochemistry (Freeman, 2005).
Web site citation:
3. IPA. Ingenuity® Systems (2013). Available at: www.ingenuity.com.. Accessed on May 21, 2013.
In-text citation:
This format is a little different than other styles because the in-text citation follows a numerical format that is transcribed in the bibliography in sequence (rather than alphabetically) beginning with the first cited source and ending with the last cited source.
Example: Aflatoxins are abundant in Botswana (1).