2.009: Product Engineering Processes 

Why cite?
There are many reasons why it is important to cite the sources you use in your research - for this class, and every paper you write. Here are just a few:

• To enable your reader/audience to locate and read any sources you used in your research. Your reader/audience may want to read other material on the same topic; your citations provide the information for him/her to track down those sources.
• To avoid plagiarism! Any time you use the words and ideas of another person, you must cite that person's work.
• To protect your academic reputation, and to respect academic scholarship. You want to give credit where credit is due. Citing your sources gives credit to the authors whose work you have used in your research.

How do you cite properly?
The best way to find out about citing sources and building a bibliography is to follow examples in an appropriate style manual. Ask the Communication Requirement Staff which style to use for this course.

• Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing
  http://libraries.mit.edu/get/mayfield - [MIT only]
• MIT Libraries Virtual Reference Collection - Style manuals

You can also use bibliographic management software to help you organize and cite your references. RefWorks is an example of a software package provided by the MIT Libraries that allows you to manage references as a group and access them via the internet.

Still need help citing your sources correctly? Ask Us!

For more help and examples, see the Information Navigator - Citing Sources.  Some tips using the Chicago Manual of Style:

Journal or Newspaper Articles

A citation to an article should include:

• Author(s) of article
• Title of article
• Title of journal/newspaper
• Volume and issue number
• Date published
• Starting page number
• Name of bibliographic database the article was found in (normally this is not required in a citation, but it is for your Treasure Hunt assignment).

Karki, Ajoy and Bhola Shrestha. “ Micro-hydro power in Nepal: Access to electricity for isolated rural population in the hills and mountains,” International Energy Journal, 3, no.2 (December 2002): 89. Found in Compendex (6 September 2004).

A citation to a press release or newswire report should include:

• Author(s) of press release
• Title of press release
• Title of news service
• Date of release

Fonte, Diwata. "Diamond Walnut Growers to Go Public Friday as Diamond Foods, Inc." Knight-Ridder Tribune Business News, (2 July 2005).

Books and book chapters

A citation to a book should include:

• Author(s)
• Title of book and edition
• Place and year of publication and publisher

Ulrich, Karl T. and Steven D. Eppinger. Product design and development . 2nd ed., Boston: Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 2000.

A citation to a book chapter should include:

• Author(s) of the chapter
• Title of the chapter
• The word in, the title of the book, followed by ed. (standing for "edited by") and the name of the editor
• The publication information
• The page numbers of the selection

Cooper, Paul. "Centrifugal Pump Theory." In Pump Handbook, 3rd edition ed. by Igor J. Karassik, Joseph P. Messina, Paul Cooper, and Charles C. Heald, 2.1-2.96. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001.

Databases

Cite a database as follows:

• Name of the database
• URL to the database (not the long URL where you found your information)
• Descriptive phrase or record locator (such as a data marker or accession number) indicating the part of the database being cited or explaining the nature of the reference
• Date of access

Unified Database (Bioinformatics Unit and Genome Center, Weizmann Institute of Science), http://bioinformatics.weizmann.ac.il/udb/ (for mapping data on candidate genes; accessed July 29, 2001).

Websites

A citation to a website should provide:

• Author's name
• Title of document, in quotation marks (if part of larger site/document)
• Title of complete work, in italics or underlined
• Date of publication or last revision
• URL, in angle brackets
• Date of access, in parentheses

Central Intelligence Agency. CIA – The World Factbook 2004, 1 January 2004, (5 September 2004).

Note: If URL is exceptionally long, provide the base URL and provide the browse/search path used.

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