Chat with a Librarian
Skip to Main Content
ask a librarian email questions

Where to Find Citation Information Plain Text

Common Citation Terms

Below are definitions of some common terms you may encounter when you are working on citations. Click on each individual term for a definition.

Access Date: The date that you looked at a source. The access date can be important for information that is frequently changing and is found on a website that updates regularly. 

APA (American Psychological Association): A citation style frequently used in education, social sciences, and other science courses. Subjects that use the APA style are most concerned with the date of the information, since they include the source's publication year in their in-text citations. Ask your instructor to see which citation style you should use.

Article Title: The name of the specific article, page on the website, book chapter, etc. that you are citing. The article title is different than the title of the entire website.

Author: The name of the person(s) or group who wrote or created your source. For certain sources, like encyclopedias or websites, it is very common to not have an author's name listed.

Database: For citations, a database usually refers to an online platform where you can search for information about a topic from many different sources. Most often, databases include articles from journals, magazines, and newspapers, but many include books, book chapters, reference entries, encyclopedias, etc. Some even include videos and/or images. and some contain information written only for that database and is not published anywhere else.

DOI (Digital Object Identifier): A unique code assigned to academic articles to help you locate them. It's sort of like an article's social security number. A DOI may look like a link (https://doi.org/10.1109/5.771073) or they may just have the DOI itself (10.1109/5.771073). If you see this on your article, you should include it, but not every source will have one.

Edition: A new publication of a book or eBook that includes information that has been updated from the previous version. Usually editions will be a number--2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. but they can also be descriptive, such as "Revised Edition." 1st editions are not normally labeled or included in citations.

Editor: A person who organizes a book to which many authors contribute (i.e. encyclopedia entries, book chapters, essays, poems, short stories, etc.). Sometimes, the authors are listed on the parts they wrote and sometimes they're not. Many textbooks and reference books (like encyclopedias) will have an editor listed and not mention the authors that contributed to writing the book. If you see an editor, that is a clue that you should look for an author at the beginning or end of your chapter, essay, entry, etc. because you will often find them listed there instead. Editors should only be included in the citation if they are listed on the title page of the book or with the source's information.

In-Text Citations: Goes into the body/text of your paper to identify where information from outside sources was used. In-text citations must be used for direct word-for-word quotes, as well as summarized or paraphrased information where you use your own words. Anytime you write sentences in your paper (or project, speech, etc.) that use information you looked up or read in an outside source, you must include an in-text citation to avoid plagiarism. All in-text citations must match to a full citation on your Works Cited page. In-text citations are a short reference that tells the reader which source to look up on the citation page for full information. They can also identify the part of the source that the specific information came from (like a page number, line number, paragraph/section number). MLA and APA have different information and rules about what goes into the short in-text citations, so see our MLA In-Text and APA In-Text Guides for more information.

Journal Title: The name of the publication where your article was published. 

MLA (Modern Language Association): A citation style frequently used in English, the humanities, and most classes at SCC. Subjects that use MLA are most concerned with where the information was found, since they include the information's page number (when available) in their in-text citations. Ask your instructor to see which citation style you should use.

Number (No.): Also known as the issue number. Issue numbers refer to how many times the periodical has been published that year. Not every source will have an issue number.

Page Numbers: 

These are the pages in your source that the information came from.

  • In-Text: MLA asks you to include the page number (when you have one) with your in-text citation. In this case, you would include the specific page(s) that the direct quote or paraphrased information came from in the source.
  • Words Cited: For a Works Cited page, citations include the page numbers of the entire article, chapter, etc. from start to finish. 
  • Electronic Sources: Many electronic sources (like websites) do not have page numbers. In the case you do not have page numbers for your source, you do not need to make them up for your in-text citations or Works Cited page.

Publication Date: The day, month, or year that your source was published. When creating your citation, list the most specific date that you have. Sometimes it is just a year (2018), sometimes it's a month and year (Jan. 2018), and sometimes it's the full date (2 Jan. 2018). Sometimes it's even a season (Winter 2018). If there is more than one date for your source, list the most recent date. Sometimes on websites, it is common for the date to appear as a range (2000-2021). 

Publisher: The organization or company who published the information.

URL: A link that goes directly to your source.

Volume: 

  • Books: some print sources (like encyclopedias) are split into multiple books when they are published, because it would be too long to fit into one book. Reference sources like encyclopedias often have multiple volumes (vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3).
  • Periodicals: for periodicals, volume and issue number (mentioned above) go together. Because periodicals publish new issues all the time, this is a way to organize what is published. Each new year is usually labeled as the next volume number (and the issue number is how many issues are in that volume/published that year). For example, Vol. 1, No. 1 is the very first, followed by Vol. 1, No. 2, and Vol. 1, No. 3. Then the next year, the periodical will start with Vol. 2, No. 1, and Vol. 2, No. 2, and so on.