Important points in an essay should be backed-up either by original evidence presented in the paper or by citing a published source where the evidence is presented. A "citation" is a brief notation that appears in the essay. The citation refers the reader to the complete “reference”, usually at the end of the essay. The reference should be complete enough to allow a reader to find the original source. A reference list is often called a "bibliography".
For consistency, citations and references in a paper should conform to a standard format. In this brief note we illustrate the format used in a typical science journal.
Citations appear as numbers in brackets immediately following the location where an important point is made. For example, in the body of the essay, you might make a point as follows:
As noted by Suzuki [1], the use of computers in the classroom often results in side effects, such as…
In the bibliography, the complete reference appears as follows:
1. D. Suzuki, “Student 'computer literacy' an outmoded teaching idea,” The Globe and Mail 1997, February 14, p. D4.
The reference list should be sorted, either alphabetically by the author name, or by the citation sequence in the essay.
Below are the formats for some common types of references.
1. S. Carson, T. P. McKenna, & A. Newell, The psychology of the internet (Evans Publishing Co., New York, NY, 1998).
2. J. McCarthy, The little thoughts of thinking machines Psychology today. (1997, December) pp. 46-49.
3. http://www.eecs.uwaterloo.ca/~jones/