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Computer Science

A general guide to Computer Science

Citing Sources

Why Cite?

When you incorporate someone else's thoughts or words into your own writing, it's important to cite your source.

Citing:

  1. Gives the original author the credit they deserve - to avoid plagiarism
  2. Show to your instructor what you have read and used
  3. Points your readers to the original work, in case they'd like to consult it themselves

Need Help with citations?

Start with the Library's Citing Your Sources guide

Citation Styles for Computer Science

APA, ACM and IEEE are among the common citation styles in Computer Science. Be sure to check with your instructors to find out which style they prefer.

APA = American Psychology Association
ACM = Association of Computing Machinery
IEEE = Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

 

ACM Citation Style

The ACM citation style is made up of two parts:

In-text

numbered in square brackets, refer to the full citation listed at the end of the work, e.g. [1]

References

assigned a bracketed number according to the order the items being cited in the work
 

ACM General Guides:

 

Examples

Monograph

References

[n] Author first and last name. Year.  Book Title in Italics  (edition number if available). Publisher, City, State. DOI if available.

[3] Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike. 1984. The UNIX Programming Environment. Prentice-Hall, New Jersey.

In-text

One of the first applications of UNIX systems was editing and formatting documents [3].

Journal Article

References

[n] Author first and last name. Year. Title of article using sentence capitalization.  Journal Title in Italics & All Important Words Capitalized .Volume, Issue (Issue Month and Year), page number. DOI

[1] Patricia S. Abril and Robert Plant. 2007. The patent holder's dilemma: Buy, sell, or troll? Commun. ACM 50, 1 (Jan. 2007), 36-44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/1188913.1188915

 
 

IEEE Citation Style

The IEEE citation style is a numbering system

In-text
sources are cited with a number in square brackets
References
a list of numbered sources at the end of the paper ordered numerically based on the order of appearance in the text

 

IEEE Documents:

Other library guides: