Citations are incredibly important in all sciences. It is important to give authors credit for the work that they have done. Citations can also give what you are saying more credibility because scholarly articles go through a rigorous peer-review process. Also, if the reader is interested in learning more about the topic, you have given them a place to start their research!

For your proposal, you will need two types of citations:

1. In-text citations throughout the document

2. Full works-cited/Bibliography at the end of the document

When to use in-text citations: You should always provide an in-text citation any time you are saying something that is not common knowledge. You may know this information because you are doing lots of research on the topic, but the average member of the general public would not. Therefore, you will need to provide a citation. These citations go at the end of the sentence that contains the information that you are citing. In-text citations are required when you are quoting a source directly or when you are paraphrasing from a source. Paraphrasing is when you take ideas from the source but you restate them in your own words.

In-text citations of scholarly articles use the (Author, Date) format:

- One author: (Smith, 2020)
- Two authors: (Smith & Jones, 2020)
- More than two authors: (Smith et al., 2020)

For other types of in-text citations that do not meet the (Author, Date) format please see the Purdue OWL link here. (Links to an external site.)

Here is an example of a sentence from a proposal that I wrote for my research that includes an in-text citation at the end:

- "Consequently, when individuals do not perceive police as effective means to control crime and disturbance and view police as unfair or biased, the legitimacy of the police decreases (Tyler 2003)."

Here is the same citation in the bibliography:

- Tyler, Tom R. 2003. “Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and the Effective Rule of Law.” Crime and Justice 30 (January): 283–357. https://doi.org/10.1086/652233.

This allows the reader to find the source that I referenced and read it for themselves in the event that they want to know more about the topic. It also gives credibility to my statement because it is referenced in an article that has undergone a peer-review process and therefore is not something that I have just made up!

Please review the following references that go over different aspects of citations:

APA In-text Citations Guide (Links to an external site.)

APA Bibliography Guide (Links to an external site.)

Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing (Links to an external site.)

What is Paraphrasing? (Links to an external site.)

References in Writing