EM SC 240N
Energy and Sustainability in Contemporary Culture

APA Style Information and Academic Integrity

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Academic Integrity and Citation Styles

You will be expected to use APA formatting and citation style for the paper you write in this course. For discussion board posts and answers to quiz questions you do not have to use APA style, but you must cite any outside sources that you use. Please note the three following important rules with regard to citing sources:

  1. Any time you use outside information you MUST indicate the source you got it from. If you do not cite your source, you will receive a zero for that answer, and further disciplinary action may be taken, especially if it is a repeat offense.
  2. All answers should be in your own words. Avoid using direct quotes unless necessary. If you do use direct quotes, you MUST identify them with quotation marks and indicate the page (if an article or book) or paragraph (if web page) where it can be found.

Please note that this does not include content you got from this course and use for essay answers on quizzes. However, this does include websites that this course links to. So if you use content from the course in an essay answer, no need to cite. If the course provided a link to another website (e.g. government site such as EPA, an article from a newspaper, a journal article, etc.) you must cite it in your essay answers.

Why are citations important? Well, in an academic environment citations are important for at least two basic reasons. The first is to give credit to the author(s) from whom you have read and found their ideas worth repeating (whether paraphrasing, building from their foundation, or directly quoting). Using someone’s work without proper citation is considered plagiarism, because without proper citation your readers are going to assume you came up with that idea, claim, argument and so forth. Thus, it’s truly important to acknowledge (through proper in-text citations) whose ideas, thoughts, and arguments you are building from. Secondly, proper citations are important and advantageous to you because you are letting your reader know that the claims you are putting forth have been built on the foundations of other respected scholars/thinkers. In choosing what resources you will be working with, you are choosing which scholars (and which of their ideas/claims/arguments) will be supporting your research—or, in some cases, you will cite certain scholars and their works to highlight that you are deliberately not in agreement with their ideas/claims/arguments. In short, your selection of scholarly resources tells your readers which authors you are engaging with. Lastly, if you have a question about how to cite sources, do contact me—or reach out to your classmates—to get clarification. Some sources may seem hard to figure out how to cite, but there is a proper citation format for pretty much every source of information out there—from a book to a podcast to an email exchange.

Penn State defines academic integrity as "the pursuit of scholarly activity in an open, honest and responsible manner." Academic integrity includes "a commitment not to engage in or tolerate acts of falsification, misrepresentation, or deception." In particular, the University defines plagiarism as "the fabrication of information and citations; submitting other's work from professional journals, books, articles, and papers; submission of other student's papers, lab results or project reports and representing the work as one's own." Penalties for violations of academic integrity may include forfeited assignments, course failure, or disqualification from a degree or certificate program. More information is available by reading the academic integrity policy of Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.

Citation and Reference Style

We expect that the text and graphics you submit as part of your assignments are original. We reserve the right to use the plagiarism detection service Turnitin.com to assure the originality of course assignments. You may build upon ideas, words, and illustrations produced by others, but you must acknowledge such contributions formally. Unacknowledged contributions are considered to be plagiarized. This guide explains when and how you should acknowledge the contributions of others to your own work.

Different disciplines adopt different standards for citations and references. Moreover, almost every professional publication enforces its own variation on standard styles. Papers and projects within the discipline of Geography and within many other Social Sciences require the use of APA format. Since it is the convention of the discipline, it is important for you to know how to use this format.

APA Style requires the use of in-text citations. You must use in-text citations where appropriate in your Final Project! This means that you cite any information that you had to look up right after you use that information in the assignment AND you must provide an in-text citation whenever you refer to a specific work (book, article, conversation, etc.). See this sample student paper from Purdue's Online Writing Laboratory (OWL) for an example of how to use in-text citations (and how to format the Reference section and so forth).

Need help?

For more information on APA, please refer to this APA Citation Guide created by the Penn State University Libraries on the basics of APA. You may also refer to the following links for help:

PSU Citation Guide

OWL at Purdue University

Wisconsin Writing Center

Learn more...

Penn State also makes available to all faculty and students an iStudy Module entitled Academic Integrity, Plagiarism, and Copyright.