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Chapter 11: Citing and Referencing

“Every citation is a signal: I’ve done the work, I’ve read the field, and I know where my ideas fit.”

Why This Chapter Matters

Citation isn’t just about avoiding plagiarism.
It’s how you enter the conversation of research.

Citations show that:

  • You’re building on credible, peer-reviewed work
  • You understand the state of the art
  • You know which ideas are yours—and which came from others

This chapter will help you cite responsibly, format correctly, and stay organized—so that your thesis, research papers, and presentations are all built on a strong foundation of attribution.

Conceptual Breakdown

🔹 What to Cite (and When)

You should cite when:

  • An idea, method, result, or dataset comes from another paper
  • You paraphrase or summarize someone’s work
  • You reuse figures, tables, or even experimental setup
  • You're inspired by a framework, tool, or model implementation

💡 You don’t need to cite common knowledge (e.g., “deep learning models use backpropagation”).

🔹 Common Citation Formats in CS

Format Common In Looks Like
IEEE Engineering, CS, AI conferences [1] J. Smith, “Title,” IEEE Trans. on X, 2020.
ACM ACM conferences, SIG venues [Smith 2020]
APA Interdisciplinary, HCI, social science Smith, J. (2020). Title. Journal Name.

📌 Always check your target venue’s template and formatting rules. They usually provide .cls or .bst files for LaTeX.

🔹 Tools to Manage Your References

Tool What It Does
Zotero Collect, organize, tag, and cite references; integrates with Word/LibreOffice
Mendeley Similar to Zotero, stronger PDF annotation features
BibTeX Plaintext reference format for LaTeX documents
Overleaf Online LaTeX editor with built-in BibTeX integration

✅ Pro Tip: Use Zotero + BibTeX for the best of both worlds: visual management and LaTeX compatibility.

🔹 How to Generate a .bib File (for LaTeX Users)

  1. Add your papers to Zotero
  2. Select the papers → Right click → Export as BibTeX
  3. Save as refs.bib
  4. In your .tex file:

```latex \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran} \bibliography{refs} ````

🎯 You can also use Google Scholar to export BibTeX entries—but double-check for formatting errors.

🔹 Citing Code and Tools

When using open-source projects, APIs, or models:

  • Look for a CITATION.txt file in the GitHub repo
  • If none, cite the original paper associated with the tool (e.g., “Transformers” → cite the BERT or HuggingFace paper)

⚠️ Don’t cite GitHub URLs without context. Always include author, year, title, and version if possible.

Self-Check Questions

  1. Are you using a reference manager (Zotero, Mendeley, or BibTeX)?
  2. Do you know your target venue’s citation format?
  3. Have you double-checked for missing or incorrect citations in your drafts?

Try This Exercise

Build Your Citation Workflow

  1. Install Zotero + browser connector
  2. Add 5 papers you’ve read this week
  3. Tag each by topic (e.g., #LLM, #legalNLP, #transformers)
  4. Export to BibTeX and integrate into an Overleaf project

You now have a clean, searchable citation workflow—and a .bib file ready for use.

Researcher’s Compass

Citing is more than just “giving credit.”

It’s how you build trust. It’s how you acknowledge the community. And it’s how you show that your work belongs in the field.

A well-cited paper says: I know where I stand—and I know whose shoulders I’m standing on.