Checklist

1. Every citation in the main text (and appendices) must have a corresponding, complete, and accurate entry in the bibliography.
2. Every bibliography entry must be cited in the text. If you didn't cite it, remove it. Uncited bibliography entries are called "bibliography padding", and which is considered somewhat unethical.
3. Every citation should be checked that it points to the correct bibliography entry.

What should I cite?

The first purpose means that in principle every sentence in your paper should either be entirely new to your research in both expression and content, or it should be citing at least one source. Of course, that's kind of ridiculous and impractical. Here are some rules for "optimal" citation.

1. All quotations must have attributions. This includes any figures you copy as images. This is not just research ethics, failure to cite exposes you to severe personal risk! Quotations are easy to search for, and an uncited quotation is both obvious plagiarism and exposes you and the university to legal action for copyright violation.

   The university (and I) take this very seriously. If you get caught before submission, I will refuse to accept the whole paper. If you get caught after submission, you will have to revise the paper before you get your degree. If you get caught after you receive your degree, the university will revoke your degree and publish a notice of that fact and the reason for the action, and you may be subject to legal action for copyright violation, and the university will likely join the plaintiff. My testimony won't benefit you.

2. All recent scientific results that are not yours must have attributions. This includes quotations, paraphrases, translations including producing figures from data, theorems, models expressed as equations or as dots-and-arrows graphs, and numerical results at least. Lack of an attribution is a claim that the result is your original work. "Recent" means it's not common knowledge or expected to be in all popular textbooks. If you got it from a research presentation including journal articles, preprints, blog posts, oral presentations, or personal communications, it's not yours and it must be cited.

3. If it's your original work previously published or sent as a private publication, it should be cited for the convenience of the reader, and to avoid accusations of self-plagiarism (i.e., presenting previously published results as new research, which is a violation of research ethics).

4. Don't cite previous versions of the same paper by the same title unless you are getting different results. If the results are different, you should cite the previous version for the convenience of the reader, and you must make it clear that the results changed.

5. You generally should not attribute "common knowledge" (e.g., the value of pi up to about 10 digits). You generally should not attribute textbook knowledge in the form of "laws" or models expressed in words. (When expressed as theorems, equations, or regression coefficients, they fall under quotation, so they should be attributed.)

Quotation vs. paraphrase

A quotation is an exact reproduction of someone else's expression. For my taste, this includes not only text, but also images (which you should have in your paper), and audio and video (which you probably won't have, but is already common in other fields). This includes cases where slight modifications are made, such as

• grammatical changes such as "he" to a person's name that is important to your argument, but wouldn't be clear otherwise, which must be enclosed in "[]" to indicate the change
• ellipses, which are removals of words or phrases or even whole sentences that are irrelevant to your purpose in presenting the quotation, which must be marked by the ellipsis "...".

Quotations also include translations, whether by you or by a third party. Of course this includes translations between natural languages such as French and Hindi. To my mind, it also includes translations of form, such as making a graph from a table. (Other people might call that a paraphrase -- but either way it must be attributed.)

Quotations must be marked, either by quotation marks or as an indented block, usually set off by additional vertical space. They must be accurate (checked against the original source), and changes and ellipsis must not change the original's meaning as intended by the author. Quotations must be attributed, that is accompanied by a citation to the original source. It is not allowed to cite another source which also contains the text as a quotation!

If you feel you need to make an exception, consult me. There are exceptions, but it's a delicate decision.

A paraphrase is a restatement of someone else's idea using an expression original to you. Paraphrases are always preferred to quotation! In many cases, your words will come out identical to somebody else's expression of the same content. You don't need to worry about that, except for the source you're citing. If you cut and pasted from sources into your notes and use that in your paper, you must reword all pasted text (strongly preferred) or mark it as a quotation (occasionally acceptable). Paraphrases of another's original research must be attributed with an accurate citation. Paraphrases of another's literature survey are a judgment call. They must be attributed, but whether to attribute to the original sources or to the author of the literature survey is the question. It's possible to be a little crafty and cite both:

Blah blah blah (Smith & Wesson [1999]).  Nantoka kantoka (Dareka
[2009]).  A more extensive survey is in Lee [2019].

For these purposes, paraphrases include graphs or tables created from another source's data. An exact transcript of an audio recording is a quotation, and must be marked and cited as a quotation. A translation of a text or recording is a quotation, and must be marked and cited as a translated quotation.

Scientific results

Placeholder section -- I'm not sure I need to clarify this.