Integrating and Citing sources/What and When to Cite
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What and When to Cite
It can be difficult to know when and what to cite. You always need to cite:
- Ideas, concepts, opinions of others
- Direct quotes, summaries, and paraphrases
- Facts used as evidence
- Tables, graphs, or figures produced by anyone but yourself
- Specific statistics or data
You may have heard that you don’t need to cite your source when the information you’re including is common knowledge. Generally, common knowledge can be understood as information that an average reader would accept without having to look up. This includes:
- Information that most people know (such as that water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius),
- Information shared by a cultural or national group (such as the names of Canadian prime ministers)
- Knowledge shared by members of a field or discipline (such as that a double bond is stronger than a single bond)
However, it can be difficult to know what counts as common knowledge, because an “average reader” is audience and discipline specific. What might be common knowledge in one cultural group or academic discipline may not be common knowledge in another. Here are some ways to determine if something is common knowledge or not:
- Ask: who is my audience and what can I assume they already know?
- See if the information is cited or not in academic scholarship. If the information is cited in at least three different sources, it’s probably common knowledge
- If you are not sure, assume the information is not common knowledge and cite. It’s always better to over-cite than under-cite.