In-text citation guidelines in academic writing

In all forms of academic writing such as essay writing, bachelor/master thesis, PhD dissertation, conference papers, journal articles etc., it is mandatory to follow proper referencing or citation principles. Negligence in appropriate citation can raise ethical concerns such as plagiarism. Hence, it is important to understand citation styles and practices in academic writing.

Over my academic career of almost a decade, I realized that many of us struggles with in-text citations. In-text citations are references to published studies or sources within a paragraph of text to ensure validity and reliability of the information presented in a particular sentence. Here, I present a few rules of thumbs for in-text citations in academic writing.

First rule of thumb, full reference information of everything cited in-text must appear in the list of reference, and vise-versa. It is challenging to ensure this without using a reference management software. I highly recommend to use ZOTERO or ENDNOTE from day one.

Second, we cite only findings of published studies and reports. We should never cite texts from the introduction and literature review sections of published studies. If you find something relevant in the introduction section of a study that you would like to cite, find the original study and cite that. For example, you find something relevant in Munim (2022), but while citing that information/fact, Munim (2022) cited Helene and Sarah (2021). So, we now have to find the full-text of Helene and Sarah (2021), check if they really said what Munim (2022) cited them for, and then cite Helene and Sarah (2021) in our study.

Third, we can have in-text citation in the beginning, end or middle of a sentence. In the beginning, we use author lastname (year), in the middle or end use (Author lastname, year). For example, Munim and Sarah (2023) found that…. According to Munim and Sarah (2023)…. There is a positive association between logistics performance and economic growth of a country (Munim and Sarah, 2023). This is typical APA style.

In case you have to use numbered in-text citation (typical in IEEE format), the above sentences can be formatted like this: According to Munim and Sarah [1]…. There is a positive association between logistics performance and economic growth of a country [1]. We mention author name(s) along with citation number only if the we cite the source(s) in the beginning of a sentence. Such formatting is every easy when we use a reference management software like ZOTERO or ENDNOTE. Otherwise, this becomes a time consuming work.

Fourth, we use in-text citations in the middle of a sentence when information comes from multiple studies. For example: While frequent ferry users prefer lower degree of autonomy (Munim and Sarah, 2023), higher degree of autonomy yields the most benefits from economic and operational perspectives (Hossein et. al., 2022). The same information, we can present using slightly different in-text citations: According to Munim and Sarah (2023) frequent ferry users prefer lower degree of autonomy, however, higher degree of autonomy yields the most benefits from economic and operational perspectives (Hossein et. al., 2022). Here notice the use of et. al.; when there is more than 02 arthors, we use (lastname of first author et. al., year).

Fifth, if you are citing a report or quoting a full sentence (e.g. definitions) from a published source, the in-text citation must include page number of that information or statement. Here is an example of citation a definition: “Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the coordination of activities, within and between vertically linked firms, for the purpose of serving end customers at a profit” (Larson and Rogers, 1998, p. 2). An example of citing a report could be: While 70% of the business executives considers big data an opportunity, still 30% considers it as a problem (Russom, 2011, p. 12).

Finally, we should never mention title of a study or author affiliation in in-text citation. For example, do not write: The study by professors from Stanford University (Clarkson et al., 2022) found that…; or The study titled Big data and artificial intelligence in the maritime industry: a bibliometric review and future research directions (Munim et al, 2020) found that…; or The study published by Munim et al., (2023) proposed a new methodology for identifying gaps in dyadic settings. We should simply cite with author names, please can find the details of the study at the end of the study in full reference list. For instance, in the latter example we could just write: Munim et al., (2023) proposed a new methodology for identifying gaps in dyadic settings.

As you can see, we can use in-text citations in different ways. Note that each in-text citation only account for the information presented in that sentence.

Hope these are useful. I highly recommend watch this video on how to avoid plagiarism in academic writing.