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Use With Caution

Many citation generators or automated citation helpers are available.  These include many databases that provide a button to generate a citation of an article, in whichever style you want.  Watch for these buttons in different databases, because they can be very helpful to start your citation.  The buttons look like this, for example:

Any from EBSCO:

JSTOR's:

Any from ProQuest:

These can be great helpers.  Another option are the many downloadable or web-based programs available.  They have variations, but at their heart, you manually input or automatically import bibliographic data for each of your sources into their program, and the program will usually work together with your word processing program to generate citations within your document.

KnightCite - a web-based source you can use to help format your reference or bibliography page.

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] - a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work -- in the web browser itself.

EndNote - use EndNote to search online bibliographic databases, organize their references, images and PDFs in any language, and create bibliographies and figure lists instantly.  EndNote is a subscription that UCO purchases -- go to the UCO Tech Store and click on Software Downloads to download it to your computer.

 

IMPORTANT NOTE: All of these citation helpers are popular among some, but they must be all be used carefully.  They are not necessarily 100% accurate.  if the data about an article or book is inputted incorrectly (as it often is), the citation generator does not "know" to fix any errors.  Always check your entries against the manual.