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Citing Your Sources

Disciplinary styles

Apart from the three major citation styles, APA, MLA, and Chicago, several sciences developed their own distinctive citation styles. Despite their differences, all these documentation styles have the same basic goal: 

  • to describe the source, 
  • to credit its creator,
  • to guide the readers to the actual source so they will be able to use it themselves.

Fortunately, the disciplinary citation styles include a lot of the same information with the major styles. This means that you shouldn't worry about which kind of citations you will ultimately use as you could alternatively use one of the major ones.

Check the table below to find out which disciplinary style manuals are available, access them, and see which alternative style you could use.

Style & Manual Discipline Type of style Alternatives

IEEE

Book cover of IEEE manual of style

 

Engineering

&

Computer Sciences

 

Citation - Sequence 

 

 

Chicago

OR

APA

ACM

Cover of ACM manual of style

 

Computer Sciences

 

Citation - Sequence

 

Chicago

OR

APA

Vancouver

Cover of Citing Medicine manual of style

 

Sciences

&

Medicine

 

Citation - Sequence

 

Chicago

OR

APA

Oxford

Cover of Oxford Guide to Style

 

 

Law, Sciences

&

Medicine

 

Citation - Name

 

Chicago

OR

APA

Types of Styles

The above citation styles fall under the citation - sequence or the citation - name categories.

Check the table below to understand the differences between styles.

Type of Style In-text References
Citation - Sequence Citations are numberedin the order they appear in the text. Full citations appear at the end of the paper, in the same order but not alphabetized.
Citation - Name Citations are numbered*. Full citations appear at the end of the paper alphabetized. The first item cited in the text might be number 4 on the alphabetical list.

*Numbers may appear in parentheses (1) (2) (3), in parentheses with the number in italics (1), in brackets [1], or as superscript ¹, depending on the disciplinary style that you use.