Wild Mind

WiserEarth Citation/Attribution

Citation is a reference to a book, article, web page, or other published item with sufficient details to identify it uniquely.

Unpublished writings or speech, such as working papers, should also be cited. We ask that all WiserEarth users to properly cite or attribute all unoriginal content posted to the site.

We also require, per the terms of the Creative Commons Non-commercial ShareAlike License 3.0, for attribution to be given to WiserEarth for original content taken from the site. The following is a guide to best practices for both circumstances.

How to Cite Sources

Varying rules and practices for citations apply to scientific citation, legal citation, and marks applied in copyright. Definitions of plagiarism also vary widely among these fields. So it is that the use of citations has no simple common practice.

We ask that all users take the time to research what information is appropriate to include for all sources cited in their work on WiserEarth and utilize the Harvard referencing system.

Under this system, a source is cited in the text in parentheses, after the section for which the reference was used as a source, using the surname of the author and the year of publication only, as in (Author 2005).

A full citation should then be placed at the end of the page in an alphabetized list of "References". Page numbers must be included in a citation that accompanies a specific quotation from, or a paraphrase or reference to, a specific passage of a book or article.

Full citations typically include: the name of the author, the title of the reference, and the date of publication. Page numbers are essential whenever possible. For journal articles, include volume number, issue number and page numbers.

Citations for newspaper articles typically include the title of the article in quotes, the byline (author's name), the name of the newspaper in italics, date of publication, and the date you retrieved it if it is online.

For a website: like that which I have used in making this page:

•"Citing Sources", (Wikipedia), Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources (Accessed: 2007, April 2).

For an article: in the case of (Smith 2007) or (CNN, December 17, 2005), this might be:

* Smith, John. "Grinning Woman, 24, Wanted Badly as Bin Laden", CNN, April 2, 2007.

Images must include source details. If you downloaded an image from the web, it might be appropriate to provide a source link-back to the page of origin somewhere near the photograph.

Ex. Source: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=community&l=cc&page=3

If you got the image from an offline source, you should also cite the source. It is important that you list the author of the image (especially if different from the source), which is important both for copyright and for informational purposes. Some copyright licenses require that the original author receive credit for their work.

Citing WiserEarth

As with any source, but particularly those of unknown authorship, you should be wary of the information found on WiserEarth and independently verify the accuracy of information if possible.

You should not necessarily cite any particular author or authors for a WiserEarth article, in general. WiserEarth is collaboratively written. However, if you do need to find the list of authors of a particular article, you can check the Page history in the dropdown menu at the top of each page.

Your citation should list both the page title and the term WiserEarth, much as you would for an article in a paper publication. Every page referenced should be a separate citation. We also require that you provide a link back to the WiserEarth page you are referencing, per the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial ShareAlike License 3.0.