LAUSR

Citations and references are essential components of academic articles. Although the terms citation, quotation, and reference are sometimes used interchangeably, clear definitions of these terms are required to facilitate further discussion and to avoid confusion. In this article, we define “citation” as an in-text indication of a book, article, or other source that supports the author’s statement; “reference,” which is typically presented at the end of an academic paper, as the detailed information about the source identified in the corresponding in-text citation; and “quotation” as an exact repetition of a section of text in one of the references. Although misspellings of authors’ names and the titles of articles in references are common errors, errors in citations are the most problematic because they can be seriously misleading [(1), D2-3]. A high error rate means that readers cannot be sure whether the statements made by the authors are supported by academic research [(2), Pg13]. Therefore, in this article, we propose a slight modification to the commonly used citation format to improve transparency and reduce the spread of incorrect information.