Dos and Don’ts for Creating Useful and Accurate References

Do:

• Follow journal guidelines
• Cite relevant literature. This is the most important consideration.  Any studies that you cite should be germane to your research question
• Select balanced references. For example, if experiments have contradicting results on a research question, be sure to cite studies having both kinds of results
• Cite current literature. It is always good practice to cite the first discovery or mention of a work in the literature regardless of the length of time that has passed since its initial publication, but generally speaking your references should be as recent as possible
• Be sure that you have verified the accuracy of your citations by retrieving the cited articles to make sure that your citation “clicks through” to the work cited if your citation is available online

Don’t

• Format your references in a manner inconsistent with journal style
• Include unnecessary references
• Misinterpret the context of a reference
• Include a disproportionate number of self-citations