executive summary : Citation and acknowledgment guide

version date/time : 2005 January 13 16 : 35 hrs

editor : Thomas F. Piatkowski

This document presents, in executive summary format, a citation

and acknowledgment guide for my students at Western Michigan
University.

It touches on the motivations and methods for acknowledging

others’ work that somehow informs one’s own writing.
Executive Summary : Citation and acknowledgment guide
Acknowledgments

This presentation borrows heavily from the research and authoring efforts of many
students, including: Jeff Baer, Ishrat S. Farooqui, Scott Fleming, Emran Jafree, Vijay
Kalusani, Xiaoqing Li, Bhargavi Muppala, Srikanth Narayana, Zankhana Patel, Xin Wu,
and especially James J. Java.

Introduction

This document presents, in executive summary format, a citation and acknowledgment

guide for my students at Western Michigan University.

It begins with a rationale for citing and acknowledging the work of others.

The body of the document details what kind of material needs to be recognized, followed
by a how-to-do-it style guide.

The citation style defined herein is the IEEE style modified to provide alphabetic author-
based labels rather than numbered labels [CEUI], [EEM].

1. Why others’ work should be recognized

a. To give credit where credit is due (and thus generally encourage the exchange of
ideas).

b. To avoid the charge of plagiarism (i.e, representing the work of others as one's own).

In the academic environment is it expected that one properly acknowledge in

one's own productions (including, but not limited to writings) the sources of all
ideas and materials borrowed from others.

c. To avoid legal difficulties.

Specialized knowledge or uncommon thought can be considered intellectual

property, to be used only with permission and other legal arrangements.

d. To strengthen the force of your statements by pointing to supporting works of others.

e. To assist the reader in tracing the sources of your work and in finding additional
materials on the subject.

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2. What must be recognized

a. Joint authorship

b. All literal repetition of material taken from others

c. All statements or terms or other materials outside the purview of “common

knowledge” and derived from the work of others, including material gained from:

i. books
ii. computer programs and electronic documents
iii. databases
iv. interviews and personal communications
v. maps
vi. media (radio, television, movies, ... )
vii. photographs
viii. public documents of all types
(newspapers, magazines, professional journals, proceedings, webpages)
ix. recordings
x. works of art

3. How to indicate the contributions of others

a. Joint authorship

All persons participating in the creation of a work must be explicitly included

in the lists of authors and/or editors.

b. General acknowledgments

All persons providing substantial (even if indirect) assistance in making a work

possible can be recognized in an Acknowledgment section.

This may include recognition of :

editors, secretaries, technicians and others providing technical support

family and friends and others providing personal support

sponsors and employers providing financial and material support

colleagues, teachers, and others providing support and materials not

easily recognized in more conventional ways.

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editor : Thomas F. Piatkowski Page 2 of 8
 c. References section

i. usually the last section of a document

ii. always started on a new page

iii. titled: References

iv. consists of a list of entries each of the form

<label> <citation>

v. <citation> identifies in detail a single bibliographic or other source

vi. <label> provides a convenient short form identifier for the associated
<citation> and is used both in the References section and in inline-
text references (see: 3e. inline text reference formatting).

vii. the reference entries should be alphabetically ordered based on <label>

viii. <label> <citation> how-to-do-it examples

articles contained in books

[G] M.J.C. Gordon, “Why higher order logic is a good formalism for
specifying and verifying hardware,”Formal Aspects of VLSI, G. Milne
and P.A. Subrahmanyam, Eds.North Holland, 1986, pp.153–177.

books

[H] C.A.R. Hoare, Communicating Sequential Processes, Prentice-Hall,

NJ, 1985.

conference or proceedings papers

[MB] D.E. Muller and M.S. Bartky, “A theory of asynchronous

circuits,”Proceedings of an International Symposium on Switching
Theory, Harvard University, 1959, pp.204–243.

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 email

[P] D. Poelman (dirk_poelman@rug.ac.be), “Re: Question on

transformerless power supply,” Usenet post to sci.electronics.design,
July 4, 1997.

journal articles

[Ma] A.J. Martin, “Asynchronous data paths and the design of an

asynchronous adder,” Formal Methods in System Design, vol.1, no.1,
pp.117–137, July, 1992.

[HH] M. Hattori and N. Hiroshi, “Synthesis of asynchronous circuits,”

Journal of the Mathematical Society of Japan, vol.18, no.4,
pp.405–423, Oct., 1966.

manuals

[BTL] Bell Telephone Laboratories Technical Staff, Transmission System for

Communications, Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1995.

personal communication

[A] J. Adams, personal conversation, Jan. 3, 1995.

technical reports

[Mu] D.E. Muller, “The general synthesis problem for asynchronous digital
networks,” Technical Report, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, 1967.

[R] B. Rahardjo, “Asynchronous hardware design: an overview,”

Technical Report UMECE TR-929215, Electrical and Computer
Engineering, University of Manitoba, 1992.

theses

[K] I. Kimura, “Extensions of asynchronous circuits and the delay

problem,” Doctoral thesis, Department of Physics, University of
Tokyo, Jan. 10, 1967.

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 software

[IDS] id Software, “readme” text file, Heretic, CD-ROM, 1995.

[G] Grolier, “Electricity,”The 1995 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia,

CD-ROM, 1995.

webpages include the date of visit in parentheses

[COD] Computational, Optical, and Discharge Physics Group, University of

Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Hybrid plasma equipment model:
inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching reactors,” Dec., 1995,
http://uigelz.ece.uiuc.edu/Projects/HPEM-ICP/index.html (visited
Dec. 5, 1996).

ix. some general guidelines on <citation> syntax

(1) only one <citation> per <label>

(2) footnotes and other words and phrases not apt to the <citation> format
should not be included in a <citation>

(3) capitalization [CEUI], [CMS]

(a) important words in the title of a book must be capitalized

(b) important words in the title of a journal or conference must be
capitalized
(c) capitalize only the first word of an article’s title (except proper
nouns, acronyms, etc.)
(d) capitalize only the first word of a paper, thesis, or book chapter
(e) capitalize the “v” in volume for a book title, but not for a periodical

(4) punctuation [CEUI]

(a) all fields in a bibliographical reference separated by commas

(b) each reference ends with a period
(c) titles of articles, conference papers, theses, Internet documents,
software, etc., enclosed in double quotes—but titles of books,
journals, software, and manuals, to be italicized

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 (5) bibliographical abbreviations [CEUI]

(a) each periodical referenced must be denoted by a fully spelled title

or an accepted abbreviation
(b) long words like volume and December may be abbreviated, but
their abbreviation must be consistent throughout the bibliography
(c) the months March, May, June, and July need not be abbreviated

x. some general guidelines on <label> syntax

(1) every <label> is of the form

[ <text> ]

where <text> is wherever possible an extended abbreviation for the

author(s) of the associated <citation>

(2) <text> is initially to be based on author’s name(s) where available

(3) for a single author — simply take the capitalized first letter of the
surname (e.g. “D. E. Muller” ÿ M)

(4) for multiple authors, take the capitalized first letter of each surname (e.g.
“D. E. Muller and M. S. Bartsky” ÿ MB)

(5) if one <text> is identical to another <text> when based on first letter of
surname, include more letters in lower case of surnames in both <text>
objects until ambiguity is removed (e.g. “A. J. Martin” ÿ Mar, with
“T.K. Masle” ÿ Mas)

(6) for one of multiple works by the same author, follow surname
abbreviation with a period and a lowercase abbreviation of the work (e.g.
“A. Tanenbaum, Operating Systems” ÿ T.os)

(7) if the author(s) is unknown but a corporate author is, abbreviate salient
words in the corporate author's name (e.g. “The AnswerBook: Navigator
v3.4, Sun MicroSystems ” ÿ SMS)

(8) if both an author and corporate author are unknown, abbreviate salient
words in the title (e.g., “Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed., University of
Chicago Press” ÿ CMS)

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 d. Inline-text referencing [CEUI].

i. <label>s from the References are placed inline in the body of document to
indicate the source to be associated with the inline text or material

ii. the <label> or <label>s should be placed at the end of the text or material being
referenced, with a space before the first label, and should be followed by any
terminal punctuation—as in, “ . . . this is quoted matter [Mar].” or as in
“ . . . text [Mar], [Mas].”

e. Inline-text reference formatting

i. when one directly quotes from a source (uses the identical words), one of two
forms can be used:

(1) for short text lines the quoted words need to be placed inline between a
pair of double quotation marks; this can be done as, for example: “640K
ought to be enough for anybody [G].”

(2) a longer direct quotation should be separated from the main text and
indented both left and right, single spaced, and not enclosed in quotation
marks, for example:

MathTools Ltd., developer of the first Matlab-to-

C++ compiler, has recently announced a complete
environment for developing, compiling, and running
Matlab.m files. Created by the MathWorks, Matlab
is one of the most acclaimed tools for performing
scientific computations. [M]

i. when one paraphrases (as opposed to directly quoting) the work of others, the
paraphrased material must be referenced with a label ... but quotation marks or
indenting are not used.

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editor : Thomas F. Piatkowski Page 7 of 8
References

[CEUI] College of Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Reference

guide: IEEE style,” Apr. 10, 1998,
http://www.ece.uiuc.edu/~pubs/ref_guides/ieee.html (visited Jan. 14, 2000).

[CMS] Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed., University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993.

[CF] E.P.J. Corbett and S.L. Finkle, The Little English Handbook, 8th ed., Longman,
New York, 1998.

[EEM] Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Manitoba, “IEEE writing

style for the thesis,” (version date unknown),
http://www.ee.umanitoba.ca/programs/undergrad/guidelines/html/style.html
(visited Jan. 14, 2000).

[H] D. Hacker, Rules for Writers, Bedford Books, Boston, 1996.

[K] A. Keck, “Scientific citation for electronic sources,” Jan. 4, 1999,

http://library.morningside.edu/scistyle.htm (visited Jan. 14, 2000).

[M] M.S. Mirotznik, “Software reviews,” IEEE Spectrum, vol. 36, no. 2, p. 64,
Feb., 1999.

[R] J. Rodgers, “Plagiary and the art of skillful citation: some notes on the ethics of
citation,” July 30, 1996,
http://condor.bcm.tmc.edu/Micro-Immuno/courses/igr/ethicite.html (visited
Jan. 14, 2000).

[SCCS] Style Committee of the Computer Society, “CS style guide—references,” 1996,
http://www.computer.org/author/style/refer.htm (visited Jan. 14, 2000).

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