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1. Avoid Plagiarism.
In academic writing, you're frequently expected to draw upon outside sources to strengthen your argument or analysis. However, when you incorporate the ideas of an outside source into your work, it's also expected that you will give the author credit. Failure to properly document another author's words or ideas is plagiarism. In addition to being unethical, plagiarism is a violation of Germanna's academic honesty policy. Cite your sources to avoid plagiarism.
2. Establish your credibility.
You can show your reader that outside experts support your view: you're not just relying on your opinion.
In addition, even with a cursory glance at your citations, the reader of your paper can make judgments about the quality and relevance of the sources you're using.
A reader can also use your citations to find your sources, and to verify that you're accurately and ethically paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting information.
3. Join the scholarly conversation.
You're showing others how your ideas fit into the scholarly conversation on a topic.
The reader of your paper may want to find a source you've cited in order to conduct additional research. In your Works Cited or References page, you provide all of the information necessary to identify any outside source you've used.
