Sources, citation styles and referencing at university

Fact-checked by Benjamin Lohrer, editor at corrected.eu · Last updated: 13 September 2026

How to cite from the source to the reference list

Everything about citing correctly at university in one place: generator, citation styles, reference managers and the citation check you can add to every order.

Citation generator: paste a DOI, ISBN or URL and copy the reference.Open generator

The most important pages on citing

Citation generatorPaste a DOI, ISBN or URL Citation styles at a glanceAPA, Harvard, German style APA 7 guideIn-text citation and reference list in APA Harvard referencingAuthor, year, page in the running text German citation styleReferences in the footnote Setting footnotesFull note, short note, ibid. Building a referenceWhich details a source needs Creating a bibliographySort, format, check Citation checkAutomatic check of sources and matches Plagiarism checkerFind gaps in your references

Citing decides two things: whether a piece of work counts as academic, and whether it gets cleanly through plagiarism checks. This overview brings together everything that belongs to it: the free citation generator, the citation styles compared, the right reference manager and the citation check you can add to any order. If you are used to the rules at a German university, note that German departments often expect footnote citations, while many English-language courses expect author-date styles such as APA or Harvard. Both are covered here.

Add a citation check to any order

With proofreading, editing and book editing you can choose a citation style under the "Citation" item in the order form. Your proofreader or editor then checks not only the language but also the references, footnotes and bibliography against exactly that style. The surcharge is €1.50 per standard page and is added to the base price of the service you choose. A standard page is 1,800 characters including spaces.

These styles are available

APA 7APA 6HarvardGerman citation styleVancouverChicagoMLACustom style sheet

If your department has its own guidelines, choose Custom and upload the guide or style sheet with your file. The check then follows that document.

What is checked

In-text citations: structure, order, page numbers
Footnotes: full note the first time, short note afterwards, correct use of ibid.
Bibliography: sorting, indentation, punctuation, edition and publisher details
Cross-check: every cited source appears in the list, and every entry in the list appears in the text
Consistency across the whole work instead of a mix of styles between chapters

The citation check page shows what the result looks like. If you want your lists, figures and tables brought into shape overall, proofreading and editing is the better fit.

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The plagiarism scan shows where a reference is missing

The citation check brings existing references into shape. Whether one is missing at all is answered by the scan: it compares your work with a large body of sources and marks matches that are not identified in the text as taken from elsewhere. Typical hits are a paraphrase that stayed too close to the original, a forgotten page number or a secondary citation without a note of the original source.

The scan costs €0.29 per standard page with a minimum order value of €2.90. The result is usually ready after about 5 minutes and at the latest after 30 minutes. Details are on the plagiarism checker page.

Citation styles compared

All styles do the same thing: they make it possible to check where a statement comes from. They differ in where the reference goes and how short it is.

Citation style	Reference in the text	Typical in	Guide
APA 7	(Miller, 2023, p. 45)	Psychology, social sciences, business	APA 7 in detail
Harvard	(Miller 2023, p. 45)	Business, economics, social sciences	Harvard in detail
German citation style	Footnote with full reference	Law, history, German studies	German style in detail
Chicago	Footnote, or author and year	Humanities, history	Citation styles
MLA 9	(Miller 45)	Literature and language studies	Citation styles
Vancouver	[1] as a running number	Medicine, nursing, life sciences	Citation styles
IEEE	[1] as a running number	Computer science, electrical engineering, technology	Citation styles
ISO 690 (DIN ISO 690)	Depends on the chosen reference method	Cross-subject bibliographic requirements	Citation styles
Oxford	Footnote with full or short reference	Humanities and cultural studies	Citation styles

A detailed comparison with example sentences is on the citation styles page.

A reference manager saves the most time

If you collect sources in Zotero, Citavi, Mendeley or JabRef from the start, you do not have to build the bibliography by hand at the end. The program stores author, year, publisher and page numbers and outputs them in the style you want at the push of a button. If the requirement changes, for example from Harvard to APA 7, that is one setting instead of a week of manual work. To get started you can also use the free citation generator and the guide to creating a bibliography.

Every type of source has its own form

A book is cited differently from a YouTube video, a statute differently from a dataset from Statista. The guides on building a reference, footnotes and the bibliography show the correct structure, each with examples for the short reference and the list entry. Typical source types are:

Book
Edited volume
Monograph
Dissertation
Newspaper article
Web source
Wikipedia
Statista
YouTube and video
Podcast and film
Interview
Lecture slides
Statutes and case law
ChatGPT and other AI tools
Figures and tables
Patent
Work of art
Grey literature

Using the abbreviations in references correctly

cf., ibid., et al. and n.d. look like small details, but they are the most frequent source of errors in references. Each abbreviation has a fixed meaning and may only appear in a particular place.

cf. (confer): compare, for supporting or contrasting sources
ibid.: the same source as the previous note (footnote styles)
et al.: several authors, in the short reference
n.d.: no date given
ed. / eds: editor or editors of an edited volume
[sic]: an error in the original quotation, kept as it is
p. / pp.: page or page range
f. / ff.: the following page or pages (common in German-language texts)
qtd. in / cited in: mark a secondary citation
Quotation within a quotation
Translating foreign-language quotations

German-language texts use equivalents such as vgl. (cf.), ebd. (ibid.), a. a. O. (op. cit.), o. J. (n.d.) and Hrsg. (ed.). If your university follows the German citation style, you will see these in the guides there.

Frequent questions about citing

Which citation style should I use?

The guide from your department always takes priority. If there is no requirement, the choice depends on the subject: APA 7 and Harvard in business and the social sciences, the German citation style with footnotes in law and history, Vancouver in medicine. What matters more than the style is consistency across the whole work. An overview is on the citation styles page.

What does the citation check cost?

The citation check costs €1.50 per standard page in addition to the service you choose. You select it in the order form under "Citation", together with the style the work should be corrected to. Current base prices are on the price overview.

Can I submit my department's own guidelines?

Yes. In the order form, choose Custom under "Citation" and upload your department's style sheet or guide. Your proofreader or editor then follows that document instead of a standard style.

Does citing correctly protect me from an accusation of plagiarism?

Not automatically. A reference in the wrong place, a paraphrase that stays too close to the original or a missing quotation mark still count as plagiarism. A plagiarism check shows where references are missing before you submit. See also avoiding plagiarism.

Is the citation generator really free?

Yes, the citation generator is free and can be used without registering. The formatting runs in your browser according to fixed rules; to retrieve the source data via DOI, ISBN or URL we use our own servers in Karlsruhe.

What does a proofreader check that a plagiarism scan does not see?

The scan compares your text with sources and reports matches. Whether a reference is in the right style, whether short references and bibliography match and whether the details are complete can only be seen by a person. The two complement each other: the scan finds missing references, the citation check brings the existing ones into shape.

Further topics on sources and references

Finding, checking and citing sources

The broad topic of sources breaks down into concrete steps: selection, evaluation, the reference itself and the bibliography.

Building references: required details and examples.
Creating a bibliography: make entries consistent and sort them.
Setting footnotes: full note, short note and ibid.

How to cite this page

Last updated: 13 September 2026

corrected.eu. (2026, September 13). How to cite: sources, citation styles and referencing. corrected.eu. https://corrected.eu/how-to-cite