If you've ever had a partial citation and needed the complete citation for a manuscript, you understand the need to learn citation verification skills. If you've ever had a supervisor or colleague tell you, "get me a copy of this reference," and all they hand you is an author's name and a year, you understand the need to have good citation verification skills.
Citation verification has two main purposes. First, it is used to make certain that a complete citation is correct. (This is often at the request of a journal editor!) Second, it is used to find a complete reference when only part of the reference is known.
Being able to verify citations correctly requires a specific set of knowledge and skills:
- To be able to identify if a citation is complete or not
- To be able to identify what type of reference to be verified. Is is a book chapter? an article? a dissertation?
- To be able to identify the subject area or discipline of the reference
- To be aware of the variety of tools (online and print) that are available for citation verification and to be able to select the appropriate tool for verification
- To be able to use the searching and browsing features of these tools
The following help sheets provide information to help you through the citation verification process.
Is the Reference Complete? [PDF]
This help sheet uses Vancouver format to demonstrate the pieces of information needed for the following reference types: journal article, book, book section, technical reports, conference papers and proceedings, and dissertations/theses.
Citation Verification Strategies [PDF]
This help sheet provides a list of strategies for verifying citations: gathering information about the reference, determining the reference type, and selecting and searching tools.
Resources Used in Citation Verification [PDF]
This help sheet provides a listing of resources that can be used to verify citations of different reference types. Once a resource has been selected, consult the Library's list of help sheets for help with searching.
Contact Mulford Reference Assistance at (419) 383-4218 or MulfordReference@utoledo.edu. Chat and IM reference is also available.
