We’ll introduce the basics and benefits of citation and attribution in this article
In this Sourcing Series article, we introduce the concepts of citation and attribution. Citation and attribution are important ways that we connect ideas, media, and knowledge to their originators or owners. Or at least to the sources where we found them.
Citations and attributions are a kind of linked data. While they might not all directly hyperlink to the original, citations and attributions provide directions for how to relocate a particular media, piece of knowledge, or idea. However, practices for citation and attribution vary widely.
Because of this variation, it can be hard to identify the key components of a citation or attribution, let alone navigate between different practices! In this article, we’ll introduce the purposes of citation and attribution and leave navigating between formats for its own article.
One purpose of citation and attribution is to give credit to those who created, developed, stewarded, or owned a particular thing. In academia, citations give credit to the originator of an idea, quote, data set, or a piece of knowledge and also trace the journey of that thing. In other settings, attributions give credit to the owner or creator of a creative media so that they can make money from their labor. Citation and attribution are also one way to meet the stipulation of intellectual property rights under certain licenses.
However, not everything gets a citation or attribution. That’s because some kinds of information, imagery, or facts are considered so commonly known that to identify a specific originator might be impossible. In those cases, a citation isn’t necessary because the knowledge or design are considered held “in common” rather than attributable to a particular person or entity.
Often, attribution or citation are necessary for ethical and academic best practices. On the ethical side, citation ensures that we acknowledge the labor necessary to create or steward something. It also provides examples of the context for an idea, such as community consensus around its acceptance. Citations can also act as a history of an idea or concept as new research adds, modifies, or contests particular understandings.
This a cropped copy of a public domain image. Although the image is in the public domain, we want folks to know where we got it so we acknowledge the stewards of this digital image. To learn who that is, check the image credit at the end of this piece. Image credits like those at the end of this article are another kind of attribution method.
These aspects are especially important in academia where people rarely profit monetarily from the labor that goes into publishing a data set or writing a paywalled article. By citing an article, a data set, image, or an infographic, we ensure that the creator, owner, or steward gets credit that they can use in other contexts, such as for tenure. Or, importantly for repositories, they can demonstrate use to obtain more funding. This is doubly important because “[p]lagiarism is not illegal in the United States in most situations” (Wex Definitions Team 2022).
To ensure that people and repositories get the credit they deserve, multiple outlets have created standardized attribution (like TASL) and citation (like Chicago or Society for American Archaeology styles) practices. These practices provide communities, consumers, and audiences the ability to relocate and state the author, owner, or steward of the work in an standardized and intelligible way.
To explore some of these practices, in subsequent Sourcing Series articles, we’ll explore how we’ve used specific attribution practices. We’ll look at the citation and attribution methods we’ve used in Data Stories, based on the Creative Commons’ suggested TASL, and explore ongoing discussion of data citation practices in archaeology. So, stay tuned for our next installments in the Sourcing Series.
Image Credits: The main header image is an adaptation of an Adobe stock image that we use as a logo for the Data Literacy Program with the added title for the series and the specific title of this article. That image is called “Sourcing Series – Intro To Citation And Attribution” by Paulina F. Przystupa from the DLP / CC BY. The second image is “Old Spanish Mission, New Smyrna, Fla.” by the Detroit Publishing Company from The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection from the New York Public Library, Image ID: 67642, and is in the public domain.
