Noun

Singular citation

Plural citations

citation (plural citations)

1. An official summons or notice given to a person to appear; the paper containing such summons or notice.
2. The act of citing a passage from a book, or from another person, in his own words.
3. The passage or words quoted; quotation.
4. Enumeration; mention; as, a citation of facts.
5. A reference to decided cases, or books of authority, to prove a point in law.
6. A commendation in recognition of some achievement, or a formal statement of an achievement.

Synonyms

• (passage of words): quotation
• (passage of words): quote

Related terms

• cite
• attestation

Loosely, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source (not always the original source). More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression (e.g. [Newell84]) embedded in the body of a intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of acknowledging the relevance of the works of others to the topic of discussion at the spot where the citation appears. Generally the combination of both the in-body citation and the bibliographic entry constitutes what is commonly thought of as a citation (whereas bibliographic entries by themselves are not).

A prime purpose of a citation is intellectual honesty; to attribute to other authors the ideas they have previously expressed, rather than give the appearance to the work's readers that the work's authors are the original wellsprings of those ideas.

The forms of citations generally subscribe to one of the generally-accepted citations systems, such as the Harvard, APA, and other citations systems, as their syntactic conventions are widely-known and easily interpreted by readers. Each of these citation systems has its respective advantages and disadvantages relative to the tradeoffs of being informative (but not too disruptive) and thus should be chosen relative to the needs of the type of publication being crafted. Editors will often specify the citation system to use.

Bibliographies, and other list-like compilations of references, are generally not considered citations because they do not fulfill the true spirit of the term: deliberate acknowledgement by other authors of the priority of one's ideas.