Special Demands of Internet Sources
Internet vs. Print Sources
No Author, No Authority
Types of Websites
Basics of Citing Websites
Avoiding Plagiarism
Respecting Privacy
Some professors will discourage you from using sources you find or access over the Internet. Although such restrictions may be excessive, there are reasons to be wary. It’s much easier to publish information on the Internet than to publish a book or periodical in print. Since it’s easier, Web posters are not always as careful to make sure that the information is accurate. For one thing, print publishing is more expensive, so many print publishers are careful not to make mistakes or to cut corners, in case what they publish turns out to be unreliable—and therefore useless. The seeming anonymity of the Internet also encourages some people to write things quickly, without checking to be sure of their facts or their conclusions. Most of us have had the experience of sending by email something we wrote quickly—perhaps when rushed or angry. Often these are things we wouldn’t print, sign, and mail, because those extra steps give us time to consider our words more carefully, and also because we recognize a higher expectation that things in print should be trustworthy.
In the context of writing in college, material from much of the Internet is less reliable than print sources because it’s hard to tell who wrote or posted it. As discussed in the section Why Cite?, the essence of academic scholarship is a conversation among authors. On many websites, it’s difficult to determine the author of the material; if the site creator’s name is listed, it’s still sometimes hard to tell whether the information has been reprinted from some other source. If you reach a website through a search engine, you may have to find the site’s homepage or search around in the “contact” information in order to identify the author or the organization that sponsors the site. Even if you find the author’s name, Internet sources make it harder to tell what status that person has in his or her field. Is the author an expert, a fan, or just a crackpot? After finding a website that seems useful and tracking down the author’s name, you may need additional research (perhaps using Google) to learn whether the author has any claim to credibility.
But of course, countless reliable sources can be accessed on the web, and even unreliable sources have some uses in research writing. (See Scholarly vs. Popular Sources for more about unreliable sources.) These days, many students and scholars use Web sources extensively in research and teaching. But they take extra care to assess and report the provenance of these sources.
In this guide’s discussion of Internet sources, we draw distinctions between various kinds of websites: those sponsored by organizations, those devoted to a single topic, and private websites that are maintained by a single person—often a devoted fan of the topic under discussion. To some degree, these categories distinguish more and less reliable sources of information. But the distinctions are neither clear nor entirely stable. Some organizations, while established leaders in their fields, have very few resources available to maintain and update their websites; some private individuals, although hosting websites as a hobby, are experts in their fields and consider accuracy on their sites to be the highest priority. As discussed in the section on How To Cite, it’s often useful to identify your source in the body of your paper (and not just in your citation or footnote); this identification is especially important when you use material from the Internet. If you give a sense of what kind of Web source you’re using, the reader will be better able to understand the context of your evidence.
When listing Internet sources in your References or Works Cited, the most important thing to remember is that your goal is to make it easy for a reader to consult your sources. (This same goal is paramount when listing print sources.) For most sites, that means you should include the full URL for the page you cite in your paper (the web address that begins “http”). But websites change, and the address you used won’t always be active when your reader tries to view a source. For that reason, it’s important to include both the date you accessed the site and also a full account of the person, group, or organization that sponsors the site. Knowing more about the author helps readers to assess the source and also, sometimes, to find the source when the website has been moved or revised.
The general form of a citation from an Internet source is:
Author’s name. Title of Document. Title of Website. Sponsor of Website. Date of Document. Date of Access. URL.
As you will see in the discussion of specific categories, however, some of these items may be hard to determine.
Note: Chicago style does not recommend listing date of document in your Bibliography unless you’re citing something published on a regular schedule (an online journal, or the electronic version of something published in print on a specific date). Chicago style also does not recommend including date of access.
The ease of using electronic sources of any kind can make it harder to keep track of where the source ends and your original contribution begins—and you must always keep that distinction clear. See How to Copy and Paste but Not Plagiarize for advice about how to use electronic sources wisely.
Most of this guide focuses on helping you subordinate sources to your own ideas. In general, we highlight your need to respect authors’ intellectual or property rights, explaining how to give people credit for their ideas while distinguishing your own original contributions. But the ease of using electronic sources also raises dangers about what might be called privacy rights, leading you to make public words that the original author intended only as private communication. When someone speaks in public, participates in an interview, or publishes a piece of writing, he or she implicitly agrees that other people may refer to this material in research. But some electronic sources blur the line between public and private communication. (Private communications also have a different force of authority than deliberately published material; see Scholarly vs. Popular Sources for more information.)
If in doubt about whether a given text should be considered public or private, we urge you to check with the original author before quoting it in your own work. Although the following categories overlap, they may help you decide when more care is warranted to avoid an invasion of privacy. (1) Web versions of sources that also appear in print are generally safe to quote, since most print publishers take care to secure rights before publication. (2) Publicly accessible websites are generally safe to quote. You may occasionally find a website reposting information that’s clearly from category 3, in which case you may wish to contact the original author before using the material. But if you can access the information through regular surfing, without passwords, it’s probably safe to use. (3) Communications sent via email or accessed by membership in a specific group are generally considered private, and you should exercise care in quoting from them in your papers.
Even in this last category, there’s not a hard and fast rule you can follow. If your university sends an announcement to all students via email, you may reasonably consider this public information. If your best friend reveals something damaging or embarrassing in an email sent only to you, it’s clearly private. But what if a professor writes to you about something related to the course? Or if you receive a message that’s sent only to the members of a small club? What about the discussion forums that many courses set up for students to exchange ideas about the readings? These cases are all ambiguous. Unless there’s been an explicit agreement that the material is public, we encourage you to check before using such messages in your work.
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