A Note on Sharing Resources with Clients
As a consultant, you may be asked to locate market research reports, industry reports, and other gold mines of information that are cost-prohibitive for your client to access. As with academic articles, newspapers, and other resources, SU Libraries and/or The University System of Maryland pays for access to these reports for educational purposes.
Sharing, copying, or distributing copyrighted materials is prohibited by law. Certain exceptions apply when it pertains to the personal use of materials for educational purposes. Quoting copyrighted materials (including sentences, paragraphs, charts, tables, visual representations, etc.) is acceptable as long as it is properly cited and complies with fair use as far as the extent of material quoted.
In short, if a client asks for information from a report, you can share pieces of data/information as long as it is properly attributed, cited, and falls within fair use. Whole chapters or pages of a report would likely violate copyright and fair use.
Citing Business Sources
- Citing Business SourcesThis LibGuide goes over the best practices for citing specific business sources that aren't mentioned in traditional citation manuals. If your professor has a different preference defer to their preference.
Manage & Organize: RefWorks
ProQuest RefWorks is a citation management tool that assists researchers in gathering, organizing, annotating, and citing their sources. Accounts are free to anyone with an SU email address (students, staff, faculty).
To set up your account, go here.
Please note that citation tools like RefWorks are only as perfect as the data they are extracting from resources -- you should always double-check your citations to make sure they are correct.
Help Pages:
- Accounts and features
- ProQuest's Tutorial Library
- ProQuest's Guide to RefWorks
- For further assistance, please contact your librarian.
Citing Sources: APA
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association by Call Number: BF76.7 .P83 2010ISBN: 9781433805592Publication Date: 2009-07-15Part of our Ready Reference Collection -- ask at the Research Help Desk.
You always have the most control over the accuracy of your citations when you do it by hand using the selected style manual (above).
Additional resources:
- APA 7th edition citation for business sourcesSchemm, N., Dellenbach, M., Grisham, Z., Hageman, M., Tingle, N., Trowbridge, M., & Wheatley, A. (2020). APA 7th ed. citation for business sources. https://bit.ly/APA7business
Citing Sources: MLA
MLA Handbook, Eighth Edition by Call Number: LB2369 .M53 2016ISBN: 9781603292627Publication Date: 2016-04-01Part of our Ready Reference Collections -- ask at the Research Help Desk.
You always have the most control over the accuracy of your citations when you do it by hand using the selected style manual (above).
Additional resources:
Citing Sources: Chicago
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations by Call Number: LB2369 .T8 2013ISBN: 9780226816371Publication Date: 2013-04-03
The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition by Call Number: Z253 .C45 2010ISBN: 9780226104201Publication Date: 2010-08-01Part of our Ready Reference Collection -- ask at the Research Help Desk.
You always have the most control over the accuracy of your citations when you do it by hand using the selected style manual (above).
Additional resources:
Avoiding plagiarism
The Oxford English Dictionary defines plagiarism as "[t]he practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own"
You're plagiarizing when you:
- Copy, quote, paraphrase or summarize any source without citing the source
- Purchase a research paper
- Allow another person to write a research paper for you
- Submit another person's work in your name
To avoid plagiarism, give credit whenever you use:
- another person’s idea, opinion, or theory
- any piece of information that is not common knowledge
- another person’s actual spoken or written words
- paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words
Resources