Post World War II, the huge influx of money into the research and development fields of various channels of the government and the growing need to document research work publicly led to the evolution of a concept called citation. Citation or referencing, i.e. providing information on the antecedents of any information borrowed from other sources, forms the basic core of ethics in literary and academic work. Borrowing data or information from another writer’s work without giving proper attribution or credit to the original author or passing off the work as one’s own, original work is plagiarism – a strict no-no. The type of citation style used depends upon the type of writing that is offered for publication.
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Generally, most citation styles include rules for citing specific works, such as books, journals, research papers and other print material. However, the development of the Internet has created a vast repository of useful information and resources in the last two to three decades. Its use necessitates the formulation of new rules on how to cite information presented exclusively in a web page or website. There are also cases in which the reference is available in both print and Web media, but the writer accesses the reference from the latter itself and not the former.
