Citing a source means that you show, within the body of your text, that you took words, ideas, figures, images, etc. from another place.
Citations are a short way to uniquely identify a published work (e.g. book, article, chapter, web site). They are found in bibliographies and reference lists and are also collected in article and book databases.
Here are a few citing best practices
Why citing is important
It’s important to cite sources you used in your research for several reasons:
To show your reader you’ve done proper research by listing sources you used to get your information
To be a responsible scholar by giving credit to other researchers and acknowledging their ideas
To avoid plagiarism by quoting words and ideas used by other authors
To allow your reader to track down the sources you used by citing them accurately in your paper by way of footnotes, a bibliography or reference list