Guide to Scientific WritingLiterature Cited
In your lab report, you must have references in two forms: a Literature Cited section at the end of the lab report, and in-text citations throughout the report. The in-text citations inform the reader where the ideas, background information, and data not generated by you originally came from. This allows readers to look up the cited works for themselves, and allows them to double check your interpretation of the original source material. In addition, it is important to accurately attribute works to their original authors—they deserve credit for all of their hard work!
The final section of every lab report will be the Literature Cited, also known as the references. In the life sciences, we typically call this section Literature Cited because it lists the sources you actually cite in the text of the lab report. In some other disciplines, they might include general references or a bibliography of relevant papers even if they are not directly cited—we do not do that.