Referencing and using sources - Citation generators - Should I use them?

See this example properly formatted in the QUT Cite tool.

Most automatic citation generators are pretty good. You can choose different styes and select from many types of items to reference, but some generators may not support the style you need. For example, the Harvard style used by most citation generators does not accord with the one used at QUT and the APA style generated by MS Word's tool has been out of date since 2020.

However, it is always a case of GIGO (garbage in garbage out). If you enter incorrect information, or the database creating the reference has inaccurate or incorrectly formatted information, the reference will have errors.


For example, the reference above from QUT Library Search is not totally correct. The title of the article should be in sentence case. This happens because the journal has the title in capitals so it comes across to the search (and the reference) in capitals.