Business of Healthcare

Why do I need to cite information sources?

• To give more credibility to the information you present by referencing expert opinions, ideas, and facts

• To allow your reader to look for more in-depth information on your presentation

• To avoid plagiarism and U.S. Copyright Law violation by giving credit to the work of others

• To uphold the Owen Graduate School of Management Honor Code.

Citation and Reference Management Tools 

• Mendeley, Endnote and Zotero are supported by Vanderbilt Library.
• Learn more here.

To cite the AI model itself, treat the model as a software as outlined in Section 10.10 of the Publication Manual (American Psychological Association, 2020, Chapter 10).

General format, references list:

Author/Developer. (Year). Model name (Version) [Large language model]. URL

References list example:

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (May 24 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat/

• Author. APA recommends citing the creator (i.e., author/developer) of the model as the author (note: this is not the case for all citation styles, e.g., MLA).
• (Publication Date). Date of content creation - only need to include year. 2023.
• Name of the Model. The name of the model serves as the title and is italicized in your reference. ChatGPT.
• (Version specification). Identify the version you used in the format the author or publisher provides, which may be a numbering system (e.g., Version 2.0) or other methods. (May 24 version).
• [Additional description to provide context for the reader]. Bracketed text providing additional context is often included in APA citations for less common sources. For text-based generative AI, APA recommends providing the descriptor “Large language model” or "Large multimodal model" in square brackets. Pending further recommendations, use your best discretion based on how the creators/publishers describe the model you're citing. [Large language model].
• URL. When the publisher name and the author name are the same, do not repeat the publisher name in the source element of the reference, and move directly to the most direct URL available to access the model. https://chat.openai.com/chat/

The APA Style team has likened citing the output from an AI model to sharing an algorithm's output. It must be noted that the output was generated by a Large Language Model (LLM) and the model identified.

Note: ChatGPT does not currently cite any sources unless specifically requested in your prompt. Even if references are requested, it is known to make up, or "hallucinate" sources that do not exist. Other AI models such as Bing AI Chat do cite sources, but it is important to assess the quality and reliability of each one individually.

Many thanks to Denise Wetzel at Penn State Universities for developing the LLM APA citation materials utilized in this box!