ABSTRACT
Historians depend on their primary sources and the secondary work of other historians in order to do their work. They do not work in isolation. They must learn to credit and acknowledge the work of others so that another historian can repeat and validate (or invalidate) their work by examining the original sources that they used. The tools of acknowledgment include footnotes, bibliography, and quotation marks around the words of another person. The work of a good historian should be transparent to, and repeatable by, any other historian. Crediting and acknowledging sources is a professional and ethical responsibility for all historians. If they use or quote sources without acknowledgment, they may be accused of engaging in plagiarism or fraud.
