The Arts and Sciences goal is to grow the depth and breadth of knowledge on our individual subjects. All Kingdom Arts and Sciences entries must have a list of cited works in a published citation format (APA, MLS, Chicago, etc.).There is no preferred method, but when in doubt, most judges are familiar with MLS, and academic history is now using the Chicago Manual of Style.
A few sources will not be allowed for direct citation in Kingdom Arts and Sciences documentation. Remember, the goal is to use academic or vetted sources in your work. You can use all of these sources as tools to locate better sources by going through what they cite, but always cite from the original source:
- Crowd Sourced Encyclopedia – Wikipedia, etc.
- Any AI – ChatGPT, Google Bard, etc.
- News Aggregators – Buzzfeed, Mashable, Huffington Post, etc.
- Social Media Posts—Reddit, Facebook, Twitter/X, etc.- cannot be cited unless the account holder is a verified account holder and an academic, or oral history expert (See the oral history policy). If you have questions about the source’s usability, please contact the Kingdom Minister.
- Non-Academic Classes—Classes at Wars, Kingdom Colleges, etc., unless taught by someone with academic credentials outside of the SCA. An exception request would be, “I took a course from John Snow at Pennsic. He is a PhD, expert in this subject from “X University.” Any other exceptions will be handled on a case-by-case basis.
- Undergraduate class assignment – Just because a resource can be found on a university website does not make it an academic source. You can often find assignments and other draft works that are not to be used as sources. However, you can still use their cited sources as long as they fit the other citation criteria.
If you have any questions about these exclusions or are requesting a particular exception please contact the Kingdom Minister of Arts and Sciences.