Referencing guides

Important icon Avoid losing marks!

Before choosing a Reference Style, check with your School whether they have a preferred style. Some Schools produce their own guidelines for citing references. You may be penalised if you do not follow the requirements of your School.

What is referencing?

Referencing (or citing) an information source used in an academic work means to employ a standardised method of acknowledging that source. The full details of the source must be given. All information used in your assignment, thesis, etc., whether published or unpublished, must be referenced.

There are many acceptable forms of referencing. Two common styles of referencing are the author-date and notation styles.

The author-date system originated at Harvard University. Although Harvard University no longer produce a standard guide to referencing a version of the author-date system is still commonly referred to as the Harvard style. Other author-date referencing styles include: Chicago, APA and MLA.

The notation style of referencing is based on a numerical system which refers readers to footnotes at the end of a page. Some notation referencing styles include: IEEE and Vancouver.

Why reference?

When writing a piece of academic work (e.g. essay, thesis, etc.) you are required to acknowledge the sources of information that you have used:

to prove that your work has a substantial, factual basis
to show the research you've done to reach your conclusions
to allow your readers to identify and retrieve the references for their own use

Information obtained from the Internet is covered by copyright law. For this reason it is important to cite Internet references just as you would cite print references. Many style guide producers have extended the system used for print resources and applied this to electronic resources. A date of access is very useful as Internet resources change rapidly.

When to reference?

You must reference all sources used in a particular work whether you are:

directly copying the words of another author (quoting), or
putting their ideas into your own words (paraphrasing)

If you do not acknowledge these sources, then you are plagiarising their work. Plagiarism is defined as the taking, using, and passing off as your own, the ideas or words of another. It is a very serious academic offence, and may result in your work being failed automatically. There is more information on this subject in Copyright, plagiarism and fair use.

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