Guide to Referencing

Referencing means acknowledging the work of others you mention in your work, so you cannot be accused of having taken their ideas and made them look as if they were your own!  Test out your knowledge on referencing by doing this quiz

Why referencing is needed:

• To acknowledge the work of others - failure to do so regarded as plagiarism - please click on this link and explore the various parts of the resources on plagiarism you will find. You might like to explore this resource The Plagiarism Spectrum - produced by TurnitIn, the plagiarism checker we use throughout  Peoples-uni to check on assignments.

• To demonstrate that you have read widely on the subject, and that you can underpin your arguments with evidence

• To help readers to trace your sources

• It is part of critical thinking and writing

You need to reference when you are:

• Quoting

• Summarising

• Paraphrasing

• Using images or data from other sources.

• You also need to cite figures, videos, maps, and leaflets etc. A useful general rule is: if in doubt, cite!

Citing: you need to ‘cite’ all the sources written by others which you use in your assignment, so you demonstrate the sources of any ideas or viewpoints, images or data you present are clear to the reader. 

 Note: Remember that when you quote someone directly, you need to use direct quotation marks (“…”) around the copied text, and also give the page number of the quote from within the source document. 

For example:  Citing has been described as an “Indication in the body of your text that the ideas or viewpoints you are writing about, or the images you are reproducing were created by someone else. This could be when you quote, paraphrase, summarise, reproduce an image or chart, and so on.” (University of the Highlands and Islands 2013: 3) 

Referencing: Strictly speaking, ‘referencing’ means to produce list of all cited sources according to a particular referencing style.  The list is usually attached to the end of the text/assignment.

For the example above, which is a web source, the entry into the list of references (using the Harvard referencing style – more about this below) would look like this:

University of the Highlands and Islands (2013) Student referencing guide [online]. Available from <http://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/libraries/how-to/uhi-student-referencing-guide> [20 May 2015]

Referencing styles:

Peoples-uni allows two styles of referencing: Harvard and Vancouver.  These need to be applied very correctly.  The examples above and below use the Harvard style, which is much easier if you do not use a reference management software (which can generate a reference list for you automatically).  Vancouver, by comparison, is a numerical style of referencing (you cite by including a number in your text, and the number corresponds to a particular reference in your reference list).

Note that in referencing the use of every punctuation mark is defined by the style you use!  This can create significant amounts of work at the end of your assignment, and particularly the dissertation, and we highly recommend that you use reference management software which will save many hours of work.

Now read:

Read the Harvard referencing guide from Manchester Metropolitan University.  It gives a helpful introduction to referencing and citing in general, including on how to quote other authors directly.  Importantly, it also demonstrates how exactly to cite and reference from different types of key sources, such as books, journal articles, web pages etc. (see page 10 onwards). 

For the Vancouver referencing style, read this guide from Imperial College London

Some examples of Harvard referencing:

 Reference management software:

These are free, but there are also commercially available packages (e.g. RefMan, Endnote):

1. Mendeley:  see Geting Started with Reference Management and Mendeley (PDF Version) File on Student Corner

2. Zotero: see https://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide

3. EndNote Web: http://wokinfo.com/media/pdf/qrc/enwqrc.pdf      

Citation generator:

As an alternative, you can use an online citation generator.  For this, you will fill in a form according to the type of resource you want to use, and the citation generator will give you suggested citation styles which you can copy and paste into your text ( you need a special paste )

Last updated: 20 October 2015