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Academic Support - Library and Learning Support
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Referencing - when and what to reference

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When to reference?

You need to reference a source whenever you use any source of information for:

  • Your inspiration.
  • Particular facts, theories, findings or ideas in an author's work.
  • Specific data or statistics.
  • A direct quotation.
  • Paraphrasing or summarising an author's words.

Then the reader - your tutor - will be able to refer to the original source themselves. This reduces the risk of your being accused of PLAGIARISM - the act of presenting the ideas or discoveries of someone else as your own. There are also good academic reasons why you should reference.

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Why reference?

When writing academic reports or essays you are expected to read around your subject. Referencing is a way of demonstrating that you have done that reading. Each time you use someone else’s ideas or words it is essential that you acknowledge this in your work. Doing so allows you to:

  • Justify and support your arguments.
  • Make comparisons with other work.
  • Express ideas better than you could have done in your own words.
  • Demonstrate your familiarity with your area of work.
  • Help to distinguish between your ideas and findings and those you found.

All academic research needs to consider is based on the ideas and theories of others. As Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". (Letter to Robert Hooke, 5 Feb 1657)

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What is a reference?

A bibliographical reference is:
"a set of data or elements describing a document, or part of a document, and sufficiently precise and detailed to enable a potential reader to identify and locate it".

Source: British Standards BS1629: 1976 and BS5605: 1990.

Everyone is expected to acknowledge all the information they use in any academic piece of work by producing a list of references or bibliography with each one.

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Elements of referencing

There are two elements to referencing:

  1. Citing in the text, and
  2. Reference list at the end of a piece of work

Citing

You will need to do this for a direct quotation or where you have summarised other authors' words or ideas.

What does CITING look like?

  • “In a popular study Evans (1994) argued that we have to teach good practices…”
  • “As Evans (1994, p.149) said, “good practices must be taught” and so we…”
  • “A more recent study (Stevens 1998) has shown the way theory and practical work interact…”
  • “Theory rises out of practice, and once validated, returns to direct or explain the practice (Stevens 1998).”
  • “Mercer and Smith (1993) have proposed that…”

Reference list

The reference list is where you describe - in an alphabetically arranged list of references - the detail of the documents (or multimedia items), from which you have obtained your information. This is sometimes referred to as a bibliography. Either term is generally acceptable. Whichever term you use, you should always remember that

  • you can only list those items that you cite (refer to) in the text, and
  • only those items you refer to in the text can be listed in a Reference List or Bibliography.

If you want to show that you have read other sources too, then you will need to list those in a separate list after the Reference List. You can head this second list as Further Reading (or Additional Reading).

What sort of information?

  • Who wrote it, if a print item, or who produced/directed it, if a multimedia item.
  • What the item is called.
  • Where the item was published or produced, by which body or organisation.
  • When it was published or produced and, if retrieved from the Internet, when you did so.

Later you will find some typical examples of different print and online formats, which will show you easily where you can locate this information.

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