Referencing & Citing Sources
Once you have found all the information you need to use for your assignment, you will need to quote from these sources and acknowledge using them.
It is very important to acknowledge the owners of the book/article that you may have used in your assignment, whether you have quoted from them directly or just referred to their research/ideas. If you fail to do so, you will not protect yourself from possible accusations of plagiarism (taking other author’s ideas and presenting them as your own).
What is ....?
A Citation/in-text citation: these appear in the main body of your assignment and so, are often called –in-text citations’. They ‘refer’ to the list of references or bibliography at the end of your paper.
A Reference: an entry in your list of references or bibliography at the end of your paper.
A Reference List: the list of items you referred to in your assignment. This name can be used interchangeably with the word bibiography.
A Bibliography: the list of items you referred to in your assignment and also the items you used for your research but didn’t cite. These two names are often used interchangeably.
A Citation style: There are many citation styles, e.g. Chicago, APA, Harvard. Check with your lecturer/school as to which one you need to use. It usually depends on your subject area.
Reference Software: There are many different referencing software packages you can buy and use, e.g. EndNote, RefWorks, Mendeley, Zotero.
EndNote Basic is a free online citation manager which you can use. You use it together with the plug-in ‘Cite While YoU Write’ to enable you to insert citations in-text. You need to set up an account with EndNote. You ‘library’/file of references is located online with Endnote so you need to have internet access to use the software.
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