Environmental Health Subject Guide

Plagiarism means using work done by other people and trying to pass it off as your own work instead of attributing it to its real author or acknowledging your original source. This includes using sentences or paragraphs by another person, using material from the internet, using maps or pictures created by others, using other people's ideas, and even using your own work in multiple assignments.

Citing (aka referencing) the information sources used in student assignments is essential to avoid plagiarism and maintain academic integrity. The OWL (Purdue Online Writing Lab) is a good place to start if you need advice or help with paraphrasing, avoiding plagiarism or getting started with academic writing. 

You can also use the Academic Integrity module in Brightspace and the Library Guides linked below..

Always check with your School or supervisor as there may be an in-house style requirement or a specific version of Harvard required for your dissertation or assignment.

The Harvard system (also known as the Author/Date system) is made up of three components:

• In-Text Citation: provides the author surname & publication date for referencing the work in the body of the text.
• Reference List: an alphabetical list at the end of an assignment of all references cited in your work with additional and full details provided to identify each source.
• Bibliography: a more comprehensive list of sources used to research your assignment, including those not cited within the text. Documents are referenced in the same way as in a reference list.

In-Text Citations

A citation should be used within the text of your work if you:

• use a direct quote from someone else's work
• summarise or paraphrase someone else's work

Details provided are brief and include the author's surname and the year of publication in brackets e.g. These theories can be tested by sample statistics (Reilly, 2016).

Reference list

This is placed at the end of your assignment. There are a number of details that must be included in a reference depending on the source (i.e. a book, journal, website etc). As many of the following items as possible should be included:

• Author(s) or editor(s) or the full name or the organisation responsible
• Title of the journal article
• Name of the journal, website or book
• Edition (for a book)
• Publisher’s name and place of publication (for a book)
• Year of publication
• Volume or issue details for a journal
• Page numbers (for a book or journal article) or doi number for an e-journal article.

If you're new to using the Harvard style try these getting started videos:

• Harvard Referencing - the basics
• Harvard Referencing - using in-text citations
• Harvard Referencing - creating a reference list

Reference manager software

Various freeware software options can be used to manage, cite and store your citations 

1. Zotero
2. Mendeley
3. CiteThisForMe
4. BibGuru

• Mendeley referencing manager: getting started guide
• Mendeley: an introduction video tutorial