CITING AND REFERENCING

TUTORIAL PREPARED BY TIM McLERNON

June 2004

THE IMPORTANCE OF CITING AND REFERENCING

• You will derive a significant proportion of your knowledge at university from work done by others of authority in their subject.

• This will mainly be from written work in the form of books and journals.

• You will also use electronic resources in a variety of formats and the Learning Resource Centre at UU has a considerable, and growing, resource database in electronic format.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CITING AND REFERENCING

• Your time at university is very much self managed by yourself.

• A 20 credit point module carries with it 200 notional learning hours.

• Contact time with tutors will amount to about 6-60 hours per module.

• The remaining time should be spent studying. This will consist mainly of reading authoritative work.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CITING AND REFERENCING

• Much of your coursework will require you to submit written work based on what you have read or discovered from other sources.

• In these written submissions, you will need to refer, in the text, to material written or produced by others.

• This procedure is referred to as citing references.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CITING AND REFERENCING

• A list of those references cited in the text should be prepared and listed at the end of the text in a logical fashion in a bibliography.

•WHY?

Why is Referencing Necessary ?

• It is to acknowledge the work of other writers; to demonstrate the body of knowledge on which you have based your work;

• to enable other researchers to trace your sources and lead them on to further information.

• To distinguish between your own thoughts, ideas and contributions and those of others on which you are assembling your dialogue

HOW DO I CITE REFERENCES AND PREPARE A BIBLIOGRAPHY?

• The system chosen in the Faculty of Engineering for Citing and Referencing is ‘The Harvard System’.

• This tutorial will point you to sources of information on the Harvard System and how to use it.

• It is imperative that you familiarise yourself with the Harvard System and use it in all of your written work

CITING IN THE TEXT

• The Harvard system of citation is the most straightforward method of acknowledging other people's work, because initially all you need to do is mention the author and date of publication in the text of your work. So, at each point in the text which refers to a particular document, insert the author's surname and publication year.

• e.g. The work of Preece (1994) was concerned to emphasise the importance of quality in social research.

CITING AND REFERENCING WITH THE HARVARD SYSTEM

• The reader can easily locate the full description of the item you have cited by referring to the alphabetical list of references (or bibliography) provided at the end of your text.

• The system has the advantages of showing at a glance the authority used, who may well be recognised, and how recent or contemporary the information might be.

Citing and Referencing with the Harvard System

• Try your own UU resource: e.g. VIBEL, the Virtual Built Environment Library and click on ‘The Harvard System’

• Lots of guidance freely available on-line:

• Using a search engine such as ‘google’ input ‘Harvard System’; loads of websites; there should be one at least which is suited to your style of reading and learning

AND FINALLY……• GET USED TO EXAMINING THE CITING

AND REFERENCING SYSTEMS USED WHEN YOU ARE READING.

• LOOK AT BIBLIOGRAPHIES, OR REFERENCE SECTIONS IN BOOKS AND JOURNALS AND HOW THEY ARE CONSTRUCTED.

• REMEMBER, ALWAYS QUOTE YOUR SOURCES OF REFERENCE IN ALL OF YOUR WRITTEN WORK