Referencing and avoiding plagiarism

Contents

1. Referencing and avoiding plagiarism
2. What is plagiarism?
   1. How to avoid plagiarism
   2. Examples of good and bad academic practice
   3. Activity 1
   4. Plagiarism of expression
3. Why you need to reference
4. What is referencing?
5. How to provide references 1
6. In-text citations (Author/date style)
7. How to provide references 2
   1. Footnotes, reference lists and bibliographies
   2. Activity 2
8. To reference or not to reference that is the question
9. Referencing: Think - Who? When? What? and Where?
10. Referencing books
    1. Referencing book chapters
    2. Activity 3
    3. Referencing eBooks
    4. eBooks: Finding the URL
    5. Activity 4
11. Referencing journal articles (print)
    1. Activity 5
12. Referencing electronic journal articles
    1. Electronic journals and Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)
    2. Activity 6
    3. Referencing online reports (Government department)
    4. Referencing the Internet (webpages)
    5. Activity 7
13. Managing your referencing: EndNote
14. Summary

In-text citations (Author/date style)

There are many different ways in which the author's(s') surname(s) and the year of publication can be incorporated into your text at the point of citation.

Citation appearance
The most common way is to include the details after your citation in round brackets, separated by a comma:

It was emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent (Jones, 1998).

However you may have already named the author(s) in your text, therefore only the year needs to be included in the brackets:

Jones (1998) emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent.

If two or more of your sources have the same author and are from the same year they should be distinguished by adding a lower case letter after the year (a,b,c etc.):

It was emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent (Jones, 1998a).

If you want to cite information from a specific page of your source the relevant page number should be included after the year of publication:

Jones (1998, p. 97) emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent.

Citing multiple authors
If a source has two or three authors then all names should be given in the order in which they appear in the article or book title page:

It was emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent (Jones and Baker, 1998).

If a source has more than three authors the name of the first author is given, followed by the phrase et al. (meaning and others):

It was emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent (Jones et al., 1998).

Citing multiple sources
If you need to refer to two or more sources at the same time these can be listed, separated by semicolons (;):

It was emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent (Jones and Baker, 1998; Johnson, 1994).

Furthermore, they should be ordered chronologically by their year of publication with the most recent source first, and then listed within each year alphabetically by the author(s) surname:

It was emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent (Salmon, 2001; Andrews et al., 1998; Jones and Baker, 1998).

Citing the work of one author when it has been referred to in the work of another author
Sometimes a source you read will refer to the work of someone else.

This is called secondary referencing as you will not have read the original piece of work. You are therefore relying on the author you are reading (or have read) giving a fair reflection of the contents of the original work. Your text must make it clear that you have not read the original but are referring to it from a secondary source. For example:

Carol (2001, p. 9) agreed with Jones that citations in a text must be consistent.

In your reference list at the end of the work you should only include the reference where you have read about the original work:

Carol, B. (2001) Referencing made easy. London: Routledge.

Remember - In the numbered style references in the text are indicated either by numbers in brackets (1) or superscript¹. There are two types of numbering systems: consecutive and recurrent.

The consecutive style uses the superscript method where each reference uses a different consecutive (or running) number ^{1, 2, 3}.

In the recurrent numbered system either a superscript or bracketed number(s) can be used. In this type of system the same number can recur, for instance, if a source is mentioned more than once in the text.

These numbers, either consecutive or recurrent, then connect to the full reference list at the end of your chapter or work.