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

Referencing the Internet (webpages)

It is important that when you need to reference something that you have found on the web that you distinguish what you are referring to. The Internet contains many forms of information such as organisational websites, government publications, company data, presentations etc . Some of the types of information that you can include in your reference are listed below:

• Author/Editor or Organisation
• Year the site was published or last updated
• Title of work - main title and subtitle (screen heading/sub-heading)
• Type of medium - for example, cd-rom, online database, online bulletin board
• Publisher and place of publication - for example documents on portable databases, which organisation has prepared the materials and where they are located
• Online address or location within database - full address (URL or DOI)
• Name of database (if applicable)
• You can also include other identifying features such as a page or screen reference, a paragraph or line number or perhaps a labelled section/part of a table or graph
• Date you looked at the information.

Webpages usually follow the following format:

Author (this may be an organisation)
Year the site was published/last updated (in round brackets)
Title of Internet site (in italics)
Available at: URL
(Accessed: date)

Please note however that you may not always have all these details.

Webpages with no author(s) and/or no title:
If you cannot identify an author or a title then you should use the website's web address (URL). If possible use the shortest URL but it may be necessary to give the full URL within your text and in your reference list. Think - If the webpage has no author or title, is this a reliable source suitable for your academic work?

Webpages with no dates:
If you cannot find a publication or revision date on the webpage then you should use the URL (no date), followed by the date you accessed the website. Think - If the webpage has no date - is it a reliable source? The information may be out of date.

Don't forget to evaluate the information you find on the web because the reliability and accuracy of the content and the source of the information is not always immediately apparent.