Citing Made Simple: A Beginner’s Guide to Easy Referencing, by Dr Sahana Shankar
When transitioning into Higher Education, most students struggle with referencing. So here is my guide to referencing.
The Reason for the (Referencing) Pain
When writing any kind of academic work, whether for an assignment or publication, it is important to acknowledge all sources and ideas that have been presented by others. This ensures you are supporting your ideas with evidence and gives credibility to the writing as the evidence is (hopefully!) from reputable sources (Masic, 2011). And most importantly referencing, avoids plagiarism and ensures academic integrity (Chike, 2017). For others reading your work, referencing allows them to verify the information, and facilitates further reading should they want to follow up on any ideas (Santini, 2018). Overall referencing is essential in academic writing, as it has both a practical and ethical purpose.
Understanding Different Referencing Styles
If you have ever run out of things to talk about with your peers, and somehow landed on discussing referencing you might have discovered that your peers use a different style of referencing, and wondered why? For example, this blog has used American Psychological Association (APA) referencing style, whilst other styles such as Vancouver, Harvard and many others also exist. There are several reasons for the existence of different referencing styles. Firstly, there are disciplinary differences, different academic disciplines have distinct conventions and preferences regarding citation styles. These styles reflect the specific needs and practices within each discipline, as there may be technical requirements that certain referencing styles suit over others. Secondly, many referencing styles developed over time and in different countries, as such there are both historical and regional influences on referencing leading to different styles. Finally, publishers often have different preference for referencing styles.
Organising your References Effectively
If you dread the time spent writing up references, I do have some good news, you can use reference managers! As the phrase suggests, reference managers can collect, organise, and even cite your sources for you. These programmes can be used to essentially bookmark any research or relevant sources you come across, as reference managers often have browser extensions. The reference manager will then save a copy of the source along with all relevant information needed to create a full reference list. You can use the reference managers’ word processor plugin (just needs to be installed once) to search up the source, and the reference manager should then create the in-text citation, and the reference list automatically.
Reference managers allow you to systematically sort all sources and makes it easier to find any sources. This is particularly helpful if you are writing a piece of work over a longer period, you don’t need to have a hundred tabs open on your browser and slow down your computer. These programmes can also seamlessly integrate with writing software like Microsoft Work, LaTex, and Google Docs, which gives you the flexibility to work across different platforms.
And most importantly, reference managers will save you so much time, you will look back on all the academic writing you have written to date and wonder why you haven’t already been using reference managers. Reference managers will essentially automate the process of creating in-text citations and reference lists. And several different reference managers exist such as Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley and many more. You can easily try out a few and use the one that works best for you.
Overall, reference managers offer a range of benefits that can greatly enhance the efficiency of academic writing. For in-depth guidance on how to use reference managers have a look at the guidance provided by the Royal Holloway, University of London Library services: https://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/referencing/refworks.
If you would like to have a chat about referencing, do get in touch with me at sahana.shankar@rhul.ac.uk.
References
Chike, P. (2017). Academic Writing and Referencing: A Sine Qua Non for Academic Excellence. International Journal of Innovative Research in Education, Technology & Social Strategies, 4(2), 35 to 42.
Masic, I. (2011). How to Search, Write, Prepare and Publish the Scientific Papers in the Biomedical Journals. Acta Informatica Medica, 19(2), 68–79. https://doi.org/10.5455/aim.2011.19.68-79
Santini, A. (2018). The Importance of Referencing. The Journal of Critical Care Medicine, 4(1), 3–4. https://doi.org/10.1515/jccm-2018-0002