Difference between revisions of "Referencing system"

Revision as of 07:12, 1 November 2006

There are many different systems of referencing in the academic world. Be careful to choose the appropriate one for your needs. Apart from the stress that academic teachers may lay on referencing, and its importance in avoiding accusations of plagiarism, good referencing provides a very good training in precise and careful work. University students should always supply references for the information they use when writing. These should always follow the appropriate convention. Unfortunately, the conventions vary greatly. Departments have different systems, and Departments in one institution may have different systems from their equivalents in other institutions. It has even been known for different lecturers in the same Department to insist on different systems.

Undergraduate students should use the system required by the Department in which they are working. (The third principle of referencing recommended in this Guide is Use your Department's system - with great care and attention to detail. The most important step is to obtain any guidance available from your Department - this will often be a Student Handbook, in paper or on-line. The title may well be different.) Some students are unlucky enough to work in more than one Department, those taking a Joint Honours degree or a module outside the base Department for example. Such students should be very careful to notice which system the Department is using. If the two Departments use different systems, then such a student must learn boith, and be careful to use the appropriate one for each subject. Further care should be taken if the two Departments say that they are using the same system: they may differ quite strongly about details.

This is reflected in the academic journals for which post-graduate students may be writing. Bibliographic Programs such as EndNote contain templates to match the publisher's requirements for well over a hundred different journals.

The different systems may be grouped generically. You may link to as general description of the system that youir Department says that it follows her - but be warned that the details may be different in the Handbook that you should be following. The commoner systems include:

• footnotes
• Harvard - better known as
  • author-date
• Vancouver - also known as
  • author-number
• legal
• APA , which stands for American Psychological Association.