Introduction to referencing

Referencing is extremely important in academic writing and research. All students read and refer to many academic sources when preparing and writing papers, essays and reports.

​Introduction to Referencing

Poll

Brainstorm reasons for referring to academic sources.

• Acknowledge   the    contribution   of    writers,    researchers   and academics/experts in the field.

• Support and strengthen your own ideas.

• Show that you are aware of and understand the field that you are writing about.

• Allow readers of your work to trace the source of information and perhaps to read further

​Purpose of the lesson

To introduce students to referencing and explain-understand its importance

Why referencing?

• By referencing correctly, you are showing that you are part of an academic tradition and that you both understand and respect that tradition.

• As a part of the tradition, you are able to make use of the ideas, thoughts, arguments, and research data developed, collected, and published by academics and researchers who have worked very hard to put it all together.

Why referencing?

• However, you need to go one step further. You need to cite these sources accurately so that everyone who reads your work knows from where and to whom you gathered your ideas.

• The GAC Referencing Guide will help you to develop the skills you will need to accurately cite and reference all of your academic sources.

All of these reference styles have different approaches to referencing.

In addition to these, certain professions have their own referencing styles, such as the ASCE (the American Society of Civil Engineers) and the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).

There are a number of different styles of referencing including:

• Harvard

• APA (American Psychological Association)

• MLA (Modern Languages Association)

• Chicago

• Oxford

• Vancouver

Referencing Styles

Within a university, it is possible for different faculties, different departments within a faculty (and sometimes even different lecturers and professors) to use different referencing styles.

It is therefore important when you are at university that you check with each of your lecturers and tutors so that you know the preferred referencing style for the subject you are studying.

​The GAC referencing style

The GAC program uses the Harvard referencing style for in-text referencing. This means that when you refer to an academic source (e.g. a book, journal, article or website) in your written work, you MUST give the author’s name and the date of publication in brackets after the reference.

No Footnotes

Foot notes are NOT used in the Harvard referencing system

Open Ended

Why is referencing important?

​Why is referencing important?

In academic writing, it is important to acknowledge the source of any ideas that are not your own.  There are several reasons for this:

• to prove that your claims and the information you are presenting are accurate.
  to show just how much research you did.

• to demonstrate your understanding of the field or topic.

• to support your claims or arguments.

• to make your research more persuasive.

• to allow your readers to check your sources, and follow up the references if they want to.

• to protect yourself against charges of plagiarism; a form of cheating.

This includes: written information in books, journals, articles, newspapers, letters, brochures both in paper copy and online.
It also includes the spoken word, whether it is in a speech, an interview, a lecture, in a film, a YouTube video, a documentary or an advertisement. Information in word form, in picture form, in graphical or tabular form. In other words, ANYTHING that was produced by someone must be referenced.

You should reference ANY words, ideas, pictures, diagrams or information taken from ANY source.

What kind of information should you reference?

" Language Focus"

The term citation (verb: to cite) is often used for reference (verb: to refer) and has the same meaning.

the Reference List, it is where you list full details of all the books, journals, articles and websites you have cited in your written work. The Reference List comes at the end of your essay or report

in-text references (or citations) show where you refer to a source (e.g. a book, journal, article or website) in your written work.

​There are two aspects of referencing that you need to be familiar with:

What does referencing involve?

There are standard conventions both for in-text references and for the Reference List. You need to be familiar with these and use them correctly in all of your academic work. The conventions used in the GAC program are those of the Harvard system of referencing as used by Monash University (Citing and referencing: How to acknowledge your sources, 2006)

​So? Ready for the practice...