Aberystwyth Business School: Referencing Guide

Introduction to referencing

Several different methods of referencing are in common use within Universities. It is essential that you adopt one method - as approved by your School - and use it consistently throughout your work. The Aberystwyth Business School uses the Harvard APA style.

Referencing is important in all academic work as it indicates to the reader the sources of your quotations and borrowed ideas. Failure to indicate your sources is tantamount to plagiarism. The purpose of the referencing system is to describe your sources in an accurate and consistent manner and to indicate within the text of your paper, report or dissertation where particular sources were used. This is essential for three reasons: (a) it demonstrates a disciplined approach to your work (academic rigor); (b) it means you will not be accused of plagiarism because you have acknowledged your sources; (c) anyone who reads your work at a later date will be able to follow up on citations which interest them.

All sources, whether academic texts, journal articles, newspaper articles, material from the Internet etc., must be cited in the text. There are two kind of textual citation - firstly, a direct quotation, where you use the author's own words in your text and for which the format is as follows:

“Obtaining funding for a research project entails drawing up a detailed research proposal which is then closely examined either by colleagues in the same or another university or by members of a funding body”. (O'Connell & Davidson 1994, p.34)

O'Connell & Davidson (1994, p.34) states that: “Obtaining funding for a research project entails drawing up a detailed research proposal which is then closely examined either by colleagues in the same or another university or by members of a funding body”.

So the necessary components are author, date of publication (that is, year) of text and page number.

Sometimes you might want to use a quotation which is not taken from the original source - i.e., that you have found a citation in someone else's work. Here the format is as follows:

“All are concerned, in some sense or another, with problems of languages and meaning in relation to the 'interpretative understanding of human action.” (Giddens cited in O'Connell & Davidson 1994, p.30).

As Giddens (cited in O'Connell & Davidson, 1994, p.30) argues “All are concerned, in some sense or another, with problems of language and meaning in relation to the 'interpretative understanding of human action”.

Here the format is author - cited in - author of text that you have found the citation in - date of publication of this text - page number in this text.

You can use dots, to show that you have not lifted the entire sentence from the source that you consulted. NB three dots are sufficient. Also you can use square brackets if you want to slightly alter the quotation from the way it is in the source text - for example:

[Elements of discourse create] problems of language and meaning in relation to the...

The brackets indicate that you have inserted you own words in place of the original author's words.

Also note that longer quotations (i.e., more than two lines) should be separated out from the rest of the text. You can either use single space long quotations (in a double spaced text) or indent them, or both, to make them stand out.

If you wish to add emphasis to a quote, you may, but make sure that you indicate that you have added this emphasis - for example:

“It assumes that any social phenomena are continually changing .... “ (Easterby-Smith 1997, p 33 - emphasis added)

Always remember to use speech marks or some other form of notation to make it clear that certain sections of your dissertation are direct quotes.

[sic] can be used after a particular word in a quote to mean 'so written', i.e., that this is the way that the author worded the original. This is often useful when quoting an author who used sexist languages - e.g., 'he' or 'his' when speaking about managers - to make it clear that these are their words and not yours.

You should also use the author / date of publication / page number format when citing the source of any diagrams or tables which you have reproduced from other people's texts.

The second kind of textual citation comes into play when you want to indicate that an idea or a concept has come from another source without using that source's own words. You can do this either by using a direct reference, as follows:

According to Easterby-Smith (1997) social phenomena change constantly.

or an indirect reference:

Social phenomena are in a constant state of change. (Easterby-Smith, 1997)

If more than one person has come up with this idea, you can string citations together, as follows:

Many writers have suggested that social phenomena are constantly changing. (Easterby-Smith, 1997; Giddens, 1997 and May, 1998)

This should be done either in date of publication order (as above) or in alphabetical order of author. Make sure you stick to one format and use it throughout.

Sometimes you might want to make reference to material which is not taken from the original source - i.e., that you have found someone else's work. Here the format is as follows:

As Mullins (1999) has pointed out, McGregor's argument is based on several assumptions about the nature of management.

Also note that, if the ideas that you are using only appear once in the text, or only in a small section of the text, that it is a good idea to include the number of the page/s on which they appear, even though you are not lifting the original words - so the citation (Mullins, 1999) might become (Mullins, 1999, p 275).

ibid., meaning 'in the same place', can also be used to stand in for a citation where the citation is exactly the same as the one immediately preceding it. So (ibid.) used after a quotation would mean 'the same as the last citation', page number and all. Do not use ibid. under any other circumstances: it is only appropriate when you are quoting or using ideas from the same place in a text several times without citations from other sources intervening. Also do not use ibid. to refer to a citation on the previous page. It should be italicized and abbreviated.

et al., meaning 'and others', should be used in in-text citations where there are more than two authors, and should be italicized and abbreviated - so, for example, (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 1997) would become (Saunders et al., 1997). However, the authors should be listed in full in the bibliography.

If there is no obvious author for a piece that you are using, for example, an editorial in a newspaper, use the name of the publication in which the piece appears as the author - e.g., (The Guardian, 1999). This also applies to the bibliography.

The reference list at the end of the report, paper or dissertation should be arranged alphabetically by the author’s surname. The Harvard format requires book and journal titles etc. to be underlined or italicised. The latter has been adopted in this guide.

Book reference

Gardner, H. (1973). The arts and human development. New York: Wiley.

Strunk, W., & White, E.B. (1979). The elements of style (3rd ed.). New York: Macmillan.

Institute for Financial Studies. (1995). Analysis of conservative budget strategy in the 1990s. London: Author.

Anon. (1976). Encyclopaedia of psychology. London: Routledge.

Moore, M.H., Estrich, S., McGillis, D., & Spelman, W. (1984). Dangerous offenders: the elusive target of justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Note: List up to 6 authors. The 7th and subsequent authors are abbreviated to et al.

Edited Book

Maher, B. A. (Ed.). (1964-1972). Progress in experimental personality research, (6 vols.). New York: Academic Press.

Article in Edited Book (Chapter)

Vygotsky, L. S. (1991). Genesis of the Higher Mental Functions. in: P. Light, S. Sheldon & M. Woodhead, (Eds.), Learning to think (pp. 32-41). London: Routledge.

Government Publication

Great Britain. Home Office. (1994). Prisons policy for England and Wales. London: HMSO.

Great Britain. Command Papers. (1991). Health of the nation. (Cm 1523). London: HMSO.

Report

Birney, A.J. & Hall, M.M. (1981). Early identification of children with written language difficulties. (Report No. 81-502). Washington, D.C.: National Educational Association.

Conference Paper in Published Proceedings

Borgman, C.L., Bower, J., & Krieger, D. (1989). From hands-on science to hands-oninformation retrieval. In J. Katzer, & G.B. Newby, (Eds.), Proceedings of the 52nd ASIS annual meeting: Vol. 26. Managing information and technology (pp. 96-100). Medford, NJ: Learned Information.

Journal Article

Popper, S. E. & McCloskey, K. (1993) Individual differences and subgroups within populations: the shopping bag approach. Aviation Space and Environmental Medicine, 64(l), 74-77.

Noguchi, T., Kittawaki, J., Tamura, T., Kim, T., Kanno, H., Yamamoto, T., & Okada, H. (1993). Relationship between aromatase activity and steroid receptor levels in ovarian tumors from postmenopausal women. Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. 44(4-6), 657-660.

Two or more works. by the same author(s) with the same publication date: where an author (or particular group of authors) has more than one work in a particular year list them in title order and follow the date with a lower case letter

a, b, c, . . . For example:

Harding, S. (1986a). The instability of the analytical categories of feminist theory. Signs, 11(4), 645-64.

Harding, S. (1986b). The science question in feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

When referred to in the text these letters following year of publication are also used.

Newspaper Article

Young, H. (1996, July 25). Battle of snakes and ladders. The Guardian, p. 15.

Anon. (1991, July 13). Caffeine linked to mental illness. New York Times, pp. B13, B15.

Individual Works

Anonymous. (1992). How your gestures reveal inner thoughts. Oxford English Dictionary, p. 209. Retrieved September 10, 2004, from Oxford University Press on CD-ROM.

If a work is signed “Anonymous” your reference must begin with the word Anonymous, followed by date etc. as normal. If no author is shown, put the title in the normal author position.

Pritzker, T.J. (n.d.). An early fragment from central Nepal. Retrieved September 12, 2004, from: http://www.ingress.com/~astanart/pritzker.html

If no date is shown on the document, use n.d.

Note: These references contain important elements common in citations of electronic sources: author, initials, (year), Title, Retrieved month, day, year, from Internet address.

The Medium (CD-ROM, Online, etc.)

The expression “Retrieved from” is used to refer to the publisher and the Internet address (URL).

“Retrieved August 29, 2003” refers to the date that the resource was accessed. This is used because Internet sources are liable to frequent change.

Parts of Online Works

Daniel, R.T. (1995) The history of Western music. Britannica online: Macropaedia. Retrieved August 29, 2004, from: http://www.eb.co.uk/

Online Journal Article

Korb, K.B. (1995). Persons and things: book review on Bringsjord on robot-consciousness. [Electronic version]. Psycholoquy 6(15). Retrieved August 29, 2004, from gopher://wachau.ai.univie.ac.at:70/00/archives/Psycholoquy/95.V6/0162

Note: for articles in Internet-only journals page numbers are not given, and where possible the URL you give should link directly to the article itself.

Smith, L. (1996) Keynesian economic policy in France. [Electronic version]. Journal of Economic Analysis, 35(2). 19-27. Retrieved July 24 2004, from: European Business ASAP, Information Access Company Web site: http://www.searchbank.com/eurobus/

Sydora, B.C. (1996). Intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes respond to systemic lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection. [Electronic version], Cellular Immunology, 167(2), 161-169. Retrieved August 21, 2004, from IDEAL, Academic Press Web site: http://www.janet.idealibrary.com

Where referencing an online article where the format differs from the printed version or which includes additional data or commentaries, you should add the date you retrieved the document and the Web address (URL).

Newspaper Article (online and on CD-ROM)

Young, H. (1996). Battle of snakes and ladders. The Guardian, p. 15. Retrieved September 10, 2004, from The Guardian on Chadwyck Healey CD-ROM database.

Howard, P. (1996). The case of the red-handed leak. The Times. [Electronic version]. Retrieved August 13, 2004, from: http://www.the-times.co.uk

Bloxwich, K. (1994). Dividing the spoils. Financial Times, pp. 18-19. Retrieved September 22, 2004, from The McCarthy Database on Chadwyck Healey CD-ROM database.

Use pp. for page ranges only for encyclopaedia entries, multi-page newspaper articles and chapters or articles in edited books. For articles in journals or magazines use the numbers alone (not pp. before the numbers).

Online Discussion List Message

BLAXTBRM., (1995, October 13). Parasite nucleotide sequences. Parasite-Genome. Retrieved August 27, 2003, from: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/parasite-genome

Note: the author name is given as it appeared in the e-mail message.

Personal E-mail Communication

Davis, W. (), (1995, 23 December). Thoughts on disarmament

conference. E-mail to Robert Jones ().

WWW site (whole site)

American Psychological Association [No date]. PsychNET [Online]. Available from:

http://www.apa.org [Accessed: 3 October 1996].

You should avoid overuse of websites such as Wikipedia. These should not be your main source of reference for an assignment.

Document From an FTP Site

Bixley, T. S. (1995) Sentient microfilaments: a tempest in a tubule. Retrieved September 14, 2003 from: ftp://blahblah.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/conscious-ness/1 1/bixley

For this Referencing Guide extensive use has been made of the University of Portsmouth Library leaflet “Bibliographic References Harvard Format – APA Style”. This leaflet is a summary of the APA style guidelines as contained in The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, (5th ed., 2001). In addition, the following references have been used:

Bell, J. (1987). Doing your research project. Oxford: Open University Press.

Gill, J. & Johnson, P. (1991). Research methods for managers. London: Paul Chapman.

Jankowicz, A. (2000). Business research projects. (3rd ed.). London: Business Press Thomson Learning.

Jolliffe, F.R. (1986). Survey design and analysis. New York: Ellis Herwood.

Some other references which may be of benefit are as follows:

Axelrod, M.D. (1975). The Dynamics of the Group Interview’, Advances in Consumer Research, 3, 437-441.