Transcript
Richard Farr: In this video we are going to talk about one of the very important academic issues and that is referencing. Do the students know what we mean by referencing?
Chris Grant: I hope so! But maybe they will understand more, and in particularly the reasons why referencing is important by the time we’ve finished this video.
RF: When you do a piece of work for your coursework, project or dissertation, we’re not expecting you to operate in a vacuum, we’re not expecting you to operate in isolation and come up with all these ideas on your own. It’s actually the opposite, we want you to show that you’re aware of the work that’s gone before. There will have been people writing theories or reporting events and we don’t want you to ‘re-invent the wheel’! We don’t want you to start from square 1, what we want you to do is to build upon the work of those that have gone before.
Referencing is important for a number of reasons that we’re going to talk about.
CG: Students often think that referencing is just to prove that they haven’t plagiarised, and that, I think, is probably the least important reason for referencing. One of the main reasons for referencing is demonstrating that you have looked at, understood, considered, and applied work that other people have done. We don’t start with a blank piece of paper, everything we do is building on what people who have gone before us have done. And so referencing is the academic way of showing that you are aware of the work people have done, that you are building on existing models or theories and so on. It may be that the way you will do that is to take a study in one context and you may apply it to a different context, be that an industry or geographic area.
RF: To begin with, a reference is a very handy way of showing what you mean without having to go into great depth. So you can say ‘value chain (Porter, 1985)’ and you’re done, if that’s what you mean by value chain and your reader doesn’t understand that, you’ve told them where to go and find it. So it’s like a link on the Internet, isn’t it?
CG: Yes, and it demonstrates to us that you understand what has gone before and we can say ‘ah, so they are using Porter’s interpretation of value chain as opposed to somebody else’s.’
RF: So that’s evidence of scholarship that they have been and read. Please don’t try to fake it and reference things that you haven’t read or understood, because you might get into difficulties where you don’t understand the thing in the same way as your tutor thinks it applies or something like that! But as general principle referencing does no harm.
CG: Don’t make up references! I have had situations where a student has made some claim and referenced a book and I knew that the book didn’t include that fact. Had they chosen another book, they may have got away with it! But, be careful.
RF: When you reference someone else’s work, you can take shelter behind that person to some extent. If that is their claim and it has been accepted for publication then you don’t have to defend, your ideas or assumptions because you’re saying ‘look this guy said it and it was published’. Do choose your references with care though, do not reference Wikipedia, do not reference these types of online sites (CG: Ask.com!) and essay sites and things like that. We are looking for academic sources, which you will find via the University of Bolton Library website and you can search for journal and conference papers.
CG: Because most of our students are working in business or business related courses, it may be that there are other appropriate sources that you could use, for example, Government websites if you are interested in statistics; trade bodies for people working in a specific industry and even some quality newspapers and magazines have some up-to-date information. I’ve just been reading an article about corporate social responsibility in Time Magazine. But just be careful with journalistic articles, they may be coming from one particular perspective and may not be as impartial as academic work would be.
RF: We are looking for you to demonstrate that you are aware of the potential that there is bias. One of the things I wanted to say was don’t be afraid to critique the work that you reference. Just because it’s published, it’s written by a professor, or someone who’s been in the industry for a long time, doesn’t mean you can’t say, ‘now, this was back in the cold war, or in a different continent and here things work differently’; scientific advancements, newer theories, etc. Do compare and contrast theories. Consulting multiple sources has always got to be a good idea.
CG: When we say we are looking for critical evaluation and critical analysis, this is the sort of thing we mean. Critiquing in an academic sense doesn’t just mean saying ‘this is rubbish’; it’s not criticising, it’s looking at the advantages, disadvantages, maybe it’s a different context such as pre-financial crisis or scientific advancement has moved on.
RF: And relate it to your own work as well, to your aims and objectives and the study that you are doing, where you may find it’s partially applicable, but not completely applicable. How many references would you be looking for in a piece of coursework – student always ask that!
CG: As many as are necessary! I always used to say to students ‘1 was not enough and a thousand was too many’! It was up to them to find somewhere in between! Every argument you make needs to be supported by evidence and typically in a four thousand work assignment I’d be looking for around 40 references. But that could be a mixture of academic sources and other appropriate sources.
RF: Now one thing we haven’t talked about because of this format being a video, is the referencing style. What I would like to suggest is that you go to BISSTO on the Library website and there you will find referencing guidance and there is also help with report writing and structuring. So there are very detailed texts that tell you what we are looking for.
CG: Remember that we use Harvard within the Business subject areas. Other subject areas use slightly different methods, so make sure it’s the Harvard system that you’re looking at.
RF: Yes, and you will find the Harvard referencing approach detailed here in BISSTO. I think we’re done! Thanks for listening, I hope that helps you.