Why you Need to Reference Your Sources
Referencing (or citing sources) is the important process of acknowledging another person's ideas used in constructing your own essay or assignment, whether quoted directly or otherwise. Any work without proper reference makes the unattributed sources appear as your own. This is known as plagiarism.
Correct referencing gives the reader the opportunity to locate and check the source if required. Every scholarly discipline has a preferred format or style of referencing. Vancouver is the preferred style for The Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at UWA.
What is Referencing and Citing?
Citing
When you make reference in your text to ideas that are not your own, or use words or phrases that are not your own, you must indicate in your essay or assignment the source of this information.
This is referred to as "citing your sources".
Referencing
At the end of your assignment or essay you must include a full description of each source that you have cited. List them in numerical order under the heading; References.
Reference Types and their Format
With all references there must be sufficient and accurate information to enable the reader to check your source of information. Details on what to include and examples of common reference types are in the section on Reference formats.
When to cite
To avoid plagiarism it is important to know when you should cite. In the section When to cite there is a diagramatic representation that may help you decide whether you need to cite or not.
Who to cite?
Often when you are reading for an assignment an author will refer specifically to the work of another author, acknowledging that the 'intellectual' content referred to belongs to another author. Who should you cite? You always cite the author you have read. For more details and an example of how to deal with this issue in your text, read the section When one author cites another.
Paraphrasing and direct quotation
Paraphrasing
A paraphrase is when you take information from a source and put it entirely in your own words (changing one or two words is not paraphrasing). Paraphrasing rather than direct quotation helps demonstrate to the reader your understanding of the information.
You should aim to paraphrase information provided by an author in your own words rather than quote large amounts of their work exactly as they are written.
- For excellent tips on how to effectively paraphrase and examples of paraphrasing, follow this link to the Owl at Purdue
Direct Quotation
It can be necessary to directly quote from the text when:
- You cannot present the information more succinctly or in any other way.
- You need to present a particular portion of an author’s text in your work to analyse it.
In a short quote, less than 4 lines of text, enclose the quote in double quotation marks "...".
When a quote is longer than 4 lines of text it should be off-set in a block, ie, in reduced type and without quotation marks. "Paragraph indents are generally not used unless the quoted material is known to begin a paragraph."1 Space is often added above and below the quotation.
1. American Medical Association manual of style: a guide for authors and editors. 10th ed. New York: Oxford University Press; 2007
Elements of a reference
Details you need to construct a reference
The basic details you need to construct your references is similar for every style and every reference type.
Author(s), editor(s)
Title of book or journal
Title of chapter or article
Year of publication
Publisher name
Publisher place
Volume and Issue Number if it is a journal
Page numbers
If it is an electronic resource you will need additional information
Date the web page or document was last modified/updated
Date you accessed/downloaded the information
Location: URL or name of Library database
- If you record these details as you read for your assignment it will make referencing a much quicker and easier task.
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