Citing references
It is vital in academic writing to acknowledge your sources to give proper credit to other people's work and ideas, and to avoid plagiarism. By acknowledging your sources you can also:
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substantiate any statement you make
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show that you have consulted widely
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signpost related works and prior publications
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enable others to check the evidence and accuracy of your information.
Two guides on citing references can be found on our userguides page. Please also refer to any guidelines on citation practice provided by your School or department.
Plagiarism
Taking and using another person's thoughts, words, judgements, ideas etc as your own without any indication that they are those of another person.
Plagiarism is a serious academic offence and can result in severe disciplinary action.
Students are required to sign off a statement when they enrol, saying that they understand the nature of plagiarism and will make every effort to avoid it.
College statement on plagiarism and related forms of cheating.
Citing conventions
There are recognised conventions for citing the work of others in essays, journal articles etc
In-text citations are placed at the point within the text at which reference is made to another’s work, and these refer the reader to the reference list (sometimes called a bibliography) which is usually placed at the end of the essay/article.
There are three main approaches to citing references. For more detail see the links at the top left.
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In the author-date approach the citations within the text are given using the author’s name and the date in brackets, with the reference list at the end of the document being arranged alphabetically
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The numeric approach uses numbers to indicate citations within the text, and the reference list at the end is ordered numerically
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The footnotes method uses superscripted numbers within the text to refer to footnotes at the bottom of each page, in which the references are given in full.
Reference list or bibliography
The terms reference list and bibliography are sometimes used interchangeably, but here we define the terms as:
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Bibliography - a list of consulted readings, for example a list of textbook sources, that you have studied while composing your essay, but not specifically cited in the text
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Reference list - a list of cited sources.
Quoting
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Make it clear when you are directly quoting from a source by using double quotation marks for short quotations or indenting for longer extracts
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The use of direct quotations in scientific writing is generally inappropriate and unacceptable
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Include the page number in the citation
Paraphrasing
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Paraphrasing the words of others does not make them your own
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It must always be clear that the ideas being expressed are those of the original author, and the work should be cited
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Read the passage until you thoroughly understand it, and then write your own version without looking back too often to the original
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A citation should still be given to acknowledge the source of the ideas.
Secondary referencing
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NEVER cite an article you have not seen in full. You should not cite an article based only on an abstract
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If it is impossible to read the original article, but you wish to include the findings of that research as reported in a review or textbook, then you must cite the review article or book which refers to the original work, ie (as cited by --) e.g. “Brown’s results cited by Jones (1999, p563) indicated that…”
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The use of secondary referencing in scientific writing is strongly discouraged.
Diagrams and illustrations
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Scanned or electronic images included in written work should always be acknowledged by citation
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If the work is to be published, permission must be sought from the original creator before inclusion of any graphic material.
Bibliographic software
Software which is very useful for creating correctly formatted citations and reference lists in wordprocessed documents.
RefWorks is online bibliographic software, available to King's users, and EndNote and Reference Manager are on Student computers and can be downloaded to College computers.
See the web pages on bibliographic software.