Introduction
Citing references in a text
Creating bibliographic referencesPart 1: Non-electronic sources
Book ReferencesPart 2: Electronic Sources
Journal Articles
Papers from Conferences
Theses
Reports
Patents
British Standards
Personal CommunicationIndividual works
E-Journal Articles
Mailbase/Listserv email lists
Personal electronic communications (E-mail)
In the course of your literature search you are likely to find many publications which contain relevant information. It is important that you record their full bibliographical details in order to be able to identify them easily at a later date. These details are known as bibliographical references.
There are many different ways in which bibliographical references are set out by other authors. In order to avoid producing an inconsistency in your own work it is important to choose one style and stick to it. Therefore you should 'translate' any references you find into your chosen style. If you are preparing a paper for a particular journal you must of course follow the style used by that journal.
Remember the basic rule is that references should be correct, complete and consistent.
Within your own text you will be expected to acknowledge where you have used any sources (e.g. books, journal articles, conference papers etc.) to provide ideas, support arguments or for direct quotations, by citing the documents, from which you obtained the information, at the point of use.
At the end of your project or dissertation the bibliographic details of all documents cited are listed under the heading References or Material Cited. Do not include any references which are not cited in the text. If you wish to indicate other useful publications for background or further reading these are included in a separate list entitled Additional Reading or Bibliography.
Why you need to cite references
The following guidelines explain :-
The author and the year of publication of the cited document are given
in the text.
If the author's name occurs naturally in the text then the year follows
in brackets, if not, then both name and year are in brackets.
* Example
A study by Gremillion and Jenking (1981) showed that colour significantly improved recall ability. However, we need to guard against using distracting colours in order to realise these benefits (Marcus, Cowan and Smith, 1989).
Part 1: Non-electronic sources
| What is needed? | Author/s or Editor/s surname, initials.
(Year of publication). Title of book (in italics, or underlined or in bold type). Edition (if other than first). Place of publication: Publisher. |
Sommerville, I. (1992). Software engineering. 4th ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
If there are two or three authors then all should be given, but if there are more than three then only the first is given followed by et al. or and others. If the book has an editor then ed. is added after the name.
* Example
Warren, D.H.D. and Szeredi, P. eds. (1990). Logic programming. London: MIT Press.
You may wish to refer to a chapter in a book. In this case the editor of the book is also acknowledged. In effect a double reference is required, with the more specific reference coming first.
* Example
Smith, C. (1980). Problems of information studies in history. In: S. Stone, ed. Humanities information research. Sheffield: CRUS, 1980, pp.27-30.
Notice that when referring to specific pages in a book 'pp.' is used. Use 'p.' if referring to a single page.
For books without individual authors use the corporate author if possible, otherwise use the title.
* Examples
British Computer Society (1991). Glossary of
computing terms : an introduction. London: Pitman.
Turbo Assembler: users' guide - version 2.0
(1991).
Scotts Valley, CA: Borland.
| What is needed? | Author/s or Editor/s surname, initials.
(Year of publication). Title of article. Title of journal (in italics, or underlined or in bold type), Volume number, (Part number), Page number/s of the article. |
The title of the journal should be in bold or italic type or underlined to distinguish it from the rest of the reference. There is no need to put in the words 'vol' or 'part'. The inclusive page numbers for the article should be given. If an article is interrupted by advertisements or other features this should be indicated by showing all the page sequences.
* Example
Nicolle, L. (1990). Data protection: laying down the law. Management Computing, 13(12), 48-49, 52.
If the conference is one of a series use a similar method to that for journals but including the publisher if known, otherwise use the same method as for books.
* Examples
Feldman, D.S. (1993). Fuzzy network synthesis with genetic algorithms. Proceedings of the fifth international conference on genetic algorithms.
Urbana-Champaign, IL., July 1993. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, pp.312-317.
Duchastel, P.C. (1992). Integrating hypermedia into intelligent tutoring. In: A. Oliveira, ed. Hypermedia courseware: structures of communication and intelligent help: proceedings of a NATO Advanced Research Workshop. Espinho, Portugal, April 1990. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. 198-204.
Use similar methods to those for books.
* Example
Levine, D. (1993). A parallel genetic algorithm for the set partitioning problem. Ph.D. thesis, Illinois Institute of Technology.
Similar method to that for books. Add all report numbers that appear on the document, plus publisher or distributor details if known.
* Example
Koza, J.R. (1990). Genetic programming: a paradigm for genetically breeding populations of computer programs to solve problems. Technical Report No. STAN-CS-90-1314, Computer Science Department, Stanford University.
| What is needed? | Inventor/s
(Year). Assignee Title Patent number |
Graham, C.P., Fonti, L. and Martinez, A.M. (1972). American Sugar Co. Tableting sugar and compositions containing it. U.S. Pat. 3,642,535
*Example
British Standards Institution (1981). BS 5930: 1981. Code of practice for site investigations.
Can be used when one has cited unpublished information gained from a private letter, conversation or interview.
*Example
Ross, D.E. (1991). Personal communication
No standard method for citing electronic sources of information has
yet been agreed on.
The following citation formats outline the practices most likely to
be adopted and are based on the book by Xia Li &
Nancy B. Crane (1995) and the draft of ISO standard
690-2.
References to electronic sources follow the same general pattern as for non-electronic sources. Items from the Internet also use the URL (Internet address). The URL should only be split after a forward slash, no further punctuation should be added, and the case of the characters must not be altered. The examples given use the Harvard System, however these basic rules may be customised for any standard citation style.
| What is needed? | Author/s or editor/s.
(Year). Title [online]. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher (if ascertainable). Available at: URL [Accessed Date]. |
Holland, M. (1996). Harvard system [online]. Poole: Bournemouth University. Available from: http://bournemouth.ac.uk/service-depts/lis/ LIS_Pub/harvardsyst.html [Accessed 15 April 1996].
The term [online] indicates type of medium and is used for all Internet sources. [Accessed Date] is the date on which the document was viewed. This allows for any subsequent modifications to the document. When referring to Internet sources the term publisher usually applies to the organisation responsible for hosting the site, such as Bournemouth University.
If no specific author is cited ascribe authorship to the smallest organisational unit.
* Example
NRSWG (2000). In the mail: report of a survey of interlibrary loan delivery [online]. Canberra, Australia: National Resource Sharing Working Group Available at: http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/nrswg/mailsurvey.html [Accessed 8 March 2000].
| What is needed? | Author/s
(Year). Title of article. Journal Title [online] (title in italics, bold or underlined), Volume number, (Part/issue number). Available at: URL [Accessed Date]. |
Caplan, P. and Arms, W. (1999). Reference linking for journal articles. D-Lib Magazine [online], July/August. Available at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july99/07caplan.html [Accessed 27 Aug 1999].
These discussion lists generate email messages which are sent directly to the subscriber. References to these messages should be treated in a similar fashion to journal references; using the list name in place of the journal title and the subject line of the message in place of the article title. For "Available at:", use the email address of the list administrator.
These details, together with the author, will appear in the message
header.
| What is needed? | Author (Year).
Subject of message. Discussion List [online]. Day Month Year. Available at: list e-mail address [Accessed Date]. |
Brack, E.V. (1995). Re: Computing short courses. Lis-link [online]. 2 May 1995. Available at: mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk [Accessed 17 Apr 1996].
Jensen, L.R. (1995). Recommendation of student radio/tv in English. IASTAR [online]. 12 Dec 1995. Available at: LISTSERV@FTP.NRG.DTU.DK [Accessed 29 Apr 1996].
It should be noted that items may only be kept on discussion group servers for a short time and hence may not be suitable for referencing.
Personal electronic communications (E-mail)
The "subject line" of the message is given as a title and the full
date is given. In place of "Available at" use "E-mail to" and state
the recipient's name and e-mail address.
| What is needed? | Sender (Sender's E-mail address)
(Year) Subject of Message. Day Month Year. E-mail to: Recipient (Recipient's E-mail address). |
Lowman, D. (deborah_lowman@pbsinc.com) (1996). RE: ProCite and Internet Refere. 4 Apr 1996. E-mail to: P. Cross (pcross@bournemouth.ac.uk).
Draft of ISO standard 690-2 (2001) Information and documentation: Bibliographic references: Electronic documents or parts thereof.
Xia Li & Nancy B. Crane (1995) Electronic style: a guide
to citing electronic information, 2nd ed., Mecklermedia