REFRENCING

1. Introduction:
In academic writing, when we refer to an idea or information created by someone else,
we should always include a reference to the publication in which it appears. Normal
practice is to include a citation within your text and then include a list of references at the
end.
1.1 Why reference?
To give academic credibility to your work: to show that you have consulted
relevant sources and that you are familiar with the relevant research

To give due credit to the creators of ideas and information

To avoid being accused of plagiarism: representing someone elses ideas as if they

were your own. You can lose marks or even face serious sanctions if you plagiarise.
For more information, see the librarys guide to plagiarism

To enable your readers to consult the works you have referenced

To enable your tutors to see that you have used genuine sources

1.2 What is included in a reference?

Anyone who wants to consult any of the publications we have referenced will need
information about who wrote it and where it can be found. We should reference any
source of information we use, including web pages, emails, personal correspondence as
well as books, chapters and journal articles.
1.3 Referencing styles
Referencing styles determine how our citation appears in the text and how we set out our
list of references at the end of work.
Use of standard referencing style to enable readers to find the relevant information easily
The styles that are most commonly used in UK universities are Harvard (Author-Date)
and Vancouver (numbered list). Arts students may be recommended to use the MRHA
(Modern Humanities Research Association) Style. Law students may be asked to use
Oscola (Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities). There are other
styles in use as well, so do check with your lecturer/tutor as to which style or variation
they want you to use. Most academic journals prefer you to use their own style: you can
normally find out from their web pages what they require

2. Refrencing software:
Referencing software (or bibliographic software, or reference managers) are computer
programmes which allow us to store numerous references and bibliographic data, and
then insert said data into word processed documents in a variety of referencing styles.
They may also be able to search across union catalogues and our institution's electronic
resources to find articles and books which may be useful to our research, storing them all
in one place with links. Whilst they can save our time, and allow us to store all of your
references in one place, they can often be difficult to use, and some will still require you
to reformat your references once inserted.
Referencing software works best when used from the outset, it will often be impractical
to try and convert references you have already found into the software halfway through a
piece of work or course of study.There are various referencing software available to help
us to keep track of the resources which we have used in technical writting. some of the
refrencing software are as below.
2.1 Types of refrencing software:
2.1.1 EndNote:
EndNote is a software package that enables us to compile and manage our references, and
to use them to automatically create in-text citations and bibliographies for our work.
EndNote enables you to compile and manage your own 'libraries' of references, either by
typing in the details of references individually or by downloading the results of searching
online research databases. It works in conjunction with Microsoft Word via the Cite
While You Write feature, which allows us to automatically generate citations and
bibliographies in our Word document.
It has 3 main functions:
1. Search tool - search databases for articles (or the catalog for books) using authors,
keywords, titles, etc.
2. Reference database - this will help you keep track of your sources; they can be
linked to their EndNote records so they're easier to find.
3. Bibliography maker - EndNote takes all the info from the databases and packages
them as citations for you. The OSCOLA style is not one of the available citation
styles, but can be downloaded for free from the OSCOLA website.
EndNote includes over 5,000 referencing styles, including all the major referencing
systems such as Harvard and MLA, and the preferred styles for the leading academic
journals. It is therefore very easy to create citations and bibliographies in the correct style

for our purposes.

2.1.2 Mendeley:
Mendeley is both a free reference manager and an academic social network designed to
help researchers find and work with collaborators. Although we have to download the
program, it is free and web-based. This means you are not restricted to working on any
single computer and have access to our data from anywhere in the world as it is stored
remotely. Although it can link to any of the usual sources for your bibliographic data, the
programme also extracts metadata from any documents we download and allows us to
search the full text of PDFs we have collected. Mendeley sits as an icon on our desktop.
2.1.3 Zotero
Zotero operates in a similar way but is designed specifically to work with the Mozilla
Firefox browser. Our data is again stored remotely; only 100MB is provided free,
although this can be topped up. The guide to using Zotero was originally created for a
British Library course.
Citeulike is Springers site. When we register it will be asked if we want to link with your
facebook account. A useful feature associated with this service is current issues, which
allows us to browse the tables of contents of over 13,000 journal titles.
2.1.4 Papers (Mentekosj)
Papers (Mentekosj) was developed by two PhD researchers as a Mac-based tool using a
similar approach to iTunes, the music provider. Versions of Papers are also available from
the iTunes App Store for use with iPads and iPhones and a PC client is also now
available. we can try this software for free for 30 days, but we do need to pay to use it
after that.
2.1.5 RefBase (Web Reference Database)
RefBase (Web Reference Database) is reference management software often used for
self-archiving. As it is widely used, the homepage provides examples for demonstration
purposes to save you having to register to decide.