Design Context Guide to Referencing 2014-15

In any academic writing it is important to say exactly where you got your information from.
Stating the source i.e., referencing allows readers to refer back to it. The information
given by you should be precise enough to allow someone else to find the source you used.
By giving the source for your information, you are making it clear that the ideas being
discussed came from a source such as a book, an article, a lecture, a website or a film. If you
do not do so you may be guilty of plagiarism.

By keeping a careful record of your sources, it will make it easier to check up on something
later if you need to. It is important to develop the habit of noting down the information you
will need accurately. Some students have a small notebook just for this purpose. (It can be
helpful to note down the library classmark along with the other information you need.)

The universitys regulations make it quite clear that sources should always be
acknowledged. For example, where a presentation is an assessed piece of work you are
required to acknowledge and reference all of the sources you have used in the preparation
of your piece of work. Full, accurate and consistent citations should appear on PowerPoint
slides and poster presentations along with a bibliography of sources.

Regulations: http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/academic-services/policies-
regulations/regulations/assessment
University advice on plagiarism: http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-
departments/academic-services/students/undergraduate/discipline/plagiarism

When to put in a reference

In short, whenever you use any source of information.

When you quote directly (using quotation marks).

When you paraphrase, rather than quote (putting the author's ideas in your own
words).
When you use a theory, concept, viewpoint or idea.
When you use a specific example, data, an illustration or a diagram.

By putting in references you achieve a number of important things.

You avoid plagiarism. You provide evidence of the research you have done.
You allow lecturers, tutors and examiners to check your sources.

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What information to put in and where

In general, references should appear in two places:

1. In the middle of the writing - citation.

2. At the end of the writing - the 'list of references' or 'bibliography'.

The Harvard system

There are different ways of citing a reference in the middle of academic writing and you will
notice these being used in academic literature. Harvard is an author/date system; a simple
way of identifying sources by inserting the author's surname, the year of publication and the
page number. The reader is able to look at which source this is by checking your list of
references or bibliography (listed alphabetically by surname at the end of your writing).
There is no need to use footnotes or keep track of numbering.

To acknowledge any source in your text you insert the author and year of publication either
within the sentence or at the end of it. As it is standard academic practice to include the
exact page numbers when using a quotation or a specific part of a source in your writing,
you will normally need to put the page number in as well. The detailed information about
the source appears in the reference list or bibliography at the end of your assignment.

In addition to the following pages below, for more information and guidance on using the
Harvard referencing system please consult the following online resource:
http://www.citethemrightonline.com/Home

Some points to note about citethemrightonline:

1. It is, basically, a searchable online version of the book Cite them right: the
essential referencing guide by Richard Pears and Graham Shields. Multiple
copies of this book are available in the Main University Library (catalogue
number PN171.F56 Pea.). In checking or developing you referencing style and
skills, you can use the book, the website, or both resources in conjunction.
2. The University has subscribed to the citethemrightonline website in order
that students can use this resource, both on- and off-campus. The site can be
accessed via a link available at
http://www.ed.ac.uk/search?q=citethemright&submit=Search; if trying to
access it off-site, I suggest first logging on to your MyEd account via
www.ease.ed.ac.uk.
3. The citethemrightonline website has a number of accessibility tools, including
facilities to increase/decrease onscreen type size. It is also compatible with
screen-reading software and should work on smartphones.

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Citation

You will need to use the material you have researched and you will need to acknowledge
other people's work within your text. Normally tutors will expect you to use Harvard which
is an author/date system.

You use the author's last name, the year of publication and the page number, and
you put this information in brackets.

For example, for this quotation from a book by John Berger:

"The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. Its authority is lost. In its place
there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what
purpose." (Berger 1972: 33)

The reader is able to look up Berger in the reference list or bibliography for the assignment
and find out that it is from Berger's book Ways of Seeing published by the British
Broadcasting Company and Penguin Books (see the example reference list below ).

Some printed sources are not as straightforward as a book by a single author. In this
example the quotation is about the artist David Batchelor's exhibition 'Unplugged'. The
quotation is from an essay in an exhibition catalogue edited jointly by the curators of the
exhibition, Pat Fisher and by Martin Minton. The essay was written by Briony Fer and it is
Fer's name that appears in the citation (as Fer wrote the words being quoted).

"The sea of plastic which concerns him is all ready-made, but it is not the ready-
madeness that is really at stake here - but what can be made out of this kind of
colour." (Fer 2007: 10)

By checking the reference list (see below), the reader is able to find out that this is from an
essay covering three pages within an edited publication about Batchelor, published by
Edinburgh University's Talbot Rice Gallery and edited by Fisher and Minton.

You will probably want to reference a wide variety of sources in your writing, including films
and web pages.

The reference list or bibliography

A reference list is a list of all of the sources you have cited in your writing. A bibliography
includes other sources you have consulted as well as those you have cited. Most tutors will
expect you to create a bibliography that includes both works cited and other sources that
have informed your thinking (but are not directly cited).

Sources are usually listed in alphabetical order (by the author's last or family name)
and should not be numbered.
The list should appear on a new page at the end of your essay.

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This is an example of a short reference list (for an imaginary essay):

Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin
Books.

Bracewell, M. (2002) When surface was depth: Death by Cappuccino and other reflections on
music and culture in the 1990s. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.

Fer, B. (2007) The Colour of Slang. in David Batchelor Unplugged ed. by Fisher, P. and
Minton, M. eds. Edinburgh: Talbot Rice Gallery at the University of Edinburgh, 10-13.

Haldane, J. (2004) Edward La Dell and the Art of Popular Printmaking. The Art Book, 11 (1),
30-32.

Macmillan, D. (2002) The Art of Will MacLean: Symbols of survival. 2nd edn. Edinburgh: Art
First/Mainstream.

Searle, A. (2007) A study of horror and difference in the temple of liberal arts.The Guardian
Oct 8th, 21.

Sir Basil Spence Archive Project (2007) Coventry Cathedral [online] available from
<http://www.basilspence.org.uk/worship/buildings/coventry- cathedral> [31
October 2007].

Wegman, W. (1999) Fashion Photographs. New York: Harry N Abrams.

Wells, P. (2007) The language of animation. in An Introduction to Film Studies ed. by

Nelmes, J. Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 193-218.

Basic information to record for your reference list or bibliography

Keep a careful note of the information you need to include as you go along. The table below
summarises the information you usually need to note down for the main types of sources
you will use.

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Books Include the author(s), the year of publication, the title (and any subtitle on the title
page), the place of publication and the publisher. Look on the book's title page (and its
reverse, especially for dates). You may also need the edition number if it is not the first
edition.

Chapter from an edited book You will need the author(s) of the chapter, the title of the
chapter and the page numbers (starting and finishing page numbers of the chapter). You will
also need the editor(s) of the book, the title of the book and publication details as above
(year, place, publisher, edition).

Journal articles Here you will usually need the author(s), year of publication, the title of the
article, the title of the magazine, periodical or journal, the volume number (and part or
issue) and the page numbers (starting and finishing page numbers). If you accessed the
journal article in an electronic format, you will also need the internet address and to note
the date you accessed or downloaded it.

Websites You need to note down the title of the site and the title of the actual web page,
the url (the full www address of the web page - the internet address) and the date on which
you downloaded or accessed the page from the internet (plus the date it was last updated
or of publication if this is given). If it is obvious who produced the site, then include that
information (e.g. the name of an official body or an international gallery). The author's name
should appear in your citation and reference list if you are able to find the name of the
author (otherwise look for the name of an organisation). Similarly, the place of publication
and the publisher (this is obvious for some official sites, but others may be of unknown
origin). It is not always easy to tell who the author of a website is and you should take care
to assess the quality of the websites you use.

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Illustrations You may have used a source simply to get the illustration you wanted such as a
diagram or photograph. You must cite the source of the illustration, although you may want
to include this information in a separate list of sources for illustrations.

Illustrations

You will probably want to include images in your assignment. Normally illustrations should
be numbered (e.g. 'figure 1') and captioned. It is fairly easy to add numbered captions using
word processing software such as Word.

You should tell the person reading your essay to look at the image by using the figure
number (cross-referencing: 'see figure 1').

A caption for an artwork normally includes information such as the artist's name, the year
the work was produced and the title. It may be appropriate to add details such as the
dimension, the medium or material and the location (e.g. the gallery's name). Your course
tutor(s) may ask for a specific format and you should check course information.

You should include a meticulous list of sources for your illustrations at the end of the
assignment. (If you scanned an image from a book, state which one and give the page
number. If you used a webpage, be precise.) Follow the same format you have been asked
to use for referencing other printed or internet source material.

Glossary

Caption A title or brief explanation attached to an image. Usually numbered and cross-
referenced in the text.

Citation A referral to the work of another. It normally appears within the text and is
connected directly to the reference list or bibliography at the end of the piece of work. In
eca Harvard the citation and the bibliography are linked by author name(s), year of
publication and page numbers.

Footnotes A numeric system in which a note appears at the foot of the page within a
document. Footnotes can be used to provide additional information or elaboration
whatever referencing system you are using. (Footnotes should not be used for citations if
you are using the Harvard system.)

Endnotes A numeric system in which a note appears at the end of the document, or in a
longer written work, at the end of each chapter. It is unlikely that you will need to use
endnotes. (Endnotes should not be used for citations if you have been asked to use the eca
Harvard system.)

Reference The acknowledgement of a source of information; a full note of another person's

work.

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Reference list This is a list of all of the sources you have cited in your writing. It usually
appears at the end of your writing and is excluded from the word count.

Bibliography If you are writing a research-based assignment, an extended essay or

dissertation, you will usually be asked to produce a bibliography rather than a list of
references. What this means is that you should include all of the references you have cited
in your writing and any other sources which you consulted. This is likely to include books
and sources you have not specifically quoted from in your writing but that have informed
your thinking. The bibliography appears at the end of your document and is not usually
included in a word count.