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• Advanced Referencing

Introduction to Advanced Referencing

Now you have learned how to cite and reference everyday books, journals and websites, this section introduces you to some of the styles used for less commonly referenced materials such as government documents, electronic sources, visual media etc.

First, there are some general rules and questions of style in referencing that will help you to add variety to the way you cite sources in your writing, and help you compile your list of references in a consistent way.

When you have finished this section there is an Advanced Quiz with which you can assess how well you understand the key issues in using the Harvard system.

Some Rules

• At undergraduate and postgraduate levels of academic writing you should only include in your end-of-text References section sources that you have mentioned and cited in the text.
  
  

  Exceptions
  There are times though when you may be asked to provide a comprehensive Bibliography as well as a References section - for example, for a PhD thesis - which may include everything you have accessed, including items that had no significant influence on the writing.

• By contrast when an article is published in a journal the editors expect authors to limit the use of the References section to only those sources that have influenced the content of the article.
• References must be obtainable at the time of writing eg from libraries or online archives.
  
  

  Why?
  To allow the reader to verify the existence of a source of information and potentially gain access to read it for themselves.
  

  1. Unpublished theses must be located in a library (usually the library of the university awarding the research degree).
  2. But what about resources that you may have used that are of temporary nature, such as emails that are not available from an archive, or a radio programme that is not available in a recorded format, for example?
  
  Action:
  These can be cited in the text but should not appear in the end-of-text References, because they cannot be accessed by readers.

• The information provided in a full reference must enable retrieval by any reader ie there must be enough information to ensure this; that is the guiding principle for referencing any source.
  
  
  1. So check any unusual references against this principle eg for an unpublished thesis the higher education institution concerned must be mentioned, for a videotape the producer/publisher and their location.
     
  2. Always remember to write your reference when you have consulted a source, this will help you record the source of information for your coursework.