Managing information and referencing
During the course of writing an essay, report or other assignment it is usual to support arguments by referring to, or citing, information produced by other authors. This information could be presented in journal or newspaper articles, government reports, books or specific chapters of books, research dissertations or theses, material over the internet etc.
Why is citing important
If you refer to other people's work in your writing, you should include correct citations to:
- Avoid committing plagiarism,
- Avoid breaking copyright law, and
- Allow your readers to find and read your sources of information
What are citations
Citations indicate which ideas are taken from others and from whom those ideas were taken; in other words, they give credit where credit is due. Citations allow researchers to find, read and comment on each others' sources.
When do I need to cite a source
- To show anyone who reads your work that you understand the topic and can demonstrate your own thoughts on this.
- To demonstrate that you have read widely and deeply.
- To enable the reader to locate where you obtained each quote or idea.
- By providing a reference to the original source you are acknowledging that you have read the work and recognize the original author(s) ideas.
How do you cite documents in your work at ISU
Each school in the University requires students to use a specific style of referencing. At the International Space University, we use the Harvard System of Referencing (Anglia Ruskin University), also known as the Author-Date method.
All your citations and references should match the style you are using exactly, including any punctuation, capitalization, italics and bold, and you should use the same referencing style throughout your assignment.
All your citations and references should match the style you are using exactly, including any punctuation, capitalization, italics and bold, and you should use the same referencing style throughout your assignment.
Other guides to common styles
Additional styles (ACS, IEEE, ASA, etc.) are available from Concordia University Libraries in case you need to publish in journals or at conferences.
Bibliographic management tools
If you are doing intensive research you may want to use reference management programs (also known as citation manager or bibliographic management software). These programs will help you organize your research sources and generate bibliographies in multiple citation formats.
Using reference management software can save you many hours of compiling, checking, and correcting your references, and improves consistency and accuracy.
Mendeley
- PDF annotation and highlighting
- Organization and sharing of your PDFs, including annotations, with others
- Bibliography formatting using over 1,000 journal citation styles
- Personal profile building that allows you to showcase your research
- Learn to use Mendeley (YouTube)
Zotero
- Create a library of self-indexed files, including PDFs, images, video, and more
- Tag items in your library for easy grouping and retrieval
- Format manuscripts and bibliographies in over 1,000 journal citation styles
- Form and join research groups that share access to a common file library
- Learn to use Zotero (YouTube). Credit: Ohio University
RefWorks
RefWorks is a commercial web-based bibliography and database manager that allows you to create your own personal database by importing references from text files or online databases and other various sources. You can use these references in writing papers and automatically format the paper and the bibliography in seconds. It is produced by ProQuest.
- Collect and Import - With RefWorks it is simple and fast, to collect or import materials. Auto completion of reference data and retrieval of full text saves time and ensures accurate citations.
- Manage Research - RefWorks enables users to organize, read, and annotate everything they collect and import.
- Share and Collaborate - RefWorks smoothly allows users to share collections and collaborate with others.
- Write and Cite - RefWorks is accurate, delivering thousands of customizable citation styles to use within authoring tools.
- Streamlined Workflows - RefWorks makes research management and paper-writing easy with streamlined workflows that increase productivity.
- Learn to use RefWorks (YouTube)
EndNote
EndNote is a commercial reference management software package, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays and articles. It is produced by Thomson Reuters.
(On-site access via Université de Strasbourg libraries)
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