Referencing

When you are writing an essay, report or other assignment it is usual to support your arguments by reference to other published work.

These references may be from work presented in journal or newspaper articles, government reports, books or specific chapters of books, research dissertations and theses, material from the Internet etc.

There are three main reasons for citing accurate references:

1. To give credit to other authors' concepts and ideas;
2. To provide the reader (often the marker/examiner of the assignment) with evidence of the breadth and depth of your reading; and
3. To enable the readers of your work to locate the cited references easily. In this way dissemination of information can take place effectively.

We have provided you with a detailed guide to the most common forms of referencing - just choose an option from the menu on the left (the options appear as you hover over 'referencing'.

If you can't see the menu, please use the links below.

• Harvard Referencing
• Oxford Referencing
• OSCOLA Referencing
• APA Referencing
• MLA Referencing
• Turabian Referencing
• Chicago Referencing
• Open University Referencing
• Vancouver Referencing
• Kent University MHRA Referencing Guide (PDF)
• BMJ Referencing
• Referencing Software

Plagiarism

By giving appropriate acknowledgement to the sources you have used and to ideas that you have developed other than your own, you will avoid plagiarism, which passes off the work of others as your own. We have a lot more information on plagiarism for you and this can be found by clicking the link on the menu, or clicking here.