Transcript - The why and how of referencing

TRAINER: My name is Raj Harrison, and I'm one of the learning and teaching librarians at The Open University. Welcome to this library training session, the why and how of referencing. Referencing is about signalling when other people's work has played a role in your assignments. In this session, we're going to cover the why and how of referencing. We'll be focusing on Cite Them Right Harvard, which is the main style of referencing at The Open University. 

So how confident do you feel about referencing? So before we get started with this session itself, I'd like you to spend a few moments thinking about your current confidence levels with referencing. So how confident do you feel about referencing? A, not at all, B, not very, C, OK, D, very confident. You might like to note down your response so that you can revisit it at the end of this session. Whether you're new to referencing or looking for a refresher, I hope you'll find this session useful. 

So the learning outcomes for this session are you will understand why referencing is important, know what to reference when writing your assignments, know how to construct references, know where to find referencing guidance. 

So why do you think you need to reference? So first, we're going to consider why we need to reference. You might like to pause the video and spend a few minutes thinking about why you need to put references in your assignments. You could also make a note of your ideas if you like. 

Why reference? You might have thought of some of these already. These are the main reasons-- to give credit to other people's ideas or work, to show that you've read around the subject, to strengthen your argument by providing supporting evidence, to enable your readers to find the sources you've used in your work and so evaluate your interpretations. To avoid plagiarism by clearly showing when you've used another person's ideas. 

So the definition of plagiarism comes from the Cite Them Right guidance. "Plagiarism is a term that describes the unacknowledged use of someone's work. Using the words or ideas of others without referencing your source would be construed as plagiarism." 

So when do you need to reference? We've thought about why you reference. Let's move on to when you need to reference. You need to put a reference when you're using someone else's ideas or words. This could be either using a direct quote, or if you're summarising or paraphrasing a section or just mentioning something that came from someone else. 

The exception to this is what is known as common knowledge. Common knowledge is facts, dates, events, and information widely known to the general public or someone studying or working in a particular subject. For example, stating the name of the current prime minister would be considered common knowledge. If you're unsure whether something is common knowledge, it is always advisable to cite and reference it. 

So how do you reference? We're now going to go over how you reference. Most styles of referencing have two parts, the in-text citation and the full reference at the end of your work. I'm going to go over both in more detail.

So the in-text citation acts like a flag to your reader that, in this part of your writing, you are referring to someone else's work. You will see these in your module materials. In-text citations have brief details about a source, usually the author and date of publication, sometimes page numbers if using a direct quote or referring to specific sections in a source. The full details of your source aren't included here. They go into the full reference, which goes at the end of your work. There are different ways incorporating in-text citations into your work. We've included some examples of how these look on the slide. 

Full reference. A full reference is where you put all of the details of a resource you're quoting or talking about. And this goes at the end of your work, in your bibliography or reference list. It matches up with your in-text citation. So every in-text citation must also be fully referenced in your reference list. How your full reference looks will be dependent on the type of source you're using and the reference style you are using. 

Presenting your full reference list. Here is an example reference list using the Cite Them Right Harvard style. It is a complete list of all the sources you refer to in your assignment. It is in alphabetical order by author name. Each source should appear once in your reference list. 

Referencing at the Open University. The main referencing style in use at the Open University is Cite Them Right Harvard. It's used in most modules. Other referencing styles do exist. For example, some older modules may use OU Harvard, and specific subject areas, such as law, may use other referencing styles. 

It's a good idea to check the assessment information-- usually, a guide or a section on your module website-- to confirm which referencing style you should be using. If you can't find the information in the assessment information, please speak to your tutor who will be able to advise about which referencing style you should use. 

The library website has a section on referencing and plagiarism, which links through to the Cite Them Right online guide. I'm going to now show you how to access it. So I'm going to be describing in a bit more detail when I do the demonstration for accessibility purposes. And I'll increase the size of my screen at 225%. 

So this is the library website. You can find a wealth of information to help you during your studies here. So I'm going to click on the tab-- one of the black tabs in the middle-- and click on Help and Support. And I'm going to scroll down, and on the left-hand side of the page, under Help and Support and Referencing Guidelines, I'm going to click on the link that says Referencing and Plagiarism, which is the first link in that area. 

So this opens the Referencing and Plagiarism page. So now, I'm going to scroll down the page. This page has advice about referencing and links to referencing guides. It also includes information about other referencing styles used at the Open University on the right-hand side. 

As I've already mentioned, please do check the assessment information on your module website and find which referencing style you will need to use. So as I've said, most modules now use Cite Them Right Harvard. And so here, you can find a link to Cite Them Right, The Online Guide, and some other useful information. 

There is a link here to referencing physical and online module materials, which is just a quick guide to show you what you might use within Cite Them Right to reference your module materials. And the library has also a quick guide to Harvard referencing, which has got loads of examples about how to reference particular types of resources. 

So now, I'm going to just scroll back up, and on the left-hand side, I'm going to open the Cite Them Right Online Guide. I'm going to open it into a new tab. So it opens right next to the referencing and plagiarism page I just talked through. So what I'm going to be looking for, when I'm in Cite Them Right, is for e-journal articles and how to reference them. So Cite Them Right has now opened. There are different ways to find information. 

So you can either click into the Search box at the top and click on the magnifying glass to click Search, but what I need to do first is, I'm going to choose my referencing style. So just here in the middle, where it says Welcome to Cite Them Right, I'm going to click on Choose Your Referencing Style and then I'm going to scroll down, and on the left-hand side, where it's got Harvard, I'm going to click into that. 

So now, this opens the Cite Them Right Harvard referencing guide. So if I was looking for e-journal articles, as I mentioned, you could put it into the search box here. You could also scroll down and go into journals, or you could click on the Quick Links that are listed in the middle of the page here. 

So I'm going to click into the quick guide-- the quick links, sorry-- and click on Journals. This takes me down-- a little bit further down the page to Journals. And I'm going to click on Journal Articles. So this has taken me into the section for journal articles. So I can see it here in the middle where it's says Journal Articles and Harvard. 

And so this gives you guidance on all of the different ways that you can reference journal articles. It's got the citation order of how your reference could be written. It's got details of what should be included. And it tells you, if it's accessed online, to include the DOI, which is a digital object identifier, which is a unique number given to journal articles-- or the URL. And if you do use the URLs, you need to put the accessed date as well. 

So examples. You've got an example of a print article and how to reference that. An example of a electronic article with the DOI. And as you go further down, it will give you a bit more articles examples using DOI or URL. And also, there's an option here about electronic articles with article number instead of page numbers. And then further down, it gives you a bit more information about whole issue numbers-- examples. 

So I'm going to stick with the one which is electronic article with DOI. And so here, you can see, on the right-hand side, it says You Try. And what you can do is type over these with the reference that you might have. 

And then you can either copy and paste it into your document or you can email it to yourself in case you're not-- you don't want to do the work at that time. And you can go back to it once you've got your email. And so you've got the option there to be able to send the information. And let's go over the information already in the box. 

So the templates are very useful. And it's easy, because you just have to copy and paste once you put the details in. The Cite Them Right guide also has a section called Basics of Referencing. So I'm just going to click into that tab there on the right-hand side. This opens up a whole page. 

And there's lots of help and support in the form of short articles and some videos, and it covers a lot of topics, such as common knowledge, secondary referencing, what to include in your reference list. So Cite Them Right is an incredibly comprehensive resource. The important thing to remember is that you do not need to memorise the guide, but consult it as needed. So I'm just going to come back to the slides. 

So I'm now going to-- so now, I'm going to have a look at an e-journal article and have a go at creating a reference for it using the Cite Them Right Harvard style. So this is the article example. So you can click onto the link and you can read the article itself when you've got the handouts and the slides. I'm just going to open up the article. 

But you can pause the video and spend some time looking at the article and identify what you need to be able to reference that at a later point. You might like to make a note of your ideas. So what information do you think we need from this journal article be able to reference it completely? You can pause the video now, because I'm just about to go through what you need. 

So the information we would need from the article to reference it includes the author, the date it was published, the journal name, which is Critical Criminology, the issue number is 29. The volume number is not given at this point. The page numbers are here. And the digital object identifier is here. 

So to be able to find things again-- and successfully-- you need to reference them. And to be able to reference them, you need to make a note of any details that you have about the source so it's easier to find and easier to reference in your assignment. 

So you might be wondering why there's a missing issue number. Well, sometimes, you can find information about a source, but it's not always straightforward. And so it requires a little bit of detective work. So just remember that not all journal articles have issue numbers, for example, if the journal is published once a year. Increasingly, some journal articles do not have the traditional page numbers, and they instead have an online reference. 

So in the case of this journal article, we could check the details by going to the journal home page and tracking down the issue information for volume 29. So for this article, it's Critical Criminology, Volume 29, Issue 3. And also, if you are using web links and links, some pages may disappear or change. So sometimes, having a link or a URL is not enough. So it's worth putting the accessed date so that the reader of your work knows when you accessed it, just in case something changes with the website. 

So I'm going to go back to the slides, so it may go quiet while I do that. So we're going to now look at how we would reference this article now that we've got all the elements of it. So using the different elements that we've just identified on the Cite Them Right guidance, we can now create a reference for our Critical Criminology article. It would look like this. 

So we've got the author. We've got the publication date. We've got the article name. We've got the journal title. We've got the volume and the issue number, after doing a little bit of digging. We've got the page numbers. And we've got the DOI. 

So for the in-text citation, you usually do it two ways. So you can do it with Dimou 2021 or you could add the idea that you're thinking about using and then add in the author name and the publication date next to the idea in your body of work. 

So secondary referencing. So what is it and how do you do it? So you may want to use a quotation or an idea from a source referenced in a work you've read. So you haven't actually read the original, but have discovered it through a secondary source. This is known as secondary referencing. 

So there is a section in Cite Them Right Harvard with examples on how to reference a second-- how to reference a source quoted in another author's work. And there are examples in there about how to do it and how to set up the in-text citation reference. So the link's in the slide. So if you download the slides, you'll be able to link directly to it. 

So let's have a look at the article that we're-- the Critical Criminology article by Dimou from 2021. So this is an extract from that Critical Criminology article that we looked at previously. So let's just imagine I wanted to use the idea by Quijano for my assignment. I haven't actually read the work of Quijano, so how would I reference this source in my assignment using the Cite Them Right Harvard? 

So we've put this into a secondary referencing example. So in the in-text citation, we would put Quijano and the year of his idea, so 2000. And then would put it in cited in Dimou in 2021. So we would use the in-text citation to signal that we're using secondary referencing. So we've included the original author and the date, and we've also included the author of the thing we have read, so the article by Dimou in 2021, in the in-text citation. 

So you either use the phrase quoted in or cited in depending on whether the author of the secondary source is directly quoting or summarising from the primary source. So for the full reference, we only use the details of the item we have actually read. So here the example is of the article that we've actually looked at by Eleni Dimou from 2021. 

So I hope that makes sense. But let's have a look. So what if you can't find the source type you need in the guide? So you might find that the Cite Them Right guide doesn't always have specific guidance for the type of source that you want to reference. So if this happens, you can identify as much information as you can about your item so that you can create a reference for it. 

A good tip is to think about what information others would need to be able to locate the source you've used-- for example, the author, who produced the source? Date. What year was it produced or updated? Title. What is the title of the source? The source itself. What type of source is it? Is it online, print? Is it part of a larger publication, for example, a newspaper? Or is it part of a series, for example, a journal or a particular edition? How did you access it? When did you access it? Make a note of the URLs if it is a web source, and the date you accessed it. 

So once you've got all of the relevant details for your source, you can use similar examples from the Cite Them Right guide to help you create your reference. Don't be afraid to merge different examples if that would suit your reference better. The key thing here is to apply the Cite Them Right Harvard style so that your references are consistent and providing enough information about a source so that other people could find it again if they wanted to. Remember, you can always contact the library help desk if you're unsure and need some further guidance. 

So it's quiz time. So I've got a few quiz questions for you. So where would this go? Bloggs, 2019. So would it go into the library search box, in my reference list or bibliography, at the bottom of the page, at the point in my work where I'm talking about Bloggs' ideas. So I'm about to reveal the answer. So if you want to pause the video, you can do before I reveal it. So the correct answer is D. So this is an example of an in-text citation that would go into the body of your work.

So the next question. What is secondary referencing? Is it referencing you do in school, references that you want to quote which you haven't read but is quoting something else you have? What goes into my reference list at the end. When you refer to the same resource more than once. I'm about to reveal the answer, so pause if you need to. So the correct answer is B, referencing something you want to quote which you haven't, but is quoting something else you have.

So what's missing from this reference? Is it the author, the year of publication, the volume, the title of the journal? So the correct answer is D. Title of the journal is the correct answer. The journal title is missing, and the full reference should look like this one below. So Photographies is the name of the actual journal title which is missing from the above reference. 

So where should you go for help after this session? You can get help from your module. So your module will have details of how you should reference, including which referencing style you should use. If you can't find the information in the assessment information, then please speak to your tutor. They will be able to advise about which referencing style you should use. 

The library website has a section Referencing and Plagiarism-- we had a look at it quickly earlier-- which includes the link to the Cite Them Right quick guide and the full Cite Them Right online guide. If you have any problems with referencing, you can contact the library and we will help. Details of how to contact the library can be found on every page of the library website. 

So additional information and guidance. So you can have a look at some of these if you feel like you want to explore the guidance about referencing. So unpicking a reference. This activity will help you decide what format each reference refers to. You've also got an introduction to Referencing and Cite Them Right. So that activity helps you to understand why referencing is important and be able to construct references in the Cite Them Right version of Harvard. 

So learning outcomes revisited. So by the end of this session, you will understand why referencing is important, know what to reference when writing your assignments, know how to construct references, know where to find referencing guidance. 

So how confident do you now feel about referencing? So take a moment to think about how confident you feel about referencing now. Do you feel A, not at all, B, not very confident, C, you feel OK about it, D, you're very confident? 

So if you do have any questions about referencing or would like further advice, then please do contact the library help desk. So details are available on the library website, which can be found on every page of the library website. And finally, these are the references that we've used for the items through the presentation slides. Thank you very much for attending this session and watching this session. Please do contact the library if you need any more help. And thank you very much.