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Transcript - How to use Cite Them Right

So here we are on the Open University Library home page. And you can find this by navigating to www.open.ac.uk/library. From this starting point there are three ways that you can access Cite Them Right. The easiest way is to use library search. And that's this big bar in the middle of the screen here. Type in Cite Them Right, and click Search. And you'll be taken to library search.  

The Cite Them Right database should come up as the first result. And you can access it by clicking the green Full Text Available link here.  

The other way of accessing Cite Them Right is to go through our A to Z list of databases in the Library Resources section. To access this, go to the Library Resources tab, click on Databases on the right hand side of the screen.  

There are over 500 databases in this list, so I'd advise that you narrow the results to those beginning with C by clicking on the letter C here. You can then scroll through the list of results until you find Cite Them Right. And you can access the database by clicking on Cite Them Right.  

The third way to find Cite Them Right is through the Help and Support section, which you can access by clicking on the Help and Support tab here. Then in the referencing guidelines section, click on Referencing and Plagiarism.  

The Referencing and Plagiarism page contains a lot more information about referencing, including the links to the OU Harvard style, a bit more information about the Cite Them Right pilot, and the link to the quick guide to Harvard referencing. Let's access the Cite Them Right database by clicking on the link here.  

Once you're in the Cite Them Right database, you can search for resources in three different ways. The first is by searching using either the search bar up here or from the home page here. I'm going to search for how to reference a book chapter.  

And from the list that appears, you just need to select the most appropriate looking resource. I'm going to select Chapters or Sections of Edited Books. Every entry in the Cite Them Right database shows you some information about the source that you're going to cite.  

The first is the citation order. And then it gives you an example of an in text citation and a full reference that would go into your reference list. There's also a handy tool here in the You Try section, where you can overtype the text with the details of the resource that you're trying to reference and then copy and paste the whole thing into Microsoft Word.  

The second way to search for a resource is to use the menu, which is at the top of the screen here. I'm going to try and reference an online journal article. So I would start by expanding Journals and then Journal Articles. There's four separate bits of guidance on how to reference journal articles depending on the type of format that you're referencing.  

The first is for journal articles that are electronic or print. There's a format for an electronic article with a DOI. There's electronic article with no print equivalents, so only a URL, but with no DOI. And there's also an option to reference the whole journal issue, rather than an individual article. And if I quickly scroll down, I'll show you that there is a citation order and examples of each of the different types.  

The third way to use Cite Them Right to search for a resource type is to use the index, which you can find on the top right here. I want to know how to reference a web page that has an organisation as an author, rather than a named person. So to find this, I'll expand on digital and internet. Then I'll expand this section, called The Internet, and then choose the section that looks most likely. I'll choose Web pages with organisations as authors. And again, this gives me all the information that I need to reference my web page.  

There's also some really handy help and tutorial sections within Cite Them Right. I'll start off by showing you the Basics section, which you can find on the top left of the screen here. The Basics section contains help and support in the form of short articles and some videos and covers a lot of topics, such as common knowledge, secondary referencing, paraphrasing, and what to include in your reference list.  

The tutorial section, which you can find in the right up here next to the index, contains interactive slides dealing with topics such as plagiarism and how to paraphrase. The tutorial contains short quizzes after each section to test understanding.  

To access the tutorial, click Launch Tutorial. You can create an account with Cite Them Right so that the system remembers your progress if you don't want to complete the tutorial in one go. Or you can access the tutorial without creating an account by clicking the Explore link here.  

The most important thing to remember when you're referencing is not to panic. The key to referencing is to be consistent. Can someone reading your work be sure when you're referencing someone else's work, and when it's your own work? And are they able to find your sources from the reference that you create?  

If you follow the template on Cite Them Right, you can't go wrong. As long as you include all the relevant information, which will allow someone to track down your sources, you'll be OK. 

May 09

Smarter searching with library databases

Thursday, 9 May, 2024 - 20:30

Learn how to access library databases, take advantage of the functionality they offer, and devise a proper search technique.

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