Transcript - The Why and How of Referencing using Cite Them Right

JUDE BENNETT: Hello, and welcome to this recording of the session the Why and How of Referencing using Cite Them Right from the OU library. My name is Jude Bennett, and I'm a Learning and Teaching librarian based here at the Open University Library in Milton Keynes. Before we start the session, please check that this is the right session for you.   

This session is about how to use the Cite Them Right style of referencing. Only selected modules will use Cite Them Right Harvard as their referencing style between October 2019 and September 2020. These modules are listed on screen now. Other modules will not be using Cite Them Right until October 2020.  

Please continue to refer to the referencing guidance that is given on your module website until then. If your module is not yet using Cite Them Right, you can join a live session or watch a recording of our session on referencing using OU Harvard by going to the Library Training and Events page and accessing the Why and How of Referencing page.  

By the end of this session, you should know why referencing is important, know what to reference when writing your assignments, and know how to construct references using the Cite Them Right database.  

Why is referencing important? Referencing is about signalling when other people's work has played a role in your assignments. Your references show that you have read around the subject, and your academic argument will be stronger if it's supported by evidence from other people's research.  

Others will be able to find and use the same sources that informed your work, which in turn allows them to check the validity and authenticity of your work as well as develop and enhance their own understanding of the subject. And identifying your sources helps you to avoid plagiarism by attributing the contribution of others to your work. And plagiarism is defined as using the work of other people to gain some form of benefit without formally acknowledging that the work came from someone else.  

So when do you need to reference? Basically, whenever you use someone else's ideas or words. If the thoughts are entirely your own or you refer to something which is known as common knowledge, you don't need to reference it. Common knowledge is facts, dates, events, and information which is widely known to the general public, like the name of the current prime minister, or something that is expected to be known by someone studying or working in a particular field. If you're not sure whether something is common knowledge, you could just ask your tutor or just reference it anyway.  

So what about URLs? If you have the URL, isn't it enough? Web pages have unique addresses so it's easy to revisit them. However, organisations often update their web pages, and it might be a while after you've written something that someone wants to track down your source. And in that time, the page you read may have changed or have disappeared completely. By including an access date, you're letting your readers know when you found the information.  

One thing that's worth noting while we're talking about URLs is that with Cite Them Right when an e-book looks like a printed book with publication details and pagination, you don't need to include a URL, because you can just reference it like a printed book. I'll talk a bit more about this a little later in the session.  

Elements of a reference. What I'm going to do now is show you the HTML landing page of an online journal article and show you all the different things that you'll need to find in order to construct your references.  

Here we are on the Science Direct database on the landing page for an online journal article called Motor performance or opportunities to move? What do children need the most? For most reference types, you'll need to know the title, which in this case is the Motor performance or opportunities to move.  

You'll also need to know the author or creator of the source. In this case, the author is listed here, Darla M Castelli. And you'll also need to know the year in which the source was created, in this case 2019. For journal articles, you'll need to know the name of the journal, which is listed here The Journal sports and Health Science, the volume and issue number, and the page references.  

In this case, they are all quite easy to spot, but you might have to search for them a little bit. You'll also need for online journal articles the DOI. In this case, this is given here. And if there isn't a DOI, you can just use the URL from the top here.  

So you can see that by gathering all these different bits of information, it's really easy for you to find your source again as well as construct your reference later on when you're writing your assignment.  

There are two parts to referencing, and I'm going to go over both of these in more detail now.  

The in-text citation acts like a flag to your reader that in this part of your writing, you're discussing someone else's work. You'll see these in your module materials.  

The full details of your resource aren't included here. They go into the full reference which goes at the end of your work. Here are some examples of how this might look, and here's how the in text citation for our article would look-- Castelli, 2019.  

A full reference is where you put all the details of the resource you're quoting or talking about. This goes at the end of your work in your bibliography or reference list. It matches up with your in-text citation.  

In the examples on the slide, the bottom one is a chapter in an ebook that you can find through the online library. I haven't included a URL in the reference as the book displays with pagination. The second example is an ebook that doesn't have pagination, it looks just like a web page. So I have referenced it following the Cite Them Right template for ebooks including the URL.  

If you've been using OU Harvard in your previous modules, I expect that you're a little worried about this change, but don't be. The first thing to note is that Cite Them Right Harvard is really similar to OU Harvard. I'll share some of the main differences with you on the next slide. So if you've been using OU Harvard in previous modules, you should have no trouble adapting to this new style.  

Cite Them Right has the advantage of being regularly updated to reflect changes in academic publishing. So you'll have a consistent resource of information on referencing to use across all of your modules. Cite Them Right Harvard is also readily available in many reference management tools, such as Mandalay or Zotero, which means that you have a chance to get a start in your reference list if you choose to use one of these tools.  

There is a quick guide to Cite Them Right available as a PDF for those times that you can't get to the database. And I'll put up the link to this at the end of the session. Cite Them Right is also really easy to use. Just select the type of source you want to reference and an example will be displayed of how to reference both in text and your reference list.  

So as I mentioned, don't worry if you're a continuing student that's used to using OU Harvard. The Cite Them Right style is really similar. I'll go over some of the main differences now, and then I'll show you how to use the database. So the key changes for full references are: that journal issue information doesn't have volume or number written in the reference, ND is written out fully as no date, online sources don't use the word online in square brackets as part of the full reference, and there are some minor changes to punctuation.  

Now let's have a look at the Cite Them Right database.  

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-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 that I mentioned earlier.  

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 a 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 over-type the text with the details or 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.  

So using the guidance from Cite Them Right on how to reference an ejournal article with a DOI, we can construct a full reference for our article, and it would look like this. So there's the author, Castelli, D, the title, Motor performance or opportunities to move, the journal name and issue information, and I've added the DOI.  

You'll note that there is no access date included in this reference. When using a DOI for a journal article reference, Cite Them Right doesn't require you to include an access date. This is only included when you're using a URL.  

The most obvious thing that you won't find in Cite Them Right is specific guidance on how to cite OU module materials. Going forward, this won't be provided, and it'll be up to you to find out what you think is the most appropriate section in Cite Them Right to use for whatever it is that you're referencing. Then just apply it consistently.  

There are a few suggestions of different sections on the slide, and the Quick Guide document also has suggestions for common types of module materials. But these are by no means prescriptive. You can use other Cite Them Right templates if you feel them to be more appropriate for your particular need.  

A golden rule of referencing is that you should only ever reference what you've read. But you may want to use a quotation or an idea from a source which is mentioned or quoted in a work you've read. You haven't read the original, but you've discovered it through a secondary source, and this is known as secondary referencing. As you haven't read the original, you create the reference for the source that you read and use the in text citation to flag that this is a secondary reference. There's a help article about secondary referencing in the Cite Them Right database in the Basics section should you need more information.  

I'd now suggest that you pause the recording and spend five minutes using the Cite Them Right database to find as many of the following references as you can. So find how to reference a YouTube video, an ejournal article with a DOI, referencing a print book chapter, find the Help article about secondary reference and guidance on quotations in your work. Remember that you can search Cite Them Right using the menu, the index, or the search box.  

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.  

What follows are five short multiple choice questions. I'll pause for a few seconds after each question to give you time to think before I reveal the answer.  

Where would this go, Bloggs, 2017? Would it go A; into the Library Search box, B; in my reference list or bibliography, C; at the bottom of the page, or D; at the point in my work where I'm talking about Bloggs' ideas?  

The correct answer is D, at the point in my work where I'm talking about Bloggs' ideas. This is an example of an in text citation and would go into the body of your writing.  

What's missing from this reference? Is it A; the author, B; year of publication, C; volume, or D; title of the journal?  

The correct answer is D; the title of the journal. The journal title is missing and the full reference should look like this, with the journal title, American Journal of Public Health inserted in between the article title and the issue information.  

Why would you include an accessed date? This question is specifically about referencing a web page. A; I wouldn't, B; because my tutor needs to know I looked at a web page recently, C; because the web page I looked at might change after I read it, or D; so that I know when I look to the web page?  

The correct answer is C, because the web page I looked at might change after I read it. This also applies to some online journal articles and some ebooks. Check the template in Cite Them Right to see whether you need to include an accessed date.  

What is secondary referencing? Is it A; referencing you do in school, B; referencing something you want to quote which you haven't read but is quoted in something else that you have, C; what goes into my reference list at the end, or D; when you refer to the same resource more than once?  

The correct answer is B, referencing something you want to quote which you haven't read but is quoted in something else that you have.  

Which of the following do I need to reference? A; the date of the famous battle, B; the freezing point of water zero degrees Celsius, C; direct quotation from a book you've read, or D; e equals m.c. squared?  

The correct answer is C, a direct quotation from a book you've read.  

Everything else would be considered common knowledge. So you wouldn't need to reference it. And there was a help page on the Cite Them Right database, which is all about common knowledge if you need some more information.  

Where should you go for help after this session?  

Your module will have details of how you should reference, including which reference styles you should use and any other information that they think that you'll need, and this should be your first port of call. The library website has a section on referencing, which includes links to the quick guide to Cite Them Right and more resources to help you with referencing. The Developing Good Academic Practise site is a university resource and also provides some guidance on referencing.  

And if you have any problems with referencing at any point, you can contact the library help desk and we will help you. Details of how to contact the library can be found on every page of the library website. You can call us or send us an email. Our office hours are 9:00 to 5:00, Monday to Friday, or our web chat is available 24/7.  

We've now come to the end of this session. You should now know why referencing is important, know what to reference when writing your assignments, and know how to construct references using the Cite Them Right database.  

If you want to download the quick guide to Cite Them Right, or the slides for this session, or the accompanying handout, you can do so from the links that are now on screen.  

We would also really appreciate your feedback, which you can give by clicking on the link on the screen, which will take you to a short feedback form.  

Thank you.