Research Skills: Referencing

Referencing (also known as citing or acknowledging your source) means showing in your assignment the sources you have used to develop your ideas. A reference includes:

• A mention of the source in the text of your assignment (this might be a general reference to the author, a quotation, or paraphrasing/summarising ideas from the original source).

• Full details of the source (e.g. author, year, title, source and volume/page details, URL) in a reference list at the end of your assignment - usually ordered alphabetically by author's surname.

• When you summarise, paraphrase or quote directly from a source.
• You might also need to include in your reference list other works you have consulted for background information (this is a called a Bibliography) - check with your teacher if you are not sure what is needed. 

If a piece of information is common knowledge (known by a lot of people or available from a large number of sources), there is no need to provide a reference. For example - Canberra is the capital of Australia; the 1956 Summer Olympics were held in Melbourne. 

• To show that you have carried out wider research for your assignment
• To help to strengthen your arguments by showing that they are supported by experts writing on the subject
• To acknowledge the work of others, and avoid copying or plagiarising their work 
• So that a reader can easily find the sources you have used

Two referencing systems are used at Northcote High School - APA  and Harvard referencing. Check with your teacher to see which one you should use. The latest style of APA is the 7th edition, but check with your teacher which edition they would like you to use.

Both are "Author-date" systems which means the citation within the text looks like this:

Referencing systems have rules about how to format your references, for example:

• how to reference difference types of resources (e.g. a book, website or newspaper article)
• how to reference works with single or multiple authors
• how to format a quotation in your text (usually short quotations are treated differently to long quotations)

In the bibliography, a reference using Harvard would look like this:

Using APA, the reference would look slightly different:

A reference list, generally, contains only sources you have cited in-text in your assignment.

A bibliography, generally, is a list of all the sources you used to generate your ideas about the topic including those cited in your assignment as well as those you did not cite.

However, the terms reference list and bibliography are sometimes used interchangeably so it is very important to check with your teacher to make sure you know what is required for your assignment

Reference generators are a quick way to reference your work but they are not always accurate. If using a reference generator make sure to check for errors before submitting your assignment.