References

It is important that you keep track of your sources when you write an assignment. It must be quite clear when you are including the work of others in your text. This is a guide for how to cite sources in study assignments.

Referencing deals with how to handle the sources you use in your written assignments. It is common practice to cite the knowledge you make use of. When you cite a source, you give credit to the author and avoid plagiarism. Furthermore, you make it easy for your teacher and co-examiner to find the material you have used in your assignment. In short, you must always be able to document where the source you use in the assignment comes from.

As a general rule, any knowledge taken from books, reports, pictures, articles, interviews, assignments (including your own!) and statistics etc. must be cited. General knowledge, such as the financial crisis of 2008 or the fact that the earth is round, should of course not be cited.

Sources may be cited in many ways. The most important thing is that you are consistent. Be aware, however, of any standard of referencing preferred by your teacher/study programme.

One of the most popular referencing standards is Harvard. If you use the Harvard referencing standard, citations must appear directly in the text and include the author name(s) and year as well as page number(s), unless you are referring to the entire book.

So, if you choose Harvard, your references will not be in the form of foot notes, but rather integrated like this:

As an entrepreneur, you will undoubtedly meet challenges; competitors on the market, recession and lack of capital. But if you want to be successful, you have to put your head into the lions mouth and take risks (Churchill, 1900, p. 388)

You may also cite your source as an even more integrated part of your text:

As an entrepreneur, you will undoubtedly meet challenges; competitors on the market, recessions and lack of capital. But according to Winston Churchill (1900, p. 388), you must put your head into the lion's mouth if the performance is to be a success, so taking risks are part of the game. 

Sometimes it is a good idea to use a direct quotation, in particular if the quotation is so precise, brief and clear that it may be difficult to rephrase. The quotation must be in quotes followed by the name of the author(s). If the quotation is longer than 3 lines, indent it from the rest of your text. When you cite a source, make an exact copy of the quote. Do not attempt to correct the spelling or punctuation. In addition, you must always make it clear if a citation has been translated.

“The general must not be afraid to brave disaster. But how tolerant the arm-chair critics should be of men who try coups and fail! You must put your head into the lion's mouth if the performance is to be a success.” (Churchill, 1900, p. 389)

Each time you cite a source in your text, you must include the full citation in your bibliography. In other words, it must be easy for the reader to see the citation in the text and find the full citation in the bibliography.

Your bibliography is a list of all the sources you have used in your assignment. The bibliography should only contain the sources that you cite in your assignment. Sources that are cited more than once should only be listed once in the bibliography.

Your bibliography should be placed at the end of the assignment, typically on the page after the conclusion. The list must be set in alphabetical order by the surname of the author. You should not categorize the list by document type.

There is a difference between the way a book, an article or a website are written in the bibliography:

When you use other people's artwork and images, it is important to observe the rules on copyright and author’s rights. It is far from all images you may use as you see fit, and many images are protected by copyright.

However, there are image databases you can use free of charge. Try to google images with creative commons rights or use the library database Colourbox. Remember that no matter where you find the images, always double check that they can be used without the author’s permission.

Images and illustrations that are not your own must always be referenced in a separate image list, which comes after the bibliography. Therefore, when you refer to an image in your text, you must specify an image number and, possibly, a caption. The number will help the reader find the full citation and information about the owner in the image list.

Examples of using images in the text:

Digital tools can help you manage citations in your assignment. Using these tools not only ensures consistent and clear citations, it can also enable you to generate your bibliography with a single click.

You can use Word’s reference functionality or choose a standalone program for the job. Both solutions have pros and cons, so choose the one which meets your needs the best.

References in Word

Word has native support for managing references and generating bibliographies.

Watch the video below to get started using references in Word.

Standalone applications

Another option is to use a standalone application for organising and citing your references. These programs allow you to organise, collaborate and share your references within your study group. Furthermore, you can use plugins to integrate with other programs and hence get reference functionality in Google Docs and save articles directly from your browser.

Examples of standalone applications: Zotero and Mendeley.

Here you can find tools and further inspiration. Please note that all the services are free of charge, but some require that you register as a user.