One of the areas that a lot of new students run into trouble with is referencing.

I'm going to talk you through a commonly used style known as Harvard referencing.

When you're writing a piece of academic work, you'll be researching and reading a lot of

work done by others to help formulate your ideas and arguments.

You need to acknowledge where you found the information; not only because it's fair to

give credit to the person whose hard work you're using, but also to avoid plagiarism.

When using the Harvard referencing system, there are two stages to highlighting other

people's work in your own, citing or referencing.

Citing or citation is what you do in the text of your essay, where you highlight words or

ideas that you've incorporated from somebody else's work.

Referencing, is where you put all of the details of the source of the information that you've

used at the end of your work in a separate section.

The way that you use citation in your work, depends on whether you're using a direct word

for word quote from another piece of work or if you're putting somebody else's ideas

into your own words.

If you're copying a statement word for word, you need to put quotation marks around it.

If you're writing somebody else's ideas in your own words, then you don't need to use

quotation marks.

For both direct quotes and putting somebody else's work into your own words, you need

to then indicate the source of the information, in brackets, at the end.

These details are there to lead the reader to the full information at the back of the

document.

A citation only includes a maximum of three pieces of information.

If you're copying a direct quote, this will be: the authors surname, the year the source

was published and the page number.

If it's not a direct quote, you should include the author and the year the source was published.

The reference section of your work should include all of the information about the source

of the statement that you've used in your essay.

Each separate source of information should always start with the same information as

the citation in your essay, so the source materials' details can easily be found.

You should then organise each source alphabetically by the author.

If for any reason there is no author, you should use the title of the source instead.

Under the Harvard system, the order you present the information for each of your sources has

to be done in a particular way.

If you've got your information from a book, then you need to write down the following:

The author or editor, the year of publication in round brackets, the title in italics; bold

or underlined, the edition if it is not the first edition, the place of publication and

the publisher, the series and volume number where relevant.

If you used the information from an ebook in your work, then you need to write down

the following: The author or editor, the

year of publication in round brackets, the title in italics; bold or underlined, name

of the ebook collection in italics; bold or underlined, the phrase "Online" in square

brackets, the words "available at" followed by the url of the ebook, the word "accessed"

followed by the date you accessed the information in brackets.

If you used the information from a journal in your work,

The author, the year of publication in round brackets, the

title of the article in single quotation marks, the title of the journal in italics; bold

or underlined and the volume, issue and page numbers.

If you used information from an online journal in your work, then you need to write down

the following: The author, the year of publication in round

brackets, the title of the article in single quotation marks, the title of the journal

in italics; bold or underlined, the volume, issue and page numbers, the name of the collection

in italics; bold or underlined, the phrase "Online" in square brackets, the words "available

at" followed by the url of the online journal article, the word "accessed" followed by the

date you accessed the information in brackets.

If you used information from a web page in your work, then you need to include:

The author or publishing organisation, the year that the site was published or last updated

in round brackets, the title of the internet site in italics; bold or underlined, the words

"available at" followed by the url of the web page, the word "accessed" followed by

the date you accessed the information in brackets.

If you want any more information on referencing, then visit the study skills section of the

University of Derby website.