Evaluation of resources……………………………………………………..3
Academic citation…………………………………………………………….4
Good reasons for citation……………………………………………………4
How does one cite correctly and avoid plagiarism? ……………………..5
Citation styles…………………………………………………………………6
Author-date Method ………………………………………………………….7
Citing sources within the
text……………………………………………….7
List of references at the
end of the text………………………………… 8
References to books ………………………………………………………..8
References to journal
articles …………………..………………………..10
References to a thesis or an unpublished discussion………………….11
References to electronic
resources ……………………..………………..11
Secondary sources …………………………………………………………13
Style variations………………………………………………………………..13
The American Psychological Association (APA)
Convention……………14
The MLA Convention ………………………………………………………..14
Numbered References: Footnotes and Endnotes ………………………..16
References and useful readings ……………………………………………20
Students are often unsure of exactly what plagiarism is and how it affects them. Especially these days with the ease of cutting and pasting from the Internet, student plagiarism has become an issue of great concern in academic institutions and it is very important to realize that any accusation of plagiarism will be serious and could be dealt with very severely.
Plagiarism essentially is the stealing of others’ words, thoughts and ideas and is treated like fraud. Ignorance or carelessness is no excuse. Be aware that it is not acceptable academic practice under any circumstances to “lift” text and to present it as your own. There are sophisticated Web sites and techniques specifically aimed at tracking down all kinds of plagiarism. UCT has now invested in software known as “Turnitin” which has been designed to assist in detecting plagiarism in student work and you may be required to submit your work electronically, so that it may be tested in this way. Students found guilty could at best fail their course, or at worst face expulsion from their academic institution.
Although this punitive & legalistic approach may be regarded as draconian by students who often mean no harm by cutting and pasting, it is important that you realize that doing this has very serious implications. This booklet should help you to understand how to deal with the writing of others without resorting to plagiarism.
Students are increasingly relying on using information resources from the World Wide Web for their own learning. It is important that you understand that Web sources might be substantially different from sources that you might find in the academic library.
The major difference is that articles on
the Web are not peer reviewed. Anybody can publish anything on the Web. Peer
review consists of a rigorous process of anonymous review of all papers that
are offered for publication in academic journals. It is a lengthy and time
consuming process which (even though not entirely immune to abuse) ensures
accountability and reliability in the transfer of knowledge. Peer review
produces papers that are essentially different from articles in newspapers and
journals like the
The first question you therefore have to answer when faced with some potentially interesting information source on the Web is to establish where it comes from. Are the authors named and do they belong to a creditable organization? Look at the Web address or the URL: “.ac” or “.edu” indicates an academic and “.gov” a governmental provenance, while “.com” or “.co” clearly has commercial implications. If a site is anonymous you should tread carefully, as you would when there are readily apparent language errors. Reputable authors sign their work and check their language.
The tone of a text should be considered. Extravagant statements or over-emphatic claims are not found in serious academic writing, nor are sweeping or vague statements without backup. You should look at the sources cited. An absence of citations, or only references to what other people have said but not published, are not hallmarks of reliable information. Beware of very one-sided positions or evidence of bias; reputable writers tend to try and present different points of view or balanced arguments. Evidence of ulterior motives such as promotion or advertising does not point to reliable information either. It is your responsibility as a writer to ensure that you use only reliable information in your own written work.
All academic writing requires you to cite all the sources that you have read and consulted in the preparation of your work. Citation, also known as referencing, consists of quoting from or referring to other writers’ words and thoughts and the listing of their names, together with the titles and other details of their publications so that these can be tracked down independently. Citation has long been regarded as a hallmark of academic writing of all kinds. There are good reasons for this:
· Citations tell the reader of your text that you understand the topic and have read about it. You give authority to your statements and add value to your writing by showing that other writers have supported your arguments.
· Citations show how well you know the field. It is important to show that you know who the important writers are in a specific field and if you leave some of them out, or if you use the writings of those who are less highly regarded or who have been discredited, it may detract from your own work.
· Citations show how up-to-date your reading has been. In certain subject fields it is very important to be aware of the most recent developments.
· Writing is “intellectual property” and you have to give credit to persons who first expressed an idea.
· Citations enable the reader of one’s work to check the accuracy of a quotation, or to find the source and the context of a quotation.
· Citations are most important in protecting you from being accused of or from committing plagiarism, as was discussed above.
It is important to keep a list of full
details of all the papers you have consulted as you go along and not think that
you will be able to complete the references in your assignments at the last
minute, as you are bound to lose track of some of the things you have read. UCT
has invested in providing campus-wide access to the website RefWorks,
which is personal bibliographic management software that allows one to download
all the necessary details about library materials as well as online journal
papers and other resources into one’s own personal database. The system can
then automatically prepare correct citations and references according to a
large variety of referencing conventions as and when required. RefWorks
is available from the Library home page.
There
are a number of different styles and conventions which are widely understood
and used and which encourage a clear and consistent pattern of citation.
Well-known style manuals include the Chicago
Manual of Style, and those published by the American Psychological
Association (APA), the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) and The
(British) Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA). One of the best-known,
but also one of the simplest, is the “author-date” style for citations and
reference lists (sometimes known as the “Harvard method”). Scientific
publications often use the citation or style guides published by societies and
institutions in their own disciplines. In all cases, consistency in presentation is the most important consideration.
For
theses and dissertations it is essential to make sure of the specific details
of the citation convention required by your department and then to pay
particular attention to capitalization and the use of italics (or underlining)
and to check punctuation very carefully.
External examiners usually pay particular attention to citations and
references.
The
requirements of the different citation styles acceptable by the UCT Faculty of
Humanities are illustrated in this booklet. Further exhaustive examples may be
found in the Information Literacy Course, which was developed for the
Make sure that you select one style that conforms with your Departmental requirements and apply it consistently. A list of useful readings with many examples of citations using the different conventions is also to be found at the end of this booklet.
Citation conventions for electronic resources are sometimes regarded as problematic, but it should be realized that citations for electronic resources are essentially no different from any other citations: the reader wants clear instructions about how and where to find an item. Frequently, data held electronically may be moved to different locations, so that hyperlinks become obsolete and documents sometimes disappear entirely. It also becomes necessary, therefore, to show the date of consultation when referring to such sources, to indicate how recently a link was still functioning.
It is important remember that all
full bibliographic references, regardless of style, essentially have to convey
the same kind of information and consist of the same elements, although the
basic order may differ slightly according to different conventions. The purpose
of all citations essentially is to provide sufficient information for an item
to be found. All citations should
therefore contain, in the order prescribed by the citation style, the following
elements, or as many of them as you can ascertain:
·
Name of the originator(s) of
the document or the part of a document you are using as a source.
·
Date of publication (some
citation styles give the date immediately after the author; otherwise after the
name of the publisher). For an electronic resource, look for the date on which the
document was produced or updated.
·
Title of the publication (and, if it
is part of a larger work, e.g. an article in a journal, or one paper in an
edited collection, also the title of the whole publication).
·
For an electronic resource only, the medium, which may be given as
“Online” in square brackets.
·
Publication details: Place of publication and
Publisher if the item is a book; Volume and/or issue number if the item is a
journal. For an electronic resource give the uniform
resource locator (URL) which may sometimes be given between angle brackets (< >).
If the URL is very long, it may be written on two lines, but try to break a
line only where a punctuation mark occurs and do not add a hyphen, as this will alter the URL.
·
Inclusive page numbers if the reference is to an item smaller than a whole book.
·
For an electronic resource, the date on which the document was last accessed, often in
square brackets.
This very well-known system for citation
is well established in the social sciences and is increasingly used in literary
studies as well (Visser, 1992:78). Brief examples illustrating the commonest
citation issues using the author-date method follow below.
Citing sources within the text
To show
that you have used or borrowed words or ideas from elsewhere, you have to
indicate every instance in the text, to the reader. This is done by the use of
the “reference indicator” which contains brief publication details in round
brackets. When you quote the words of another writer, the page reference where
those words appeared, have to form part of the reference indicator. It appears
in either of two ways within the text:
1. When the name(s) of the quoted
author(s) form part of a sentence, the reference indicator consists of the date
and the page on which that quotation appears. For example:
In her analysis of reading comprehension among primary and secondary
school pupils, Pretorius (2000:33) proposes that inadequate reading skills play
a significant role in the poor academic performance of many South African
scholars.
2. Where the sentence does not specifically state the original author’s
name, the reference indicator has to include the surname(s) of the author(s), followed by the date and
the page on which the specific quotation appears, for example:
In an analysis of reading comprehension among primary and secondary
school pupils, it was found that inadequate reading skills play a significant
role in the poor academic performance of many South African scholars
(Pretorius, 2000:33).
List of references at the end of the text
The
reference indicator alone does not give enough information for the reader to
find the original source of the idea or quotation. Full details of all
the quoted sources also have to be listed at the end of the text. This list may
be called “References” or “Works cited.” The term “Bibliography”
is sometimes used when you include works that you have consulted for your
writing, but not actually quoted. This is not recommended, as you are expected
to refer to all the sources that you have used.
The list
of references is arranged alphabetically by surname of the author. Alphabetical
order enables a reader to locate details of all the sources cited quickly and
efficiently, so that it is essential that the reference indicator in round
brackets exactly conforms with the first word of the reference in the
alphabetical list. If a work has no identifiable author, the alphabetic
arrangement is by the name of the editor(s) or by the first main word of the
title. In such cases, the name of the editor or a brief title will be given as
the reference indicator in round brackets in the body of the text.
Here is
the reference for the example above:
Pretorius, E.J. 2000. What
they can’t read will hurt them: reading and academic achievement. Innovation. 21: 33-41.
Note
that the page reference now indicates the length of the entire paper and not
just the page on which the quotation appeared.
References
to books Author-date style: things to remember:
·
The names of authors are shown
with surname first. Forenames may be abbreviated to the initials only, but be
consistent. Sometimes, an organization may function as the author
- then simply give the name of the organization as it appears on the text as
the “author”.
·
If
there are two or three authors, list all three in the order given on the title
page, separating them with the use of commas and the ampersand (&) sign.
Alphabetic order will be according to the surname of the first author.
·
If
there are more than three authors, give the name of the first only, followed
by “and others” or “et al.” which is the
Latin abbreviation for “and others”.
·
An
editor may be treated like an author, but attach the abbreviation “Ed.” to the
name, as the function of an editor is different from that of an author.
· It is a convention that the titles of all published materials are listed using italic type or by underlining. If your word processing package and printer can display italic type, use italics for titles, as underlining is often used for web document url’s.
· Indent the second and each subsequent line so that each entry is a hanging paragraph.
· The edition should be mentioned unless it is the first edition. When there is no edition statement, you may assume that the work is a first edition.
A book by a single author:
Bloom, A. 1987. The closing of the American mind: how higher
education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students.
A book with more than one author:
Behrens,
S.J., Olën, S.I. & Machet, M.P. 1999. Mastering
information skills.
Kippax, S. and others. 1996. Sustaining safe sex: gay communities respond
to AIDS.
A book produced by an editor rather than an author:
Stone, R.L. Ed. 1989. Essays on The closing of the American mind.
An edition of a book other than the first:
Visser, N. 1992. Handbook
for writers of essays and theses. 2nd
ed.
Burns, T. 1984. Mechanistic
and organismic structures. In Organization
theory: selected readings. 2nd ed. D. S. Pugh. Ed. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. 40-51.
Poll, R. 1998. The house that
Jack built: the consequences of measuring. Proceedings
of the 2nd
· Articles are listed according to the surname of the first author that appears on the article. If there are more than three authors, you may give the name of the first author only, followed by “and others” or “et al.”
· The title of the journal is italicized (or may be underlined).
· Volume and issue numbers of the journal are given, followed by the page number (or starting and ending pages if it covers more than one page) of the complete article. Some journals have volume or issue numbers only and not both (see the first and second examples below).
· By indicating the volume numbering in the fixed sequence: Volume(issue number):starting page(-end page) it is not necessary to use the abbreviations vol.; no. pp. or p. to indicate volume, issue and page numbers. See the examples below that follow:
Flax. J. and others. 1991.
Relations between prosodic variables and communicative functions. Journal of
child language. 18:3-19.
Kiondo, E. 1999. Access to
gender and development information by rural women in
Levitt, A.G.
& Wang, Q. 1991. Evidence
for language-specific rhythmic influences in the reduplicative babbling of French and English
learning infants. Language and speech. 34(3): 235-249.
Two articles by the same
author(s) in a single year:
· In such a case, the reference indicator in the body of the text could read (Bauer & Wewerka, 1995a) or (1995b) to distinguish between the two texts.
·
The titles of unpublished works are not underlined
or italicised.
·
Give “(Unpublished)” at the end of a reference if the information is
not readily available or obvious.
Makhubela, P.M. 1998. Public libraries in the provision of adult basic
education programmes: the case of the Western Cape Province,
Thapisa, A.1998. Co-operation
with the
References to electronic resources: things to remember:
· Electronic information might be found in blogs, listservs for specific interest groups, or published on CD-Rom discs or in electronic databases and the World Wide Web.
· Information published electronically may have counterparts that are also published on paper.
· Give page numbers when they are available (pdf files; Word documents; journal articles also available in print); give paragraph numbers provided that they are available for all to see (i.e. don’t go and count them). To indicate paragraph numbers, either use the abbreviation “para.” or the paragraph sign ¶. Not giving page numbers is not a serious problem with electronic texts, as most browsers have a ‘search’ function.
·
Where electronic resources also
exist in traditional print form, it is advisable to note in references the
details about the print as well as the electronic sources, as web resources are
not yet archived very well and web addresses may change and links lost.
An electronic
journal:
Aird, A. 2001. E-commerce in
higher education: can we afford to do nothing? Ariadne. 26. [Online]. Available: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue26/e-commerce/ [2006,
November 25].
Smith, A.G. 1997. Testing the
surf: criteria for evaluating Internet information resources. The public-access computer systems review.
8(3). [Online]. Available: http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v8/n3/smit8n3.html [2006, November 12].
A journal article available in
both electronic and print formats:
Brink, P.J. 2001. Violence on
TV and aggression in children. Western
journal of nursing research. 23(1):5-7. [Online]. Available from EBSCOHost:
Academic Search Premier at http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/datahosts.htm
[2007, January 22].
Articles from
the World Wide Web:
Standler, R.B. 2000. Plagiarism in colleges in the USA.
[Online]. Available: http://www.rbs2.com/plag.htm [2007, January 21].
Walker, J. 1997. Intellectual property in the information
age: a classroom guide to copyright. [Online]. Available: http://www.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/papers/copyright/ipdummie.html
[2006, November 21].
Electronic
mail:
·
Give both the sender and the recipient’s addresses immediately after
their names. Give the day, the month and the year.
·
No underlining or italics as personal correspondence is unpublished.
De Jager, K. (kdejager@ched.uct.ac.za). 2004. Workshop on electronic citation. [Personal e-mail, 20 May] to M. Smith (msmith@uctlib.uct.ac.za)
Online
abstracts
·
If at all possible, try to find a full paper and not just information
from an abstract. Sometimes, however, this is not possible and the abstract
itself has to be cited:
Berger, J.M. 2001.Tripping
over patients: international trade, compulsory licenses and essential
treatments for HIV. Abstract of conference paper: AIDS in context:
international conference. 4-7 April 2001,
Students sometimes mistakenly believe that it is sufficient to read a single review article and then cite other writers’ statements from citations in the review article. Many references in your text to authors that have been quoted by other authors significantly detract from your work. You should as far a possible go back to the original work and not just cite the review article as the source. It is even worse to copy the references from the review article as if you have read the original; this is patently dishonest. Should you in rare instances need to cite a difficult-to-find source from a citation, the following examples will illustrate how you may do this:
According
to Barr & Hayne (1996, quoted by Bauer and others, 2000:13), infants
imitate…
Citing
Gray (1999), Mirzeler and Young (2000:408) support this view and note…
The
entry in the reference list is for the author(s) actually cited. The larger
work in which the citation appeared, is separately noted in the reference list
provided that it was cited in its own right.
Barr, R. & Hayne, H. 1996.
The effect of event structure on imitation in infancy: practice makes perfect? Infant behavior and development. 19:253-257.
Quoted by Patricia J. Bauer and others. 2000. Parameters of remembering and
forgetting in the transition from infancy to early childhood. Monographs of the Society for Research in
Child Development. 65(4).
Gray, S. 1999. “We were running, running, running”: ecological politics, local history, and the
evolution of Karimojong violence. Unpublished manuscript. Quoted in Mustafa
Mirzeler & Crawford Young. 2000. Pastoral politics in the northwest
periphery in
The
American Psychological Association (APA) convention
Lillard, A. (1998). Wanting to be
it: children’s understanding of intentions underlying pretense. Child Development. 69, 981-993.
Things
to remember for references to an article in a journal according to the MLA
style:
The use of numbered references as espoused by the Chicago Manual of Style, is extensively discussed in Turabian
(1996). The main difference between the author-date or author-title methods and
conventions using numbered references with footnotes or endnotes, is that a
reference in the text to another source is signalled by a numeral giving the
number of the citation. This numeral corresponds to either a numbered note at
the bottom of the page (a footnote), or at the end of the paper or chapter as
part of a list of endnotes. As with the
other methods, the citation within the text may appear either as part of the
sentence or attached to its end, for example:
In her analysis of reading comprehension among primary and secondary
school pupils, Pretorius 1 proposes that inadequate reading skills play a significant
role in the poor academic performance of many South African scholars.
In an analysis of reading comprehension among primary and secondary
school pupils, it was found that inadequate reading skills play a significant
role in the poor academic performance of many South African scholars.1
Beyond being used to acknowledge the use of others’ words and ideas,
numbered references may also be used as contents notes to expand or exemplify
issues discussed in the text. As the use of contents notes falls beyond the
scope of this booklet, it is suggested that you consult Turabian if your
department requires the use of footnotes (usually in a thesis) and endnotes
(for an essay).
1
Elizabeth J. Pretorius, “What they can’t read will hurt them:
reading and academic achievement.” Innovation
21 (2000): 33.
A book:
A book with more than one author:
A book produced by an editor rather than an author:
4
R.L. Stone, Ed. Essays on The
closing of the American mind. (Chicago, Review Press, 1989), 72.
An
article in a journal:
Numbered references to electronic
resources:
· Remember that where electronic resources also exist in traditional print form, it is advisable to note in references the details about the print as well as the electronic sources, as web resources are not yet archived very well and web addresses may change and links lost.
Journal article available in both
electronic and print formats:
1 Pamela
J. Brink, “Violence on TV and aggression in children” Western Journal of Nursing Research, 23 1 (2001): 5-7 [Online]. Available from
EbscoHost at: http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/datahosts.htm [2006, November 11].
Electronic journal:
2 Andrew
Aird, “E-commerce in higher education: can we afford to do nothing?” Ariadne, 26 (2001) [Online]. Available:
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue26/e-commerce/intro.htm
[2006, November 25].
3 Alistair
G. Smith, “Testing the surf: criteria for evaluating Internet information
resources.” The Public-access Computer
Systems Review, 8 3 (1997) [Online]. Available: http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v8/n3/smit8n3.html
[2006, November 14].
Articles from
the World Wide Web:
4 J.
Walker, Intellectual property in the
information age: a classroom guide to copyright, (1997) [Online].
Available: http://www.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/papers/copyright/ipdummie.html
[2006, November 14]
5 Ronald
B. Standler, Plagiarism in colleges in
the
ASCE Authors’ Guide. 2000. [Online]. Available:
http://www.pubs.asce.org/authors/index.html
[2005 November 14].
Blum,
E. & Wilhoit, F.G. 1990. Mass media bibliography: an annotated guide
to books and journals for research and reference.
Curtin.
Library & Information Service. 2004.Referencing
resources. [Online]. http://library.curtin.edu.au/referencing/index.html
[2005, November, 14].
(The pages above contain good guides
to citation and referencing with many examples.)
Gibaldi,
J. 1999. MLA handbook for writers of
research papers. 5th ed.
Lester,
J. D. 1980. Writing research papers: a
complete guide. 3rd ed.
Li,
X & Crane, N. 1996. Electronic
styles: a handbook for citing electronic information. Rev ed.
MHRA style book: notes for authors, editors
and writers of theses.1991.
4th ed.
Professional communication: how to deliver effective written and
spoken messages. 2002. J. English, and others.
(The contents of
this booklet was partially based on
Chapter 2: “Referencing, citation and avoiding plagiarism” by Karin de
Jager.)
Smith,
A.G. 1997. Testing the surf: criteria for evaluating Internet Information
resources. The public-access computer
systems review 8(3). [Online]. Available: http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v8/n3/smit8n3.html
[2005, November 14].
Standler,
R.B. 2000. Plagiarism in colleges in the
USA. [Online]. Available: http://www.rbs2.com/plag.htm
[2005, November 14].
Turabian,
K. 1996.
A manual for writers of research
papers, theses and dissertations. 6th
ed. Revised by John Grossman and Alice Bennet.
Using the INTERNET, online services, &
CD-Rom’s for writing research and term papers. 1996. Edited by Charles Harmon.
Visser,
N. 1992.
Handbook for writers of essays and
theses. 2nd ed.
http://www.uct.ac.za/downloads/uct.ac.za/about/policies/plagiarism_students.pdf