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HOW DO YOU REFERENCE A DISSERTATION CORRECTLY?

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HOW DO YOU REFERENCE A DISSERTATION CORRECTLY?

Reference is essential in academic writing at all levels. Correctly referencing your dissertation will give it the academic finish it deserves. It will also assist you in supporting your thoughts and arguments so that the person grading them knows your expertise and study.

We'll use the term "scholarly referencing" occasionally in this article. This is simply referring to the type of referencing employed by academics (as in contrast, for example to the references are included in the final section in your resume).

WHAT IS THE ACADEMIC REFERENCE?

A scholarly reference is a collection of practises employed to guide readers to the source you've referenced, borrowed, or used in your writing. There are a variety of referencing styles that can be used, and the three most popular ones are discussed below. They all provide the same information, It enables a reader to go to the source you cited in your writing and view it.

  • Book’s author

  • Title of work

  • Type of publication (for instance, an entire the book or just a section of the book, an article, or even a web page)

  • Release date for the particular edition of the text you're referencing. It's more crucial to know that this edition of the classic book was released in 2000 than that it was first published in 1818 if you're utilizing a specific variation of it. In the bibliography, this information is occasionally contained in the brackets

  • Place and publisher

  • Extra information, like the volume, issue number, and range of pages, will help your readers to search the source.

WHEN AND WHY DO I MAKE A REFERENCE?

PREVENT PLAGIARISM

Most institutions would list plagiarism defence as their first argument for the importance of appropriate citation. Any work that you use in your own work that was done by someone else must be cited. This includes statistics, paraphrases, and even broad "schools of thought," or ways of approaching a subject, in addition to direct citations.

Even though you might not be purposefully misrepresenting someone else's work as your own when you plagiarise, you run the risk of facing plagiarism charges if you fail to credit any sources that may have impacted your thinking.

Cite a source if you have any doubts about whether it has influenced your claim in any way.

OTHER FACTORS

You should not only cover yourself but there are other reasons to practise good citation habits. They are essential to both your growth as a scholar and your ability to advance knowledge.

Your work could inspire their thoughts, or readers might be able to interact with the work. It's standard for scholarly writing to ensure that anyone reading your writing can clearly and easily determine the impact of your thoughts, methods, data, or method.

  • Citing many scholars helps you to make an implicit rhetorical argument about your knowledge and expertise on the subject. Readers will be more convinced if you cite reliable scholarly work supporting your interpretations.

WHICH REFERENCE SYSTEM SHOULD I CHOOSE?

You might not have a lot of options. Your school might let you choose among their top choices. Parenthetical styles and footnotes concerning their reference styles (for the humanities and arts) or their styles (for subjects in the Arts and Humanities) or their numeral styles for social and scientific sciences

If you are given the option, please read the "usages" sections below for each type of referencing and answer the following questions:

  • What number of sources will I cite?

  • Do I want to maintain intimate ties to a large number of my sources, or will I mention a small number of them to draw attention to broad patterns in my subject and the literature?

  • Do you prefer direct quotations or paraphrases?

These questions will help you choose between the options if you have a choice in your referencing system.

HOW CAN I CONSISTENTLY AND EFFECTIVELY REFERENCE MY SOURCES?

Be systematic. You'll likely have many sources if you're referencing dissertations. Your bibliography should be considered separate from your research and writing. If you plan to forget about it, it will be difficult to find all the bibliographic details. Your bibliography and in-text citations will be much easier to locate if you have an organised method for keeping track of the sources you've used and cited.

The software can be used to assist you. You have many options. Reference management software is the best way to organize, retrieve, and cite sources. This is particularly valid if you frequently use online resources. The majority of institutions use commercial software like EndNote and RefWorks. However, employing a freeware application will allow you to save time. These characteristics are common in reference management software, just as Zotero (even though it has much fewer complex bibliography-generating facilities and significantly fewer reference styles than the commercial tools).

To make it easier to manage large numbers of sources, you could arrange your database in multiple folders (e.g., one folder for each chapter).

  • complete set of data fields that correspond to the data required by citation systems.

  • There are a variety of methods that automatically create records, including web plugins that pull information about citations directly from specific pages; DOI searches that download information about citations via websites, and the capability of importing texts as well as XML files from all databases of bibliographic information that has been searched.

  • In-text citations can be inserted using processor plugins (for Word or LibreOffice/OpenOffice) (both in the footnote and parenthetical form).

  • There are several methods for constructing reference lists or bibliographies. They can be created directly in the software or as a set of fields based on the sources used by the word processor plugin.

These programmes help you save time and assist you in quickly cataloguing as well as retrieving and annotating the sources you find. You can also create complete bibliographies, citations, or complete bibliographies for your research. Take note that an automated bibliography might not be 100% accurate. In particular, you may need to add missing information, like the place where some records were published, or change bibliographies to meet the needs of your department.

STYLES OF REFERENCE FOR PARENTHETICAL USE

USAGE

Parenthetical is the most well-known scholarly writing style. They are widely utilized in numerous disciplines, with different formats dominating different sectors. MLA, like Chicago, dominates the arts and humanities disciplines, especially in North America. APA is very common in the social sciences. However, any variation of Harvard can be found in any field around the world. Economic theory is the primary source of parenthetical style. They enable readers to find the source of information within the reference list at the conclusion of the text. (In the majority of parenthetical formats, it is labelled "References" or "Works Cited" and only includes sources that are directly referenced in the work) and can do this without interfering with the flow of the text. Since parenthetical styles focus on economics and the economy of business, they typically require that the author's name be included in quotes only in cases where it isn't evident by the contextual context. When you begin with the words "Smith declares"... you won't often repeat Smith's name within parentheses just a few lines later.

FEATURES AND FORMAT

The "author-date" pattern is used by the majority of parenthetical referencing systems. The author's last name and the year of publishing are included in the parenthetical reference (or it could be or only if your author's name appears clear in his or her context). Thus, for example, you may see

There are "far too many referencing styles for the novice scholar to keep track of," scholars frequently lament (Smith 2012, p. 6)

or

There are "far too many referencing methods for the young scholar to keep track of," according to Smith (2012, p. 6).

In order to make it easy for you to instantly and accurately connect a parenthetical source with an item of the bibliography and to make sure that the year is the first information included on the list of references, following the name of the author. If a researcher was highly involved in a single year and authored multiple articles that are mentioned in the present writing effort, it is customary to indicate them both in text and in the list of references using the convention 2012a, 2012b, for example. Author-date entries should always serve as a unique identifier for each source.

According to the discipline where a reference style has commonly used the norms for page referencing can differ greatly in format. Because it is likely that APA is utilized to reference summaries and paraphrases more frequently than direct citations, it doesn't offer a user-friendly way to specify page numbers. APA, for example, is intended for usage in Social Sciences situations. When using APA, it is recommended to include the author's name as well as the date of the citation, rather than providing the page number directly and including the page's reference in a separate note at the conclusion of the citation.

There are "far too many referencing methods for the young researcher to keep track of," according to Smith (2012) (p. 6).

THE HARVARD "SYSTEM"

Harvard deserves special mention in author-date systems. While your institution is very likely to use Harvard as a source of reference in at least some subjects, it is also possible that your university's view of Harvard referencing differs from that of any of its neighbouring universities. While Chicago and MLA have lengthy style guides that cover many aspects of academic writing (including citing), Harvard only tells you what should be in a reference and some general formatting guidelines.

There are nearly as many Harvard systems as there are newspapers and institutions that use them, and they include, albeit in small numbers, the following:

In the references list, capitalise author names. 

  • Referring to page numbers, whether "p" or just a number is used,

  • In the parenthetical citation, a comma is used to separate the author from the date (Smith 2012 or Smith, 2012).

  • Different bibliographic components' formatting and organisation

It is not uncommon for universities to deny these differences. However, you will often find them in universities' guides to referencing. This is especially important if you use reference management software to keep track of your sources and compile your bibliography. The software will almost certainly generate a Harvard-style reference list. You'll need to format it to match your university's requirements manually. You should try several Harvard reference managers. Once you have found the best match, you will need to format it manually.

FEATURES AND FORMAT (MLA)

The MLA reference system is an exceptional example of a reference system for parenthetical use as it does not utilise dates to determine works. MLA is designed to be less expensive than systems that use author dates. It only uses the name of the author to identify the source and uses minimal punctuation in parenthetical references.

Scholars frequently complain about the sheer number of numerous styles of reference to manage for students in the early stages of their studies (Smith 6).

If a literary work contains many works by the same author, the author is identified by the briefest reference to the title of the work.

Scholars frequently complain about the sheer number of numerous styles of referencing to track, especially for scholars in their early years (Smith Scholar's 6, Scholar's 6).

EXAMPLE OF USAGE

Please take note that the sources cited here and elsewhere in this essay are fictitious examples.

With text:

There are "far too many referencing styles for the novice scholar to keep track of," scholars frequently lament (Smith 2012, 6).

In the list of references:

The Scholar's Complete Guide to Referencing, Arnold Smith, 2012. Scholar's Press, London.

Styles of Parentheticals Examples

  • Chicago (author-date).

  • MLA (Modern Language Association).

  • Harvard

  • APA (American Psychological Association).

STYLES OF FOOTNOTE/ENDNOTE REFERENCING

USAGE

Footnoting is an established method for providing additional quotations and background information as well as clarifications in humanities and art classes. This is particularly true for courses in the UK as well as Commonwealth countries. Page numbers, when they exist, are usually found in footnote or endnote styles of referencing. But there are exceptions for "classic" works of literature that are available in different editions and are usually used to refer to the line, scene, chapter, or stanza number.

The referencing system assumes that readers will be able to find specific quotations in their readings to help them understand the argument or build context. When there are a lot of references in a book or journal article, the footnotes can sometimes take up more than one page.

FORMAT AND FEATURES

An extra note or number in parentheses or superscript font at the end of a statement or quote means that it has been added to the text. The note is typically located at the bottom, with the number. The page footer will not be placed on the next page if the word processing software requires that it be too large. A horizontal rule is used to separate a page's footer from its body. The number is located next to the note. These endnote referencing styles are less common.

Depending on whether the referencing style uses a bibliography, the level of detail in the footnote will determine the extent to which it contains A bibliography may be used. The footnote might only contain enough information to locate the source in the bibliography. The styles of referencing footnotes don't restrict the bibliographies you use to just cite sources within the work. You may list any sources used for your project, regardless of whether they are cited.

Some footnote reference techniques may not necessitate the inclusion of a separate bibliography at the end of written text. Footnotes must contain all bibliographic information. Oxford and MHRA are two of the most used referencing styles for footnotes. The whole bibliographic information for the article must be given in the footnote. You can use a shorter note format for the remainder of the footnotes (author name, page number, etc.).

EXAMPLE OF USAGE

Text:

Smith says that there are way too numerous styles of reference for students to keep track of.

The footer is a list of:

1. Arnold Smith, The Scholar's Comprehensive Guide to References, London: Scholar's Press 2012 p. 6.

The Bibliography:

Smith, Arnold. The Scholar's Comprehensive Guide to Referencing. London: Scholar's Press 2012.

FOOTNOTE STYLES: EXAMPLES

  • MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association).

  • Oxford

  • Chicago (footnote style).

STYLES OF REFERENCING WITH NUMBERS 

USAGE

These numerated reference formats are generally only used in the sciences. These styles are best suited for situations in which a large number of sources will be referenced in short or in paraphrase. However, direct quotation is not often used, if at all. Even using the shortest parenthetical citation style, it is feasible to utilise numbers to refer to bibliographic entries when sources are cited extensively. This is an excellent solution.

FORMAT AND CHARACTERISTICS 

Each source is allocated a number based on its initial occurrence in the text. In the text, the number is frequently written in parentheses. It is not in superscript, as footnotes are. It can also be used to refer to the source in the future. To facilitate retrieval, references are listed at the bottom in numerical order rather than alphabetically. When it comes to books that are mostly or entirely available online, numerical references can be quite useful because they can be linked to the entries in the list that they refer to.

EXAMPLE OF USAGE

Text:

Scholars complain often about the many referencing systems that university students might need to learn (1-4).

Refer to the following: Smith A. The Scholar's Complete Guide to Referencing. London: Scholar's Press; 2012.

NUMERICAL STYLE EXAMPLE

This is the most often used standardised number referencing format in Vancouver. Many colleges refer to this number approach in broad terms, but not in Vancouver-style. These are fairly similar to Harvard referencing styles. While the exact implementation of these styles will vary by university and publication, they are all very similar to the Vancouver system. You can achieve the desired style by instructing your reference program to generate a Vancouver-style bibliography.

THE CHANGING NATURE AND USE OF DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIERS (DOIS)

A DOI, or Digital Object Identifier, is an ISO-standardised technique for referring to online sources. It functions similarly to how an ISBN and URL work together. It works similarly to an ISBN. It's a unique, stable identifier that can be found in a database. It functions similarly to a URL in that it allows you to locate the object and determine its location.

A DOI is assigned to the vast majority of online journal articles.  A centralised database stores the metadata for this DOI, including author, title, and publication date, as well as journal name, volume, and issue.

This is great news for reference management software users. Simply enter an article's DOI, and the software will download all of the metadata and create a bibliographic document.

The URL of an article is one metadata property that is maintained and updated frequently for the DOI. A web browser can be used to enter any object's DOI. It should start with http://dx.doi.org/. To view the article's content, the browser will then resolve to the current location. This page will have the complete article's text. If not, it will be your login page, from which you can access the content via an institutional or personal account.

While referencing systems still have a lot of work to do with DOIs, MLA and APA provide complete guidance on how to cite online sources using DOIs. URLs are preferred wherever they are possible. If you provide a DOI, you can omit important details about the source.

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