Citation technique and styles

There are three main reasons for referencing:

• to show which previous works your own work is drawing on
• to distinguish your own thoughts from those of others and to avoid suspicions of plagiarism
• to enable the reader to check out your sources or to delve deeper into the subject

Different disciplines have developed different ways of writing references and created various styles, such as Harvard, Oxford, APA, IEEE and Vancouver styles. Your supervisor should be able to tell you which is the most common and desirable style within your discipline. 

Once you have chosen a reference style, the library Referencing group can help with questions regarding specific references.
Contact us on biblioteket@liu.se.

Web guides to reference styles

APA

APA citation style (Purdue University) 

Harvard

Harvard style guide (Swinburne University of Technology

IEEE

IEEE citation style (Concordia University Library)
IEEE editorial style manual (IEEE Periodicals)
IEE Style (Murdoch University)

Oxford

Oxford referencing style (University of Western Australia)

Vancouver

Reference guide Vancouver (Karolinska Institutet’s library)
Citing and referencing: Vancouver (Monash University)

Further reading

Some examples of handbooks on academic writing and referencing. Many more can be found on shelf 808.02 in the library.

Concise rules of APA style

Neville, C., The complete guide to referencing and avoiding plagiarism also available as e-book

Pears, R., Cite them right                                                                                                    

Williams,K. & Davis, M., Referencing and understanding plagiarism