Citation technique and styles

In all academic texts, references are used to show from where information has been collected and to guide the reader to further reading.

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. You are welcome to email questions to biblioteket@liu.se.

Online guides to reference styles
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APA

Reference guide for APA (Karolinska Institute Library) 

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 (Deakin University)

Vancouver

Reference guide Vancouver (Karolinska Institute Library)
Citing and referencing: Vancouver (Monash University)

Further reading
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Some examples of handbooks on academic writing and referencing. Many more can be found on shelf 808.02 (Scientific writing) 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 

 

More about referencing
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Use a reference management program to collect and save references: 

Zotero logotype

Zotero

Zotero is a free reference management tool that helps you collect and save references to books, articles, pdf:s etc. This makes it easy to insert references and bibliographies into your theses and assignments.

Endnote

With the reference management software EndNote, you can save and manage your references and insert them into documents in your word processor.

Plagiarism and Copyright

In the academic world it is essential to have a grasp of issues pertaining to plagiarism and copyright, issues that are often clouded in confusion. Here we give you the basics.

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