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Citation technique and styles

In 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. Examples of reference styles are Harvard, Oxford, APA, IEEE and Vancouver. Your supervisor should be able to tell you which is the most common and desirable style within your discipline.

Below you will find a selection of recommended online guides to reference styles.

Online guides to reference styles Show/Hide content

APA

APA Style References (American Psychological Association)
Reference guide for APA 7 (Karolinska Institute Library)
Reference guide for APA 7th edition (Lund University)

Harvard

Guide to the Harvard System of Referencing (Anglia Ruskin University Library) 

IEEE

IEEE editorial style manual (IEEE Periodicals)
IEEE Referencing All formats (Victoria University)

Oxford

Deakin guide to Oxford (Deakin University)

Vancouver

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

Need help?

Once you have chosen a reference style, the Library can help with questions regarding specific references. You are welcome to email your questions. Don't forget to tell us which reference style you are using!

Contact: biblioteket@liu.se

You can also find answers to questions about referencing in the Library FAQ

Further reading Show/Hide content

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

Reference management software Show/Hide content

A red "Z", Zotero's 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 written assignments.
EndNote (reference management program) logo

Endnote

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

Related content Show/Hide content

The text "don't copy" together with copyright symbol (c).

Plagiarism and Copyright

In the academic world it is essential to have a grasp of issues pertaining to plagiarism and copyright. Here we give you the basics.
Two paper documents where parts of the text is marked in yellow.

Tools against plagiarism

Ouriginal (Urkund) is a plagiarism detection tool for checking texts written by students. NoPlagiat is a self-study tutorial on plagiarism and copyright to promote students’ knowledge about these issues.
6 different publications, including articles, working papers and a dissertation.

Scholarly publications

Which types of publications researchers use may vary from discipline to discipline. Here you can find out about the most common forms of scholarly publications, such as articles, dissertations and working papers.

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