Please click on the links below to find out more about how to reference correctly following the WSC Harvard Referencing System.
For further information please click here and take a look at the guide. It is also available to print as a PDF.
This guide is designed to assist you with citation and referencing in the Harvard Style. It guides you through the many different resources that you will use in the course of your studies and whilst completing your assignments. Whilst every effort has been made to cover the most commonly used resources, this guide is not fully comprehensive. Any resources not listed in this guide can usually be found in the referencing book Cite them right (Pears and Shields, 2013). You can also seek advice from a librarian in the library.
Fundamentally, referencing is the process of acknowledging the sources you have used in writing your essay, assignment or piece of work. It allows the reader to access your source documents as quickly and easily as possible in order to "verify the validity of your arguments and the evidence on which they are based" (Pears and Shields, 2013, p.1).
Referencing is very important to avoid Plagiarism. "Plagiarism is a term that describes the unacknowledged use of someone's work...using the words or ideas of others without referencing your source would be construed as plagiarism..." (Pears and Shields, 2013, p. 1). It is an academic crime and theft of intellectual property.
The most widely used system of referencing in academic institutions is the Harvard referencing Style. Whilst this is a common system it is important to understand that there will be variations from institution to institution. Therefore it is very important to use your institutions own Harvard Referencing guidelines. The guidelines set out in this guide are based upon the University of Suffolk Harvard Referencing Guidelines and the following book. Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2013) Cite them right: the essential referencing guide. 9th edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Citation and referencing is a two part process:
In-text citation
Reference list
Firstly you will cite in the text. This occurs after a direct quote or paraphrase to acknowledge the original source.
Secondly the full reference will then appear in the reference list or bibliography (or both), at the end of your assignment. This gives the full details of all the information sources (books, journals, websites etc.) you have cited.
There are various ways of citing (quoting) in the text e.g.
"In-text citations give the brief details of the work that you are quoting from, or to which you are referring in your text. These citations will then link to the full reference in your reference list at the end of your work" (Pears and Shields, 2013, p.4).
You should incorporate cited publications in the body of your assignment as follows:
Author or editor's surname followed by a comma
Date of publication, followed by a comma
Page number(s)
And the citation is enclosed within parenthesis ( )
If the quotation is more than three lines it may be incorporated into the body of the text in quotation marks. e.g.
Giddens (2009,p 6) states that "Sociology is the scientific study of human life, social groups, whole societies and the human world as such."
If the quotation is longer it must be entered as a separate paragraph and indented from the main text. It is not necessary to use quotation marks, but you must add page references as the following example shows.
Communicator scientists are a crucial group of scientists. A communicator scientist's career path may follow a variety of routes and for the majority there is likely to be some postgraduate science training. These are scientists who are able to combine their science and their technological know how with the ability to communicate.... (Young, 2018, p. 35).
You may want to cite a work mentioned or quoted in another author's work. It is known as secondary referencing because you haven't actually seen the original source yourself. However, you do need to make reference to both sources in the text, and give the exact page number on which your source made the reference. In the text of your essay or assignment, you should cite both sources and use the phrase 'quoted in' or 'cited in' depending on whether it is a direct quote or a summary of the original. e.g.
"Bauman (1992, quoted in Giddens, 2009, p. 97) offers a helpful distinction...".
"Unicef (2000, cited in Giddens, 2009, p. 348) found that levels of domestic violence in Eastern Europe were not really known..."
There is often confusion between what a reference list is and what a bibliography is and what is required.
Below is a definition of the two.
The reference list is the detailed list of what you have cited in your assignment. It includes the full bibliographical information on sources, so that the reader can identify and locate the work/item.
A bibliography also provides a detailed list of references but includes background readings of other material you may have consulted in your text.
You should always check with your tutors whether they require you to include a reference list, a bibliography, or both. Either way, both are located a the end of your assignment and always arranged in strict alphabetical order by the surmame (Pears and Shields, 2013, p.11).
Be consistent throughout
Keep a constant list of what you use - when you start your assignment also start compiling the references you use
Make sure you take note of the date you accessed a website - this is important because websites are constantly updated and by the time someone elses accesses it, it may well have been updated
Make sure your reference list is in alphabetical order - by surname of author, or title if no author
Remember that you may not always find what you are looking for written down anywhere. Where possible, try to find something similar in the reference lists and use your judgement in applying the same formatting rules
