Biological & Environmental Sciences: Referencing & RefWorks

Referencing correctly is important. Your writing should always include accurate references in order to:

• acknowledge the sources you have used to establish your arguments and criticisms and inform your ideas
• enable other people to identify and trace the sources you have used
• demonstrate the breadth of your reading and research
• help to avoid charges of plagiarism because it makes clear when you are using someone else's ideas and words.

There are three components to citing references

1. The Citation. This is the way you acknowledge i.e.cite the source in your text. Depending on the referencing style you are using this may appear as the author name and year in brackets e.g. (Jones 2016) as a number e.g. [1] or as a footnote. (See the 'Other referencing styles' tab for more about styles)
2. The Reference. This comprises the details of the source that you have cited.
3. The Reference List or Bibliography. This is a list of the references you have used or consulted and appears at the end of your work.

There are many different styles of Referencing. The Harvard style is used in Aquaculture, Biological & Environmental Sciences and Geography. At Stirling we follow the Harvard guidance published in Cite Them Right.

We subscribe to the Cite Them Right Web site, as used by many Universities, to support you in your referencing. Cite Them Right provides tutorials, examples, videos, articles, blogs, and other guidance on referencing and avoiding plagiarism. It also covers related topics such as credible sources, note taking, study skills and student issues.

Find out The Basics of Referencing from Cite Them Right including:

• How to cite and construct references in the Harvard style

• Setting out citations in your own writing

• Secondary referencing (referencing sources quoted in another author’s work)

• Quoting

• Paraphrasing

• Summarising

• Sample text and reference list

• Common questions on referencing
• Referencing Generative AI (including ChatGPT)

See the Referencing and avoiding plagiarism module in Canvas for more guidance about plagiarism and help with referencing. This is brought to you by Student Learning Services.

All new students should complete the 'Academic Integrity and Writing' module within your first 4 weeks at university. It is also useful to revisit this module if you are struggling with your writing and referencing or have received feedback on plagiarism.

Referencing software helps you to collect and organise references and automatically generate a reference list (bibliography). The University provides RefWorks and EndNote. EndNote is mostly used by staff and PhD students.

Always check the guidance in Cite Them Right first. If you don't find a suitable example, try the Learning on Screen guidelines for Film, Television, Radio, Other Audio (spoken word, podcast etc.), New Media (podcasts game, apps, live performance streaming etc.).