It is good academic practice to acknowledge another person's work in your own essay, dissertation or article, giving full details of your source. You risk being accused of 'poor academic practice or plagiarism if you fail to do so.
UoR Computer Science department recommends using the APA style, but you can choose another style such as Harvard as long as you are consistent.
There are Things you can do to avoid plagiarism. Study Advice provide various guides to improving your writing style when supporting arguments with references. See Referencing and Academic Integrity, especially: Avoiding unintentional plagiarism, Quotes and paraphrases, Writing a precis or summary and Getting the most out of Turnitin. See also Using Turnitin as a feedback tool.
For help with citing specific types of publication contact Rachel Redrup, your Academic Liaison Librian. For advice on using references in your work to support your arguments, consult referencing guidance on the Study Advice website or make an Study Advice appointment
An internet search can retrieve a wide range of different publication types. It is important that you know how to recognise these to help you judge their reliability and suitability for use in your assignments, and to know how to reference them.
Watch this short video from our Academic Liaison Team which will help you become a digital detective and use clues to help you recognise different sources in your results.
When you do your dissertation, consider using reference management software to organise and store references, then insert citations and build a bibliography in your Word document. The Library supports two reference tools in particular we think are accurate - EndNote and Mendeley. For information on these and other options see our guide to Managing references:
We also have specific a guide for using EndNote:
LaTeX is a tool you may have been advised to use to format your papers or other written work. If you use LaTeX you may also choose to use BibTeX as an alternative to Endnote for managing your references and inserting your citations.
We have books about how to use LaTeX in the Library - you can find them in Enterprise. A few are listed below.
LaTex beginner's guide by 
LaTeX and Friends by 
