It is good academic practice to acknowledge other people'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 do not. For more information, see the Building references into your writing section of the Academic Integrity Handbook.
UoR Computer Science recommends using the Harvard style for dissertations (author's surname and publication date inserted in text refers to full details in reference list at end of work). A numbered style, like IEEE or ACM, might be used in shorter pieces of work (number inserted in text refers to a list of further detail). The best approach is to use a good reference manager to insert references for you - see boxes below on BibTeX for LaTeX or EndNote for Word. Check all is working correctly against these guides:
Citation examples in Harvard Style in the Library's Citing references guide which also includes general information and guidance on citing different publication types in different styles.
Numbered lists [1]
For help with referencing technique (order of words and punctuation) or using reference management software to store, organise and insert your references, contact Rachel Redrup, your Academic Liaison Librarian.
For advice on improving your writing style using references to support arguments, consult the Study Advice guides to referencing or make a Study Advice appointment.
LaTeX is free, high-quality typesetting system valued by the STEM community, especially for its representation of mathematical expressions. You can use it with BibTeX, instead of Endnote, to manage your references and insert citations.
Find books on LaTeX by searching Enterprise, the Library catalogue. A few are listed below.
BibTex works with LaTeX to organise references and create a bibliography. Use it on its own, or with reference management software - especially if you have a lot of references and/or stored pdfs.
Mendeley - works well with BibTeX, can be downloaded free and your account includes online storage. Very easy to use, metadata can be extracted from pdfs and webpaes and exporting to BibTeX appears straightforward. See our Mendeley guide. Other programs exist which may work well with BibTeX, but are not supported by the UoR Library. Some examples are:
Consider using reference management software to organise and store references, insert citations and build a bibliography in your Word document. The Library supports two tools in particular we think are accurate - EndNote and Mendeley. See our general guide:
And our more detailed, dedicated guide for:
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.
