Whenever you refer to another person's work in your own essay, dissertation or article you must acknowledge them and give full details of your source. You risk being accused of plagiarism if you fail to do so. For more information, see the Building references into your writing section of the Academic Integrity Handbook.
UoR Department of Mathematics and Statistics recommends a Name/Date system of referencing, such as Harvard, for longer pieces of work like dissertations. A numbered style, as used by the American Mathematical Society, might be preferred in shorter pieces of work like conference posters (number inserted in text refers to a list of further detail). Check against these guides:
Harvard (Name, date)
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]
AMS/LMS referencing style (University of York) summarises AMS style well.
American Mathematical Society (AMS) Style guide, chapter 10 gives a few examples which require a MathSciNet reference number.
Gives references to journal articles, conference proceedings and books in mathematics.
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.
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:
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:
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.
