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 general information on referencing, including an explanation of different citation systems, and guidance on citing specific types of publication, see our Citing references guide.
For help with citing specific types of publication contact your academic liaison librarian (contact details below)
For advice on using references in your work, and how to use them to support your arguments, consult the guidance on the Study Advice website or make an appointment with them.
The Department of Meteorology recommends using the AMS style for citations. See your student handbook for more detailed guidance.
Note that AMS style requires that journal names are abbreviated. The following is a source of suitable abbreviations:
When you do your dissertation you could consider using reference management software to organise your references. These bibliographic management tools can be used to store references, and then insert the citation in your Word document, automatically building the bibliography for you in the correct style.
The library supports two reference tools in particular - EndNote and Mendeley. For information on these and other options for electronic management of your references 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.
Books about LaTeX can be found by searching Enterprise - you will need to refine by 'computer file'. A few are listed below.
The AMS webite has a FAQ for LaTeX authors.
LaTex beginner's guide by BibTex works with LaTeX to organise references and create a bibliography. You can use it on its own, but you could also use it in conjunction with reference management software. This may be especially appropriate if you have a large number of references or stored pdfs of academic papers.
Reference management software allows you to keep a 'library' of everything you consult. Typically you will need to set up an account for any program you choose to use, which will then store your references so that you can access them from various devices. They will also generate citations in a variety of styles. If you have downloaded pdfs you can link to them and usually read them within the program. Using Word, it also allows you to automatically reference as you write and build up a bibliography. Using LaTeX, it works differently - you would need to export your reference list to BibTeX.
The Library primarily supports EndNote software (see box above), but other programs exist and may work better with BibTeX. Some examples are:
There is a lot of information and help available on the web about all of these.
