A reference (or citation) is a way of:
The sources that you use must be acknowledged:
All of the sources you use in your assignment must be included both as in-text citations and in your reference list.
To reference (or cite) a source, you need four pieces of information: who wrote it, when was it published, what it is, and where you found it.
This information will look slightly different depending on the type of source you're trying to reference (e.g. book/eBook, a chapter from an edited book, journal article, web page, online document, etc.).
Correct referencing ensures that:
Referencing is compulsory for many assignments, so it's an important skill to develop.
A referencing style tells you how to correctly acknowledge the sources that you use in your assignments. Whenever you paraphrase or directly quote from a source, you need to reference it. You also need to reference any images that you use in your assignments.
There are two kinds of referencing styles: author-date styles and numbered styles.
Each style has its own referencing style guide which sets out the formatting rules of the style with examples of how this should look.
It's a good idea to have the relevant referencing style guide open on your computer while you write your assignment so that you can check (and triple check!) the formatting for your in-text citations and reference list. Pay particular attention to indents, capitalisation, punctuation, links, itallics, and the order in which the information in your citations must be presented.
Always check with your lecturer to confirm what referencing style is used in your course as different styles are favoured by different disciplines.
Common styles used at UON include:
Read the Library's Referencing Guides for detailed information on how and when to reference.
“Academic integrity, honesty, and a respect for knowledge, truth and ethical practices are fundamental to the business of the University.”
To act with academic integrity, you need to avoid academic misconduct such as fraud, cheating or plagiarism.
If you are having trouble with an assessment, you should contact your course coordinator. Get in touch with them early so that they are better able to assist you.
Using reputable information resources and referencing is an important part of academic integrity. You can use the library resources to help you with finding information and referencing correctly.
To get assistance, ask the Library.
To cite your sources in a PowerPoint presentation, you can put in-text citations on your slides; include your reference list at the end of your presentation (just as you would with an essay or report).
If you like, you can mention these references as you present your slides. The important thing is to tell your audience where any information or images have come from, either verbally, on the slides themselves, or with a combination of these methods.
Always follow your lecturer's instructions and follow the referencing style for your course.
There are three questions you need to ask when referencing images:
Once you have these answers, you can use the appropriate referencing style guide to:
If you are not reproducing the image in your assignment, you can leave out step 2.
It's good copyright practice to put an attribution statement underneath images you use in your presentation slides. The more information you can include in your attribution the better (e.g. title, author, source and license - this information also needs to be linked to the original image). You can see how to write an attribution statement in the referencing guide for your referencing style. It's also a good idea to use free and open licensed resources in your assignments. For more information on free and open licensed resources and copyright, please see Copyright for students.
It is important to respect copyright when accessing, using and reproducing information resources. You can access information on copyright for students and how it applies to you and your university work from the library website.
EndNote is a citation management tool that is available for free to all University of Newcastle students. Other citation management tools include Mendeley and Zotero.
You don't have to use a citation management tool; it is acceptable (and recommended!) to do your referencing manually until you have thoroughly learned the referencing style that is used in your course. You may even choose to continue to reference manually once you are confident with applying your course's referencing style to your assignments.
You can use EndNote to keep track of your reading and research. EndNote also has a "Cite While You Write" function which lets you insert in-text and reference list citations into your assignment in the referencing style of your choice. However, the quality of these references is only as good as the quality of the data that has been imported or typed into EndNote.
This is why it is important to always learn your referencing style and always double check any citations imported or typed into EndNote to ensure that your citations are correct. A common error to look out for is the name of the database or publisher being included in the author field.
The Library provides EndNote support via our EndNote guide and Book a Librarian.
You can also watch our other EndNote webinars: