Skip to main content
It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.
Banner Image Main site Library home page Library home page

Referencing: Introduction

Referencing is a standard method of acknowledging the sources of information you have consulted in compiling your assignment. Anything – words, figures, graphs, theories, ideas, facts, images – originating from another source and used in your assignment must be referenced (i.e. acknowledged).

In your assignment (e.g. essay, seminar paper, dissertation, project, etc.) you must provide the reader with precise information pertaining to every source referred to in your written work or consulted as part of your research.

Referencing is a vital part of academic research and writing. There are several reasons why it is so important, some of which are listed below: 

  • To avoid plagiarism
  • To back up your argument(s)
  • To establish credibility
  • To verify your research and quotations
  • To provide your reader with the details needed to source the original documents, etc. used in your research

Common Knowledge

Widely known information or facts such as names, events, and/or dates do not always have to be referenced. This is known as common knowledge. 

For example, it is commonly known that Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the Moon in 1969, thus there is no need to cite or reference such a statement in your work. 

If you are in doubt over whether or not something is common knowledge, cite it!

 

  1. Record the details of all materials used in your research and reading as you go along – this will ensure you have all the requisite information to create your citations and references when you begin writing your assignment.
  2. Create an in-text citation every time you use or refer to someone else’s work within your own assignment
  3. Build your reference list as you go along (in alphabetical order), listing every source cited within the text of your assignment.

Zotero facilitates all three steps of the referencing process, click here for more information on Zotero.

Click and Collect:

 

Contact Hours:

 

More hours
https://libguides.dbs.ie/skills/referencing
libguides.dbs.ie
crawl=CC-MAIN-2021-31
44555
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:K4JXNFFT2XZOAEDPYJ77NGIDNNYYFI4M
<urn:uuid:6f41172f-1dda-4322-a5ae-77eba9a0b39f>
2021-08-04T12:48:18Z
104.26.14.36
text/html
sha1:PGEQIGJQQER5U3KYJ7BFOOK2XU4XY5C5
<urn:uuid:b3d18063-e8ed-4c20-a5fc-610a332ea64f>
https://libguides.dbs.ie/skills/referencing
response
<urn:uuid:7e8bc260-3502-4d2e-ba12-638259031d86>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2021-31
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for July/August 2021
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-217.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/