Referencing styles
What are referencing styles and how do you stick to one?
Many research authors have their journal papers returned with the comment: “Please adhere to the journal style for referencing”. What does this mean, and how can an author better prepare their references according to a particular referencing style?
Referencing is used to show the source of a fact or other information in a body of work. This allows readers to better understand the context of the research and enables them to go back to that source for more information.
Another important aspect of referencing is that automatic indexing pulls information from standardised references. This information is used to determine impact factors of journal articles.
Referencing systems
Referencing systems can be divided into two main categories: author–date and notation systems.
In author–date referencing systems, in-text citations use a combination of the author(s) name and the publication date of the work. The references appear in a separate list, which can be at the end of a chapter or the end of the body of work.
In notation referencing systems, in-text citations are indicated by a number in the body of the text. The number can be either a superscript number or appear in a bracket. The references appear at the bottom of the page (as footnotes) or the end of the body of work (as endnotes).
Referencing styles
A referencing style is a set of rules about how the works of others are attributed or cited in your own work. This can include guidelines for the layout, capitalisation, font style and punctuation used in in-text citations and reference lists. The referencing style will differ depending on the journal you are applying to, the style guide you are following or the guidelines of the publisher who is publishing your work.
There are a number of different referencing styles for each referencing system.
Author–date referencing styles include:
APA (American Psychological Association)
Harvard
MLA (Modern Language Association of America).
Notation referencing styles include:
Oxford
Vancouver.
Some styles, like Chicago, incorporate elements of both referencing styles, in that they incorporate notation system footnotes, but references are also listed in a bibliography section at the end of the body of work.
Citation and reference formatting
The way that in-text citations and references are formatted is specific to each referencing style.
For notation referencing styles, the style dictates whether citations are numbered as superscripts or in brackets.
For author–date referencing styles, the style dictates whether citations use a comma between the author name and the date or not, and whether the author name includes initials or not, among other things.
The style also dictates such things as whether the reference list is indented or not, capitalisation conventions, how many authors are listed, whether author initials have spaces and/or full stops after them, what titles are italicised, and how page ranges are represented, among other things.
The style can also dictate how to organise the alphabetical order of referencing, especially if there is more than one article by that author or set of authors.
Getting your computer to work for you with referencing
A practical way of getting your computer to work harder for you in making referencing more consistent is to use a reference management system such as EndNote, Mendeley or RefWorks. These systems help ensure that you include all the required fields for your references, and can produce fully styled and formatted references that comply with your chosen referencing style.
Checking references
Authors often forget to check their referencing. This check is an important step. It ensures that:
all the in-text citations/notations have a matching reference
all the listed references are cited/noted in the text
authors’ names are spelled the same way in both the in-text citations and the references (in author–date referencing)
the referencing style is correct and consistent.
My blog on Reference wrangling is a quick guide to correcting reference lists. In addition, you can use online reference checking tools such as Edifix to check your references for style and spelling, and even to add web links.
Resources
Some reputable sources for guidance on referencing include:
library guides, such as the Monash University citing and referencing website, which cover a range of referencing styles
any reputable style guide, including The Chicago Manual of Style, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, and the American Medical Association Manual of Style.
