RGUHS J Pharm Sci_2_2_01.pdf

Referencing: Principles, Practice and Problems 

Colin Neville 

University of Bradford, Bradford, UK 

AbsTRACT 

This paper explores a neglected aspect of academic writing, namely the principles and practice of referencing 

sources. In recent years, plagiarism has been a dominant concern for higher education practitioners. However, 

there can be a fine line between plagiarism and poor referencing practice, and higher education institutions report 

that students often struggle to understand, not just the ‘how’, but the ‘when’ and ‘why’ aspects of referencing. 

This paper will, however, assert that student difficulties can stem from the inconsistencies of institutional advice, 

proliferation of referencing styles, and an over-emphasis by institutions on the technical presentation of sources, 

rather than on the principles underpinning referencing. The author will argue that academic writers, particularly 

students, should be encouraged by institutions to perceive referencing primarily as a tool for the development of 

an authentic authorial voice, rather than just as a defensive shield against accusations of plagiarism. 

Keywords: Referencing, citations, bibliographies, avoiding plagiarism, academic writing. 

INTRODUCTION 

Referencing is the practice of acknowledging 

in an academic text the intellectual work of 

others; work that has been presented formally 

into the public domain and is still 

accessible in some way. The term ‘citation’ 

refers to the presentation of a source in the 

body of the text; and the ‘references’ or 

‘bibliography’ refers to the full list of presented 

sources at the end of the work. It is 

expected that academic writers will cite and 

fully reference the sources of ideas, data 

and other evidence in written assignments. 

However, this practice is not without its difficulties 

for academic writers, particularly 

students. Recent studies 1,2 have highlighted 

the difficulties students can have in understanding 

the principles and practice of 

referencing, including understanding when 

it is necessary to reference and how to cite 

and reference sources in a way that avoids 

plagiarism. 

Pittam et al. 3 has highlighted the difficulties 

students can experience in developing a 

sense of authorship in academic writing, 

and Neville 4 has also identified a number of 

particular technical concerns for students, 

including the confusion caused by the 

proliferation of referencing styles found 

within higher education. For academic 

practitioners, a particular area of concern 

has been in relation to the number of 

inaccessible or ‘disappeared’ sites cited in 

peer reviewed journals, leading to a loss of 

credibility for the academics in question; 

this will be explored later in this paper. 

Like many familiar practices, referencing can 

be taken for granted by academics experienced 

in writing for professional purposes. 

Familiarity with the method can lead to a 

situation where the principles that underpin 

practice are no longer reviewed, challenged, 

or even considered. The experienced academic 

writer can also fail to appreciate why 

others less experienced struggle to master a 

practice that may seem commonplace to the 

writer concerned. 

The aim of this paper is to review the 

principles that underpin the practice of 

referencing and the problems that can 

Scientific Tool 

Received Date : 30-03-2012 

Revised Date : 30-04-2012 

Accepted Date : 02-05-2012 

DOI: 10.5530/rjps.2012.2.1 

Address for 

correspondence 

Colin Neville 

Trans:it Project-Science 

(Resource Development) 

University of Bradford 

School of Lifelong Education and 

Development 

University of Bradford 

Bradford 

BD7 1DP, UK 

E-mail: c.neville@bradford.ac.uk 

www.rjps.in 

RGUHS J Pharm Sci | Vol 2 | Issue 2 | Apr–Jun, 2012 1

occur, particularly for students. It will address the ‘why’, 

‘what’ ‘where’, ‘when’, and ‘how’ of referencing. It will 

also engage with the thorny issues of what constitutes 

common knowledge – which does not need referencing– 

and about the proliferation of referencing styles and 

the confusion this can cause to students. A key point 

in the paper will be that referencing difficulties of 

students, particularly those studying outside their home 

countries, are often inseparable from other the writing 

difficulties, and these arise largely from a lack of previous 

experience and knowledge of what is expected of them. 

One desired outcome from this paper is that institutions 

of higher education allocate time in staff development 

sessions to reviewing the way referencing is perceived, 

presented, and assessed. 

Why reference? 

So what is the point of referencing? It can be argued 

that the main purpose is to facilitate the collective 

development and transmission of academic knowledge. 

This development and transmission is powered by 

human endeavour and communication; referencing is 

one element in this communication process, and can 

allow writers to separate their ideas from the work of 

others. It also helps other scholars trace the origins of 

ideas, thus build links across knowledge. 

Secondly, all academic writers, whether students or 

practitioners, are expected to become more critical of ideas 

as they progress in their careers. This critical approach 

includes the intelligent selection, review, analysis and 

presentation of ideas in support of a chosen argument. 

Referencing is a practical manifestation of this engagement 

with knowledge and crucial in the development of 

authorial identity, particularly in the analysis, review and 

construction of arguments. 

In this respect, Becker 5 believes the construction of 

arguments is the predominant function of referencing. 

In Becker’s view, referencing facilitates the communication 

of evidence to support a particular case, or to 

assess, compare, contrast or evaluate different sources. 

Shahabudin, 6 summarising work done by the ‘Critical 

Thinking’ learning area of the Learn Higher Centre of 

Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) network, 

also suggests that mastery of the principles and practice 

of referencing is an important element for academic 

writers in the development of critical thinking. 

Shahabudin 6 sees referencing as a way to gain authority 

and authenticity in academic writing if it is used to 

help to trace the origins of ideas, synthesize multiple 

voices in any discussion, and build a web of connecting 

ideas. 

Thirdly, it can be argued that the standardisation of 

referencing practice, in compliance with a particular 

referencing style, supports this communication process. 

Colin Neville: Referencing: Principles, Practice and Problems 

The accurate citation and referencing of sources, and in 

a consistent way, advances a writer’s credibility with his 

or her peers, and facilitates others to identify the type of 

source, originator, publisher, and the date of its origin. 

This serves to comply with copyright agreements, 

acknowledges the authors or originators of the work in 

question, and assists other academic writers with their 

own research. 

Despite the potentially broad role of referencing in 

academic writing, Angelil-Carter 7 found that undergraduate 

students in her South African study perceived 

its function largely in terms of satisfying institutional 

guidelines, and quotes one student as viewing referencing 

as a ‘damn nuisance’ 7 (p. 64), rather than as an aid to the 

development of arguments. Angelil-Carter 7 cites other 

examples where referencing is seen as a strategy for 

merely displaying reading coverage or for mimicking the 

conventions of academic writing, rather than a means for 

students to develop their ‘own voices’ in assignments. 7 

(p. 61) Neville 8 too, has argued that the ‘moral panic’ 

around concerns of plagiarism in UK higher education 

has produced a situation where undue emphasis is 

placed by institutions on the ‘when’ and ‘how’ aspects of 

referencing, rather than on the principles underpinning 

referencing, particularly the development of authorial 

identity in academic writing. 

Discussion about academic integrity in general, and 

plagiarism in particular, has gained momentum in higher 

education over the last two decades, leading to policies 

and statements emanating from within institutions 

warning students of the dire consequences of plagiarism 

to their academic careers. However, Levin 9 and Neville 8 

feel that these warnings have made academic writers, 

particularly students, anxious about expressing their 

own views in assignments. Both commentators 8,9 argue 

that concerns about plagiarism can lead some students 

to adopt defensive forms of writing. This is where 

the identity or personality of the writer is submerged 

by the weight of citation and referencing in the text, 

including the referencing of texts included merely for 

‘show’ purposes, but clearly not read by the students in 

question. This defensive form of referencing highlights 

a tension many academic writers appear to feel between 

developing their own ideas, demonstrating their 

commitment to the set reading, and avoiding accusations 

of plagiarism. 

Abasi et al. 2 for example, in their study of graduate 

students, found that: “The students relied heavily on citation 

and referencing to represent themselves as writers who had consulted 

their sources.” 2 (p. 10) They quoted a student who said: 

“You don’t want to write or read a paper that is full of citations, 

but you have to when you are a student”. 2 (p. 110) 

Neville, in his study of students’ perceptions of 

referencing, found students who described the process 

2 RGUHS J Pharm Sci | Vol 2 | Issue 2 | Apr–Jun, 2012

of academic writing as akin to editing, rather than 

authorship. He quotes two postgraduate students: 8 (p. 28) 

The person is not able to bring out his own thoughts, in 

the fear that this idea has already been quoted by previous 

authors. As this process of fear grows higher, the interest 

to research and innovate is lost… as the reader analyses 

further almost every idea that [he] thinks is already quoted 

by another…I am not against referencing, but with the 

degree to which it is over-emphasized, I fear it will defeat the 

objective of education – to train the minds to think. 

“ It is considered that if there are a lot of references 

[in the assignment] then the person has done more 

research, which is not necessarily true. I think an assignment 

must be more of your own work, and not an entire literature 

review. Your own ideas and words must be valued…” 

This tension can lead to students writing in a way that 

buries their writing style identity behind a crustacean layer 

of referencing to the point where, as one experienced 

higher education tutor has suggested: 

“Any rhythm that the resulting prose might have 

possessed had been destroyed through being referenced to 

death.” 10 (p. 54) 

However, there have been interesting workshop 

approaches within higher education institutions to 

encourage students to develop their own authorial 

identities and to use referencing as a tool for this purpose. 

The University of Aberdeen, for example, has embedded 

academic writing workshops within its Science Masters 

programmes. These workshops address questions, such 

as, ‘What is a piece of academic writing?’; ‘What is an 

argument?’ Feedback from students and staff has been 

positive, with all commenting favourably on the increased 

understanding and application of the conventions of 

academic writing. 11 At London Metropolitan University 

and Liverpool Hope University, Writing Centres were 

established, and peer mentoring schemes introduced, 

enabling successful post-graduate students to mentor 

new undergraduate and postgraduates in academic 

writing generally, or for a particular discipline. 12 

The use of plagiarism detection software, such as Turnitin 

and Ferret, can also be used, not just to deter plagiarism, 

but in formative way to assist in the development of 

academic writing. Barratt and Malcolm, 13 for example, 

report on a study involving 182 mainly postgraduate 

International Masters students on Computer Science, 

Automotive Engineering and Electronics courses. The 

students were asked to summarise a number of research 

papers in an essay, and their assignments were submitted 

to Turnitin and Ferret, with a view to giving feedback on 

how original their words appeared to be. A threshold of 

15 percent of matching text was used, but it was found 


that 41 percent of students had submitted work that 

exceeded this threshold, although on closer inspection 

a number of these, for a variety of reasons, could not 

be regarded as plagiarism. However, over a quarter 

(26 percent) of assignments was above the threshold, 

and these students were shown their work with the 

copied passages highlighted and given an opportunity 

to resubmit it. On resubmission, the incidence of 

plagiarism had dropped to 3 percent overall. 

Pankhurst and Moore 14 found that Turnitin, if used in a 

formative way, was a ‘powerful tool’ in encouraging and 

helping health science students to paraphrase journal 

articles. The researchers suggested that plagiarism 

occurred because students were often ‘not comfortable’ 

with their own writing ability: “To change or paraphrase was, 

to them, to risk inaccuracy.” 14 (p. 126) This view is supported 

by Neville who found that some students, particularly 

those studying outside their home countries, “… could 

not always think of alternative words or ways of expressing 

ideas; and some admitted to only half understanding the meanings 

in some passages, so had resorted to partial copying of the most 

impenetrable sections of the text.” 4 (p. 32) 

When and what to reference 

There is no referencing issue more capable of confusing 

academic writers than this. In particular, as suggested 

in the last section, students can experience a tension 

between expressing their own ideas and citing the work 

and ideas of others; separating the two can become 

difficult, and students can become over-cautious or 

confused, about what should be cited. 4,15–17 

Higher education tutors in the same disciplines may not 

agree on when it is necessary to reference sources and, 

in particular, may disagree on what constitutes common 

knowledge. 7,18 As stated earlier, what is regarded as 

common knowledge does not need citation or referencing. 

However, Angélil-Carter 7 found inconsistencies among 

staff at one higher education institution on this issue; 

common knowledge to one tutor was not to another, 

even in the same subject area, leading to student 

confusion and insecurity. 

So what is common knowledge? One definition is: 

… information that is presumed to be shared by members of 

a specific “community” — an institution, a city, a national 

region, the nation itself … a particular race, ethnic group, 

religion, academic discipline, professional association, or other 

such classification. 19 

Common knowledge, in a referencing context, has 

two main elements. First, there is knowledge ‘shared’ 

in the public domain. These are generally undisputed 

facts circulating freely and publicly in any largely 

uncensored society. It would also include general and 


factual descriptions of folklore and traditions, although 

specific author comment on these would be referenced. 

It also covers commonplace observations or aphorisms; 

for example, that the dreary days of winter can have a 

depressing impact on our moods, although if specific 

evidence was mentioned, this would be cited. It would 

also cover descriptive historical summaries of past 

events or periods taken from general reference sources, 

where most commentators agreed on what happened. 

However, disagreements among commentators on 

causal factors of these events would be noted and duly 

referenced. 

Second, there is common knowledge within a subject. 

Every subject has its own set of commonly agreed 

assumptions, jargon, and symbols into which the scholar 

becomes drawn and which do not have to be continually 

explained or referenced. At undergraduate degree level, 

it is assumed that students starting on many courses 

where there are particular subject prerequisite, for 

example, sciences, mathematics, and English literature, 

will already have some knowledge of these. 19 However, 

as suggested earlier, not everyone within the same 

discipline may agree on what is common knowledge and 

navigation of this arena often requires explicit and early 

negotiation between students and individual tutors on 

any course. 17 

Angélil-Carter 7 has also drawn attention to difficulties 

older students can encounter when they attempt to 

integrate their own experiences into an assignment. 

In the social science disciplines, for example, students 

who have lived through significant periods of history 

may assume their own perspectives on past events are 

commonly held by others. They may take the position, 

therefore, that their own perspectives do not need the 

support of citation and reference to an ‘expert’. Many 

tutors would agree with this stance - but not all - and it 

is this inconsistency of tutor approach to referencing 

that can contribute to inequalities in the marking and 

feedback of assignments. 

Another factor in this discussion of common knowledge 

is in relation to shared knowledge common to one 

cultural group, but not others. Students, for example, 

may present unreferenced material in assignments in 

the belief that the ideas would be regarded as publicly 

recognised and undisputed in their culture; but some 

tutors may not agree - and may criticise the student for 

not producing ‘evidence’ to support claims made. So 

when should sources, outside of common knowledge, 

be cited? Campion 20 proposes a set of ‘rules for 

references’ based on the comments of 300 reviewers 

of four academic journals. He asserts that referencing 

is essential in the following situations. Firstly, to 

acknowledge the source of a finding, theory, definition, 

technique, instrument, formula, or some other piece 


of information; secondly, to recognise similar findings, 

theories, ideas or opinions; thirdly, to recognise 

contradictory or different findings; and fourthly, to 

support a point not well-known or not universally 

accepted by readers. He argues too, that references 

may also be needed for the following purposes: (1.) to 

support a conceptual point or assertion; (2.) to justify 

the use of a method, technique, or instrument (e.g., its 

reliability, validity, or appropriateness); and (3.) to support 

the importance or viability of a research topic, research 

question, or purpose/objective of a study. 

Drawing on Campion’s work, which was written for an 

academic practitioner readership, Neville 21 additionally 

proposes a more pragmatic six element framework for 

students on when to reference sources: 

1. To give the reader the source of tables, figures, 

photos, statistics, and diagrams included in a text. 

These may be items directly copied or which 

have been a source of collation for the writer. 

2. When describing or discussing a definition, 

theory, model, or practice associated with a 

particular writer. This would include the names 

of authors who coined words to label particular 

phenomena or situations. 

3. To emphasise the wider context of a personal 

reflection or personal experience, or to add 

weight to the writer’s own arguments or 

perspectives. 

4. When giving emphasis to a particular idea that 

has found a measure of agreement and support 

amongst commentators. 

5. To inform the reader of sources of direct 

quotations or definitions used. 

6. When paraphrasing another person’s idea that 

the writer feels is particularly significant or 

likely to be a subject of debate. 

Quality issues 

The increase in readily available online information 

has raised quality issues for students and for academic 

practitioners. For students, an issue of concern regards 

the validity of sources presented in assignments; and 

for practitioners, as suggested earlier, an important issue 

is about errors of citation and referencing found in 

academic writing, including peer reviewed journals. 

In relation to validity of sources, Campion 20 (p. 166) asserts 

that preference should be given to original articles that 

are: “seminal in an area of research; methodologically or 

conceptually rigorous; and most recent”. Campion had 

his own discipline, Psychology, in mind and, as regards 

‘most recent’, but we can find a division of opinion 

between subject areas on this point. In science disciplines, 


the ‘most recent’ evidence rule is likely to apply. But even 

in these disciplines past work can be the foundation for 

exploring how contemporary ideas have built on earlier 

ideas, models, and practices. With other disciplines, such 

as philosophy, English, religious study, law, or accounting, 

the ‘most recent’ can be less applicable, as more emphasis 

can be placed on seminal work in these disciplines. 

Campion also asserts that ‘the following reportage 

secondary sources are not considered [to offer] strong 

support’ as evidence in assignments: references to mere 

statements made in research articles that are not findings; 

textbooks; professional or trade journals, and similar 

sources; newspapers and other popular press sources. 

However, he also notes that, on occasions, even these 

identified ‘weak’ sources might well offer ‘strong 

support’, depending on the credibility of the authors 

and context in which they are used: 

… the quality of a reference depends on the context within 

which it is being used. If it is appropriate to the context, then it 

is a good quality reference (e.g., popular press references may be 

appropriate to show public awareness of an issue). 20 (p. 166) 

Another area of concern expressed by practitioners 

in recent years has been in relation to inaccessible or 

‘disappeared’ sites that are cited in peer reviewed journals. 

For example, Crichlow et al. 22 found that nine percent of 

sites cited in medical journals were inaccessible within 

three months of publication; and, even more dramatically, 

Aronsky et al. 23 found that 12 percent of sites cited in 

biomedical publications were inaccessible within two 

days of publication! Other studies have raised concerns 

about the lack of attention to referencing detail by some 

researchers. For example, Buchan et al. 24 investigated 

the frequency of citation and quotation errors in 100 

papers published in ten ophthalmic journals. Their 

analysis of 200 references found 35 errors in recording 

sources and 30 quotation inaccuracies. Similarly, Gosling 

et al. 25 in a study of reference and quotation accuracy 

in four peer-reviewed Manual Therapy journals, found 

nearly 36 percent errors in referencing sources and 

12 percent of errors in quotations. Harzing 26 feels 

that errors of this type can undermine a field of 

knowledge: “When practitioners discover that academics fail to 

do a rigorous job [and] that they resort to carelessly repeating 

what others have said…they are unlikely to value the academic’s 

advice.” 26 (p. 145) Harzing 26 makes a connection between 

careless referencing and increasing workloads in higher 

education: 

Unfortunately, increasing pressures on professors to publish, 

combined with increased student/faculty ratios that demand 

more of professors’ potential research time for teaching, are 

probably exacerbating this type of ineffective behavior. 26 

(p. 144) 


The ‘how’ of referencing: referencing styles 

The ‘how’, or technical presentation of sources, is governed 

by the referencing style adopted by either the subject 

discipline; or by a single institution e.g., UK Coventry 

University with the name-date (Harvard) as their chosen 

institutional style; or at the discretion of a department 

within an institution. Neville 4 found 14 referencing 

styles in operation in UK higher education institutions, 

each with their own sets of advisory or prescriptive 

guidelines. 

Why so many styles? Particular referencing styles can 

be adopted because of an affiliation to a style guide 

produced by an organisation representing the interests of 

a professional group or subject discipline, e.g., American 

Psychological Association (APA) style with Psychology 

and related subjects. But other reasons for the adoption 

of a particular style include gradual change over time; 

departments imitating departments across institutions; 

an arbitrary past decision by someone influential in a 

department; or institutional or departmental decisions 

in an attempt to standardise practice for students. Also, 

some referencing styles have benchmark guides that are 

regularly updated and offer clear and detailed instruction 

on how to reference a wide range of sources, including 

electronic, which prove attractive to their adopters, 

e.g., APA. This can offer security in their very prescription 

and currency, which other more advisory referencing 

benchmarks do not offer. For example, the Harvard 

style is derived from the following: (1.) British Standard 

Institution (BS) guidelines: 5605: 1990: Recommendations 

for citing and referencing published material; (2.) BS 1629:1989: 

Recommendation for references to published materials; (3.) BS 

5261-1:2000: Copy preparation and proof correction – part 1: 

design and layout of documents; (4.) BS ISO-690-3: 2009: 

Information and documentation – Guidelines for bibliographic 

references and citations to information resources. These are 

advisory guidelines only and Neville found that the 

practitioners within institutions charged with interpreting 

and communicating the guidelines could be inconsistent 

in their interpretation of BS recommendations. This led 

to differences in the way the Harvard style formatting 

of sources was presented to students, even within the 

same institution. 21 

Gibaldi 27 has argued too, that referencing styles adopted 

by institutions and departments can be shaped by the 

kinds of research and scholarship undertaken. For 

example, the numerical related styles of referencing 

are often favoured by visual disciplines, such as art and 

design and architecture, because they are more subtle, 

less intrusive and pleasing aesthetically on the page, 

compared to the relative ‘clutter’ produced by the 

citation name-date Harvard, APA or Modern Languages 

Association (MLA) styles. 


Neville 8 found students critical of the number of 

referencing styles within UK higher educations. He 

quotes one undergraduate science student: 

I wish there weren’t so many styles of referencing and [there 

was] one standard referencing style for all courses. 8 (p. 17) 

Students on some combined studies courses might be 

faced with two or more referencing studies to learn 

and manage within the same semester and Neville also 

found students critical of the inconsistencies among 

teaching staff on the advice being offered to students 

about referencing detail. This was particularly true of the 

Harvard style for the reasons stated earlier in this paper. 

Within the medical and pharmaceutical disciplines 

two referencing styles tend to be predominant: the 

‘Harvard style’ and a recurrent-number style, commonly 

referred to as the ‘Vancouver’ style, as outlined by the 

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors 

(ICMJE), in their guide International Committee of Medical 

Journal Editors Uniform requirements for Manuscripts Submitted 

to Biomedical Journals: Sample References. 

The Vancouver referencing style uses either a bracketed or 

superscript number in the text, which connects with list 

of references at the end of the work. The same number 

can be repeated, for example, if a source is mentioned 

more than once in the same text. A number in the 

text will, therefore, connect with the same number 

in the final list of references. The advantage of this 

referencing style generally is that only one number is 

used per source or note, so the same number can be used 

for recurring references to the same source (Table 1). 

The basic idea of the Harvard style is to use citations 

(a partial reference) in the main body of a text by citing 

the family name of the author(s), or organisational 

name, and the year of publication; and then to list all 

references in full and in alphabetical order at the end of 

a work. The name used in the citation always connects 

with the name used to start the full reference entry. The 

Harvard referencing style is the one most familiar to 

writers from the style adopted by many academic books 

and journals and there is no distraction from the text 

Table 1: Summary of major differences between Harvard 

and Vancouver referencing styles 

Name-Date (Harvard) Style Vancouver Style 

This style involves giving 

(or citing) the name(s) of 

author(s) or organisation(s) 

in the text along with 

the year of publication. 

All sources are listed 

alphabetically at the end 

of an assignment and 

labelled as ‘References’. 


This style uses bracketed 

(or superscript) numbers 

in the text that connect 

with a list of references 

at the end of the chapter/ 

assignment. The same 

number can recur, e.g., if a 

source is mentioned more 

than once in the text. 

to look at footnotes or endnotes, as is the case with 

concurrent referencing styles (Table 1). 

The Harvard style is, however, less versatile when citing 

and referencing sources without authors, and complex 

when citing secondary sources, and Neville’s survey 

of the referencing difficulties of undergraduate and 

postgraduate home and international students 4 found 

the difficulties of secondary referencing high on the list 

of concerns of both cohorts (Table 2). 

Table 2: Main referencing concerns of students 

in the UK 

Home Students (all) International Students (all) 

1. Secondary referencing 1. Paraphrasing and 

summarising 

2. How to integrate own 2. How to integrate own 

ideas and experiences into ideas and experiences into 

assignments 

assignments 

3. Paraphrasing and 

summarising 

3. Secondary referencing 

4. How to format and organise 

bibliographic lists 

4. Plagiarism concerns 

5. Plagiarism concerns 5. Referencing the spoken word 

Formatting 

As seen in Table 2, the time it takes to format sources 

correctly and in accordance to the referencing style in 

question is a recurring concern of students. 4,8 And, as 

shown in the examples in Tables 3 and 4, there are often 

small differences between styles. 

It can be seen in Tables 3 and 4 that the differences 

between Harvard and Vancouver styles in the example 

shown are in relation to the order and punctuation 

Table 3: Book chapter: comparison of Harvard and 

Vancouver referencing styles 

Harvard Vancouver 

Ballinger, A., Clark, M. (2001). 

Nutrition, appetite control and 

disease. Ch. 13 in J. Payne- 

James, G. Grimble, and 

D. Silk (eds). Artificial nutrition 

support in clinical practice. 

2nd edn. London: Greenwich 

Medical, pp.225–39. 

Ballinger A, Clark M. Nutrition, 

appetite control and 

disease. In: Payne-James 

J, Grimble G, Silk D, (eds). 

Artificial nutrition support 

in clinical practice. 2nd ed. 

London: Greenwich Medical; 

2001. p. 225–39. 

Table 4: Journal article: comparison of Harvard and 

Vancouver referencing styles 

Harvard Vancouver 

Powell, C.E. and Slater, I.H. 

(1958). Blocking of inhibitory 

adrenergic receptors by 

a dichloro-analogue of 

isoproterenol. J Pharmacol 

Exp Ther 122: 480–488. 

Powell CE, Slater IH. Blocking 

of inhibitory adrenergic 

receptors by a dichloroanalogue 

of isoproterenol. 

J Pharma Exp Ther. 

1958;122:480–88. 


of items. However, as stated earlier, the standardisation 

and consistency element of referencing is an important 

element in the communication process with other 

researchers and in the establishment of credibility for 

any academic writer. 

Bibliographic software 

As the formatting of references is a tedious and timeconsuming 

process, academic writers, including students, 

are increasingly using bibliographic software to help 

them manage the formatting of sources. In addition 

to the referencing management system built into more 

recent additions of MS Word, there is now a wide range 

of referencing management software systems, including 

free download software, for example, Zotero, 28 designed 

to help writers manage referencing. Many universities 

provide their adopted software free for students to use 

within the institution, or enable students to purchase 

the software themselves, often at a discounted price. 

Features of this software include: 

1. Searching the Internet for references and 

importing to a database. 

2. ‘Cite while you write’ features, which includes 

organising information retrieved into a particular 

referencing style. 

3. Linking text citation with the full reference, 

along with a facility for ensuring that any 

citation featured in the text corresponds with 

a full reference entry. 

4. Editing features: easy addition to references 

already entered. 

5. Keyword sorting alphabetically of references. 

There are obvious time and efficiency advantages for 

students in using this software, in both information 

retrieval and in organising the citation and full referencing 

in any text. However, all software does have its limitations, 

and, arguably, no one system can offer completely all 

that scholars need for fully integrated information search 

and easy transfer of information into citation and full 

reference forms. With some systems, for example, the 

search facility may be limited; with others there may be 

particular problems, such as confusion in distinguishing 

between primary and secondary authors, or problems 

with referencing certain types of uncommon source. 29 

The cost of these systems is also a factor, as site licences 

can be expensive and this is a major determinant of 

which system an institution finally adopts. As already 

stated, there is free download software that can be used, 

and most higher education institutions allow students 

to use their adopted systems free when they are on site. 

However, the same institutionally-adopted software can 

be expensive for a scholar to purchase and use privately, 


even at a discounted price, and academic writers must 

decide if the cost is justified in terms of the use they 

will make of it. It also takes time, effort and practice 

before the software can be used proficiently. However, 

the available evidence suggests that the effort to learn 

can be repaid by the consistent and detailed referencing 

entry that is given. 30–32 

CONClUsION 

Referencing, whilst an important element in academic 

writing, is a neglected area of research, although concerns 

about plagiarism, and interest in helping students develop 

a sense of their authorship in academic writing, has 

brought the topic to the forefront in recent years. Students 

can find referencing difficult and confusing, and this can 

add to the difficulties they may be experiencing in writing 

in a way that conforms to institutional expectations. 

Institutions of higher education may compound these 

difficulties by failing to address and resolve the difficulties 

students experience, or by not regulating the number of 

referencing styles across departments. 

Providing opportunities for teaching staff and administrators 

to discuss referencing practice and principles 

could prove to be useful to staff and students alike. 

Discussion, leading to the formulation of institutional 

policies and guidelines, could include key but 

neglected issues relating to the principles underpinning 

referencing, including: ‘why’ and ‘when’ to reference; 

what constitutes common knowledge in any discipline; 

how will referencing be presented to students, including 

when should this happen, and who will be involved; what 

advice is offered to students on the selection of sources, 

particularly those from the Internet; and, importantly, 

the rationale for the adoption of a particular referencing 

style or styles within a faculty or institution. 

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