Referencing and Academic Honesty

Referencing Styles

A referencing style is a set of rules on how to acknowledge the thoughts, ideas and works of others in a particular way.

Whilst there are a number of different referencing styles in use across the university, they all aim to do the same thing and the differences are generally to do with how the reference is set out within your writing; some use an author, date style, where the citation (the shorthand used within your writing to indicate where you are referring to someone else's work) is in a written format, and others use numerical systems where the citation is a number. Some referencing styles such as Chicago and MHRA,  use a numerical system for some subjects (Humanities for instance) and an author, date system for others (Social Sciences).

Examples of Referencing Styles

Some of the referencing styles used across the university include:

• APA (American Psychological Society)
• Harvard
• MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association)
• Chicago
• IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
• MLA (Modern Languages Association)
• Vancouver
• OSCOLA (Oxford University Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities), mainly used in Law courses.

You should check your module handbook or ask your tutors to find out which referencing style you will be using. Some courses, which contain modules from different disciplines, might use a mix of styles, but once you understand the principles of referencing in one style, the process of adapting to another becomes less daunting, particularly if you use referencing software to help with the process.

The University's Library guides offer a wide range of guidance on referencing, including:

• ​General referencing guidance and referencing styles used in each college
• Information on the different Referencing Styles - Referencing - LibGuides at University of Exeter
• Referencing software, like EndNote, Mendeley and Zotero
• Using GenerativeAI tools such as ChatGPT in academic work

​​​​​​​You can also find introductory training on using EndNote and training on using Mendeley on its respective software support pages.

For more advice about citing and referencing, come along to a Study Zone drop-in.

Cite Them Right

​​​​​​The University subscribes to Cite Them Right, an online resource designed to help you to reference correctly and avoid plagiarism. Visit the Library's Referencing guide for more information about how to access Cite Them Right and how to use it to help you cite a broad range of sources.

Anatomy of a Reference

A reference is made up of two elements:

An in text citation that marks the place in your writing where you acknowledge you are referring to the work of another author or source. This is a form of shorthand and takes the form of either a numerical indication, or an author's surname and year of the publication in brackets. Both forms of citation normally appear at the end of the sentence in which you make the reference, but before the punctuation at the end of the sentence in author date systems. Some numerical systems place the number after the punctuation.

In the examples above, notice that the citation in itself does not contain enough information to allow the reader to find the item for themselves, it simply marks the place where the reference is made. To find the full information the reader would need to match the citation to the list of references, or Bibliography, included at the end of the written piece.

The list of references should contain full details of the publication being referred to, including author, title, date of publication, publisher, and place of publication.

The list of references is organised alphabetically by author's surname in author date systems, and numerically, in the order publications are referred to, in numerical systems.