Referencing is an important research skill, and is the process through which academic writers acknowledge the source of any information, theoretical approaches, data, illustrations or quotations that they use to support their studies.
It has a number of important purposes:
- It lends weight to your writing and shows that your work is based on reliable research.
- It allows readers to find the origin of your information and verify your sources.
- It helps demonstrate the breadth and depth of your research.
- It helps you puts your work in context which is particularly important for dissertations, final projects and post graduate work.
- It helps you avoid accusations of plagiarism, which is the unethical practice of presenting someone else’s work as your own.
- It gives due credit to the original authors or creators of the work you’ve used.
You should always include a reference to acknowledge where you have used someone else’s ideas.
Referencing successfully involves a number of skills: You'll need to keep notes about where you found information, be able to recognise, identify and evaluate information types, understand the specific rules of your referencing style, and use your writing skills to incorporate different types of information into your work.
