Lecture 25 - Harvard Citation and Referencing

Figure 1: Copy Paste

"When a thing has been stated, have no scruple. Take it and copy it. Because it your own work".

As stated by Warwick (2011) "From reading academic articles and books, you should be familiar with the scholarly practice of making references in the text to other people's work and providing listings of relevant source material at the end of the text. Why is this done, and why should you adopt this approach in your own work? There are several reasons:

• To enable someone reading the document to find the material you have referred to or consulted;
• To demonstrate your width of reading and knowledge about a subject;
• To support and/or develop points made in the text;
• To avoid accusations of plagiarism: using somebody else's work without acknowledging the fact".

Learning from class:

Lecturer started the lecture by stating that students need to do references in their academic projects according Harvard Reference format as well as need to align reference methods in proper way.

Then lecturer discussed that citation should always be within a full stop. As an example: ...... Services (Jeodth, 2012). And the citation is apply for a one sentence basically from one full stop to another full stop.

If students need to refer big chunk of paragraph or text then students need to exclude first 1 and 1/2 half lines and last 1 and 1/2 half lines of the paragraph where the other content need to be indented. As an example:

Then lecturer stated above type of citation styles seen only in literature type of documents where people need to quote basically for direct quoting. As students literature type of writing can be found in critical evaluations of literature documentations. 

The reference is used to acknowledge some ones pieces of work and the validity of a citation is valid from stating point until it reach a full stop. Apart from that other content is considered as authors work. According the lectures experience most of the students normally reference the content but there no citations align to it. If there is reference its a must to have at least one citation in the document and if there are multiple citations for same particular statement because of the same idea stated in different sources, students need to put multiple citations as Johan 2010; Peter 2012; Deme 2011. The citations were not count as part of the total word count of the document. In Microsoft Word, Word Plugging enable students to do reference and citations where it allows to generate document word count without any citations.

Then lecturer discussed How to use citations at the beginning of sentence

This applicable when the resource authors name naturally occurs in the sentence the citation (Surname of the author) appears out side the citation and the inside the citation contains only the year and page number. Bellow is list of examples on various formats of citations where it can used at beginning. They are,

• As stated by ABC (2012)

• According to ABC (2012)

• As per ABC (2012)

• As said by ABC (2012)

• As mentioned by ABC (2012)

• As told by ABC (2012)

• As reflected by ABC (2012)

• As depict by ABC (2012)

• Based on ABC (2012)

• As pointed out by ABC (2012)

• In companion to ABC (2012)

• ABC (2012) describes that

• Based on the  investigation ABC (2012)

• As proved by ABC (2012)

• As said by ABC (2012)

• ABC (2012) agreed that

• ABC (2012) makes the point that

• ABC (2012) says that

• As criticized by ABC (2012)

• In comparison to ABC (2012)

• As ABC (2012) wrote that

• As noted by ABC (2012)

• ABC (2012) argued that

As students its better to have a mixture citation patterns which reflects the students knowledge in language.

Before concluding the lecture for the the day, lecturer stated some Golden Rules relating Citations and References that need to follow when working on a Documentation. They are,

1. Don't always stick to one particular frame to introduce references. Better to have a variety or mixture of them.

2. Don not quote (Copy Paste). If its direct copying use inverted commas also do not copy pate (quote) more than three lines.

3. Always Paraphrase. State multiple citations. As an example:

• If student cant find the year it should state as "n.b"

4. Try to avoid anonymous author. If its a site state the site name or the organization name that site belongs to.

5. If the year is not available based on the reference content try to find the year. In this case it use "circa" basically state an approximate year for the content. Example :- As Peter stated (2012 C)

6. Citing Interviews/Emails - Have to mention as personal communication by including as "Pers.comm". This need to mention after the name of the interviewed person. As an example (Jame, L.E, 2012, pers.comm., 12 May) 

7. If there is a word to word copy it should placed within the inverted commons.

Reality of the Lecture:             

From this lecture I gained a vast amount of knowledge relating various aspects of Harvard Citation and Referencing which I totally misinterpreted before. Most of the time I have used only few combination of citation mix in my past academic documentations. Today only I got to now that there are various form of citations patterns available to present that will results more interest to the readers. Citation need to be done where it possible for each statement if I reflects another authors statement or an idea. There is no limitation for citations in the document since more you show them the more you have the knowledge that easy results in to develop relevant and more interested content in the document. By adopting Golden Rules relating to Citations and References where it applicable fulfills the academic documentation requirement in more professional way. I hope to use above all the consequences in my future documentations to deliver more standard documentation relating to Harvard Citation and Referencing guideline.   

Reference:

 Warwick. (2011). Why reference?. [Online]. Available at: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/help/guidespublications/bib_cit/ [Accessed 4th September 2012]