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Reviewing the Literature Topic

Reviewing the literature is a major part of any research process. It is important for many reasons, including finding the basis for your research, checking the current knowledge and thinking in your subject area and demonstrating that you can find, read and synthesise a range of literature in your subject domain. As you create your literature review, you will also be building your skills in literature sourcing, retrieval and management, i.e. effective reading, synthesis, rationale-building, organisation and writing. As you study the learning units in this topic you need to consider how you will locate the relevant literature, read and synthesise what it contains, identify gaps, manage your bibliography, and develop your argument / rationale / research questions.
Reviewing the literature > Citing references

Reviewing the literature

Citing references

When you are writing a piece of academic work, you will need to refer from within your text to material written by other researchers. You will need to do this each time your writing is influenced by, builds on, or makes claims based on the work of others. It is important to refer to the research of others throughout your work, in order to place your own research results in to context with other research that is being carried out in your field. By recognizing and referring to the work of others, the validity of your own research will be increased. Further, if correct acknowledgement in the form of a reference is not given to an author, you could be accused of plagiarism which is a serious breach of university conduct rules.

Examiners do check references and so it is important to cite your references correctly and to produce a bibliography.

Different styles of referencing citations are used in different disciplines. It is essential that you check with your supervisor and your departmental guidelines to determine what style of referencing you are required to use. These learning materials introduce you to the Harvard (also known as the author-date style) and the numeric referencing system and to legal citations, but is not intended to replace guidance from your supervisor and/or department.

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1. Some useful terminology
2. Is there a standard referencing style?
3. Harvard system: citations 4. Harvard system: references and bibliography
5. Harvard system: have a go at referencing!
6. Harvard system: solution to have a go at referencing 7. Using the Harvard system in your studies
8. Numerical system: citations9. Numerical system: references and bibliography10. Using the numeric system in your studies
11. The use of "ibid" and "op cit"12. Examples of book citation sources
13. Examples of conference or thesis citation sources
14. Examples of electronic citation sources
15. Examples of other citation sources
16. Critical appraisal of sources
17. Solution to 'Critical appraisal of sources'
18. What is a footnote or an endnote?
19. Legal citation: case law
20. Legal citation: legislation
21. Legal citation: journal articles and books
22. Managing your references 23. Practising with references

Authors: Dr Olivia Billingham and Dr Liz Falconer, University of the West of England, Bristol.

Based upon the work of Academic Services, Bournemouth University (The Library is operated by SCILS, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bournemouth University), Katy Jordan, Bath University Library, Dr Steve Gough, University of Bath and OSCOLA, Oxford University Law Faculty.