Mastering Referencing: Avoiding Plagiarism and Creating Bibliographies

1. How to reference your sourcesHow to avoid plagiarismHow to create a bibliography

2. Referencing – why do it? • When you start researching a project you will be expected to find and use information that will help you. • This might be from such items as • Books • Encyclopaedias • Newspapers • Magazines • the Internet • These are called ‘sources’ of information.

3. Sources of Information • Which of these images represent sources of information?

4. Referencing – why do it? • Sources need to be acknowledged when you are writing your project. • This allows your teacher to • Check your work • See which sources of information you have used • Ensure you haven’t just made up the information

5. Referencing – why do it?

6. Plagiarism • What is plagiarism? • It is cheating! • Examples: • using someone else’s words and ideas and presenting them as if they were your own. • copying and pasting from the Internet. • You must write using your own words and thoughts when you complete your projects.

7. Examples of plagiarism • Example 1: • ‘I copied and pasted a paragraph from the Internet into my report without changing any words. Information on the web is free after all…’

8. Examples of plagiarism • Example 2: • ‘I used the ideas of an author and wrote them in my own words in my research.’

9. Examples of plagiarism • Example 3: • ‘I submitted parts of the same essay for two different projects.’

10. Examples of plagiarism • Example 4: • ‘I copied a diagram I liked from the Internet but put a note beside it to say where I’d copied it from.’

11. Examples of plagiarism • Example 5: • ‘I copied a few lines of a paragraph from a newspaper article. I enclosed them in quotation marks and presented the information as a quote from a newspaper.’

12. When you first start to research a topic you should use the skills which you have been taught: Identify keywords Identify useful resources Use indexes and contents pages in books and encyclopaedias Skimming and scanning Note taking Remember! Gathering your information

13. Remember to write down not just the useful information you discover but where you have found it too. It’s very difficult to backtrack later if you can’t remember which book or website the information comes from. Gathering your information

14. When should I reference information?

15. Three steps to referencing correctly • Step 1: Citing in your text • Include the abbreviated details of the work you are referring to • Author’s surname • Year of publication, followed by a comma • Page number(s) • Example: Moore (2009, p.9) states that “the best place to find crude oil is at depths of 2,000 to 2,900 metres.”

16. Three steps to referencing correctly • Step 2: create a reference list • At the end of your assignment you should list all the references you have cited in a certain order. • This list will contain all the information that someone reading your work will need to locate your sources. • For example the five elements required for the reference of the book mentioned earlier would be as follows:

17. Three steps to referencing correctly So put together the final reference list entry looks like this: Moore, H. (2009) The story behind oil. London: Heinemann Library.

18. You need to have all the full stops, commas, colons and brackets in the right places to make your references correct! Three steps to referencing correctly

19. Three steps to referencing correctly • Step 3: How to create a bibliography • A bibliography is a list of all the sources you have looked at. This should include sources you have quoted from but also other sources that have help you form your ideas and opinions while you have written your assignment. • An example bibliography is shown in the booklet

20. A few final thoughts….. Give yourself time to do your referencing Don’t panic! Check over your work Ask for help