Skip to Main Content
University Library

Social Sciences - Research Skills - Intermediate

In this course you will learn how to determine your need for information; find information effectively and efficiently; check information carefully; process and save information.

Basic principles of citing

The citation style you use varies by discipline, and sometimes even by course. Discuss with your instructor which one you should use. Each style has its own set of rules.

Regardless of the method you use, two steps are always important:

  • In the text of your report or thesis, indicate which information comes from which source.
  • In the reference list at the end of your paper or thesis, provide a complete reference for each source you used. Include all the information necessary to locate the source (in the version/edition you used).

In the following chart, you can see how these two steps are carried out in the different methods:

  Methods of referencing
author - year footnotes/endnotes sequence numbers
Step 1: Indicate in the text that you used a source

Author's last name and publication year (and page number)

 Number of the footnote / endnote
Sequence number of the publication
 

Step 2: Provide a reference for the used source

References in alphabetical order by author's last name at the end of the report

Full references written in the footnotes / endnotes
References in the order they are mentioned in the text at the end of the report

 
Examples of fields where this method is common:

Social sciences (e.g., psychology, economics, political science), biomedical sciences.

 Humanities (e.g., history)

Biomedical sciences

 

These mentioned methods are a rough classification. Within each method, there are different styles that prescribe in detail how to make literature references.