06-06991 Research Skills

Referencing and references

Researchers are expected to refer to the work of others
in their own written work. This is done to acknowledge
intellectual debt; to support facts or claims; to enable
readers to explore related material. Whatever the
reason, it is important to present references in a way that
will communicate the information necessary for the
reader to identify the item referenced effectively and
easily.

06-06991 Research Skills

Failure to acknowledge sources or

how to plagiarise - 1
The obvious method
copy words written by someone else
without using quotation marks () and/or
without putting an author-and-date citation (eg
Smith, 2005) next to them.
Still plagiarism, even if the omission is out of
carelessness (without intending to deceive).
7 - Writing - 3: Referencing and references

06-06991 Research Skills

Failure to acknowledge sources or

how to plagiarise - 2
The slightly subtle way
paraphrase - ie to rearrange the words
The almost cunning method
summarize - or to write a summary in other words
(make a prcis),
without stating that you are making a summary and
without citing the source that is being paraphrased
or summarized.
7 - Writing - 3: Referencing and references

06-06991 Research Skills

Misrepresentation of
empirical observations
Cheating includes writing summaries or analyses that
include material which was not actually derived from
records made during the writers own observations (or
from someone elses observations).
In other words, you cant make up the data to fit the
conclusions you would like to make.
This is also known as fabrication of data.
7 - Writing - 3: Referencing and references

06-06991 Research Skills

Failure to acknowledge sources or

forgetting secondary citations - 1
In a secondary source, the author reports work presented
in other papers. Textbooks often report the work of other
people. Students read textbooks and then write their
essays as if they had read the original papers.
Indirect access to sources should always be
acknowledged as secondary citations, eg:
Cited by the paper that you read
7 - Writing - 3: Referencing and references

06-06991 Research Skills

Failure to acknowledge sources or

forgetting secondary citations - 2
Secondary citation is not generally acceptable in a
publication.
As good scholars, you should have consulted the original
paper, to be sure you are fair to its writer.
Always try to consult primary sources in project reports,
other continuous assessments work and theses.

7 - Writing - 3: Referencing and references

06-06991 Research Skills

Examples of correct attribution - 1

If plagiarism is such a big issue, how can you avoid it?
Fortunately, there are some acceptable ways of using
other peoples work.
The key point is honesty. Anyone reading your work
must be certain what is your work and where you have
relied on other peoples work.
7 - Writing - 3: Referencing and references

06-06991 Research Skills

Examples of correct attribution - 2

Acceptable usages
Summarizing the important points while demonstrating
some understanding of the material:
In reviewing the literature, Smalley (1998) concludes
that all attempts to parse English with grammars of no
more power than context-free have failed.
You must include Smalleys paper in the references.
7 - Writing - 3: Referencing and references

06-06991 Research Skills

Examples of correct attribution - 3

You may wish to provide more information about the
previous work so you can discuss individual points:
Smalley (1998) cites Crouchs (1993) claim that
parsing centre-embedded sentences should be parsed
using finite state machines with a limited number of
transitions, thus modelling the limited capacity of
short-term memory.
You must include Smalleys and Crouchs (with Cited
in Smalley (1998)) papers in the references.
7 - Writing - 3: Referencing and references

06-06991 Research Skills

Examples of correct attribution - 4

An alternative method:
To summarize Crouch (1993, as described by Smalley
(1998)), centre-embedded sentences should be parsed
using finite state machines with a limited number of
transitions, thus modelling the limited capacity of
short-term memory.
You must include Smalleys and Crouchs (with Cited
in Smalley (1998)) papers in the references.
7 - Writing - 3: Referencing and references

06-06991 Research Skills

Examples of plagiarism - 1
No acknowledgement of a source:
Centre-embedded sentences should be parsed using
finite state machines with a limited number of
transitions, thus modelling the limited capacity of
short-term memory.

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06-06991 Research Skills

Examples of plagiarism - 2
Representing papers as though they had been read by the
author, while the phrasing is clearly based closely upon
Smalleys summary.
Crouch (1993) states centre-embedded sentences
should be parsed using finite state machines with a
limited number of transitions, thus modelling the
limited capacity of short-term memory.
Including Smalleys paper in the references is not
satisfactory because there is nothing in the text to explain
why it is included in the references.
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06-06991 Research Skills

How to reference
There are two parts to referencing:
Making a reference in text
Recording the details of an item in a bibliography or
list of references.

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06-06991 Research Skills

Making a reference in text

There are many styles of making references. There are
two basic families:
Harvard system - Author/date method
Vancouver system - numbering.

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06-06991 Research Skills

Vancouver system numbering - 1

References are made by giving a number which points to
a numbered bibliography.
Simpkins(1) includes a review of implementations of LFG
written from the database interface perspective and with a
concentration on semantic systems imposed on LFG. This
review was later extended with a concentration on the parsing
of co-ordination.(2)
There have been two notable implementations of LFG, both
originating from the Institut fr Linguistik of the Universitt
Stuttgart. The first implementation(3-4) was part of a larger
system investigating the use of Kamps Discourse
Representation System.
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06-06991 Research Skills

Vancouver system numbering - 2

This is widely used in the Arts and Humanities.
It works well whether or not there is an obvious author.
It doesnt break the text up so much as the Harvard system.
The reader probably doesnt know the reference without
consulting the bibliography.
It is difficult to use if you have to insert the number manually.

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06-06991 Research Skills

Harvard system - Author/date method - 1

References are made by giving the authors name and the
date of publication.
Simpkins (1988) includes a review of implementations of LFG
written from the database interface perspective and with a
concentration on semantic systems imposed on LFG. Hurt
(1991) builds on this review with a concentration on the
parsing of co-ordination.
There have been two notable implementations of LFG, both
originating from the Institut fr Linguistik of the Universitaet
Stuttgart. The first implementation was part of a larger system
investigating the use of Kamps Discourse Representation
System (Frey and Reyle, 1983; Reyle and Frey, 1983).
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06-06991 Research Skills

Harvard system - Author/date method - 2

This is widely used in Sciences, Engineering and now, Social
Sciences.
It works well when there is an obvious author; badly when
there is no obvious author.
It can be made to fit well into a piece of continuous text.
The reader often knows the reference without having to consult
the bibliography.
It looks ugly when there are lots of references at the end of a
sentence or paragraph.
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06-06991 Research Skills

The art of
placing a citation in the text - 1
There are a number of guidelines for placing citations:
Obvious guideline 1
A citation in the text must point to a specific entry in
your list of references.
Easy examples:
(Jones, 1996)
(Jones and Jones, 1995)
(Jones, Jones and Jones, 1994)
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06-06991 Research Skills

The art of
placing a citation in the text - 2
More difficult cases:
Distinguishing between two authors with the same
family name, eg:
(Sloman, A, 1999) and (Sloman, M, 1999).
More than three authors
(Jones et al, 1993)
Corporate authors
(SUN, 1999) or (SUN Microsystems, 1999)
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06-06991 Research Skills

The art of
placing a citation in the text - 3
Obvious guideline 2
If you want to refer to a:
specific page (eg for a quotation),
section / chapter, figure / picture,
table, equation
you have to include the appropriate information, eg:
(Hancox, 1989, fig. 2)
(Hancox, Mills and Reid, 1990, 90-91)
(Simpkins and Hancox, 1990, sec. 6.1)
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06-06991 Research Skills

The art of
placing a citation in the text - 4
When you write your text, you should place your citation
where it doesnt get in the way of reading.
Hint - try to place citations before punctuation marks:
Many previous NLP systems have simply used the
search strategy of Prolog directly (Pereira and
Warren, 1980; McCord, 1985).

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06-06991 Research Skills

The art of
placing a citation in the text - 5
Other places look quite obvious:
Some previous implementers (Phillips, 1987;
Matsumoto, 1983) have used the opposite method.
And sometimes you use part of the citation in your text:
Sharp (1965) introduced the SLIC system .

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06-06991 Research Skills

Referencing in LaTeX - 1
When a reference is placed in some text, it is necessary to include a
command, eg:
This is a document with a reference to \cite{doc1} and is
very short. \cite{doc2}
To make LaTeX pick-up the bibliography file, you need to add two
commands:
\begin{document}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
text
\bibliography{bibtext_doc.bib}
\end{document}

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06-06991 Research Skills

Referencing in LaTeX - 2
BibTeX has a number of built-in referencing styles:
plain - numbered and reference list sorted
unsrt - numbered but reference list not sorted
abbrv - as with plain, but some parts shortened
alpha - as with plain, but a key is produced to
replace the number in the text, eg [Han94].
The plain style will produce a text in the form:
This is a document with a reference to [1] and is very short. [2]
This is the Vancouver system mentioned above.

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06-06991 Research Skills

Using the Harvard system - 1

To implement the Harvard style, we have to extend our
knowledge of LATEX by including a LATEX style file:
\documentstyle[harvard]{article}
where harvard is an instruction to read a style file
called: harvard.sty

In addition, we have to specify a different BIBTEX style:

\bibliographystyle{dcu}

where dcu is an instruction to read a style file called:

dcu.bst

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06-06991 Research Skills

Using the Harvard system - 2

Remember that the Harvard style allows us to include
authors names in running text.
There are two ways in which we might want to
incorporate names, eg:
Jones (1987) showed
Other studies showed the Earth to be cuboid
(Black, 1993).

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06-06991 Research Skills

Using the Harvard system - 3

To implement this, we need two forms of citing
references in a text:
Jones (1987) showed
\citeasnoun{jones87} showed

Other studies showed the Earth to be cuboid

(Black, 1993).
Other studies showed the Earth to be
cuboid \cite{black93}.
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