Citations and references
At the university you will often hear that it is necessary
to insert citations and use bibliographical references.
But why and what are they used for?
Citations and references have several purposes:
to acknowledge the authors’ works,
to avoid plagiarism,
to make known the sources of information used in your work
and to give your work credibility.
A citation inserted in a text
indicates the source of information used in that part of it.
The full reference of the information source
appears in the bibliography listed at the end of the paper.
Different styles are used for the bibliographical references
depending on the discipline.
For example, APA style is common in psychology, education and related disciplines.
ISO 690(2010) is multidisciplinary,
and Vancouver style is the most widely used in health sciences.
Although there are thousands of styles, all of them differentiate
references for all types of work:
books, articles, book chapters, websites,
doctoral theses, presentations at congresses, conferences, reports, etc.
Depending on the type of document,
references should include a series of elements
in a certain order.
Guides for APA and Vancouver styles are available
among the training materials collected on the library blog.
Here is an example of the same bibliography list in two different styles,
The first one is in APA style, in alphabetical order
and the second one in Vancouver style, in numerical order.
If the publication date is known, it always appears.
In cases where documents can be found on the web
their links are also included.
Website references should include
their page title and the address.
In references of doctoral theses, besides the author and title
the university where the author got his/her PhD is also indicated.
The following elements appear in the references of articles:
the author and title of the article and the journal where it was published,
as well as the volume, number and pages.
It is important to distinguish the title of the article from that of the journal.
The main elements to identify the books are
their author(s), title and publisher.
When describing chapters of books
author and title appear at the beginning,
and the data from the book that contains it below.
If you understand the references used in your field
you'll find those documents easily
in library catalogues and bibliographic databases.
Besides, you will learn how to correctly insert citations and references in your papers.
If you need more information about searches
watch the "How to Search" video collection