Get referencing right

From academic integrity to building bibliographies, these are the best ways to become a referencing champion.

What is academic integrity, anyway?

Academic integrity is an intimidating phrase but essentially it’s being honest, acknowledging your sources and not letting your work be used by others. Part of this means being clear about citations, rigorous about referencing, and ensuring that your work is a true expression of your understanding.

You should avoid things like plagiarism, AI writing tools, essay writing services or fellow students editing your text. Likewise, giving your work to others, including paid services and online plagiarism checkers, means your work may end up being reused without permission. You don’t want this to happen.

We have a comprehensive guide covering everything to look out for. It is worth giving this a scan before you start a project to understand the best practice and save it to refer to if a specific issue arises.

To find out more, book your space at our free academic integrity workshop on 16 November.

Referencing resources

Referencing is a huge part of academic life, and we know getting it right is one of the biggest worries for new students. Luckily, we have a range of resources so you can make sure you know your quotes from your footnotes.

The first thing you’ll need to do is find out your school’s referencing style. Simply find your school and follow the corresponding link to get a breakdown of which referencing style you need to use and how to use it.

We also have a referencing made simple tutorial that helps you troubleshoot any technical questions about referencing. On top of that, our referencing homepage has a step by step referencing explainer with links to dozens of our resources you might need. But if you still have questions...

Get some peer-to-peer support

The writing mentors at the Writing Space are referencing masters. The Writing Space can be found on the ground floor of Laidlaw, 1–4pm, Monday to Friday, throughout term-time. So why not head over and see if they can help you?

They should be able to get you on the right track but if you’re really struggling and need more in-depth help, you can also book one-to-one academic skills support session with our learning advisors.

If you have personal issues that are affecting your academic performance, it’s important you contact your school so they can help. The University has guidance for mitigating circumstances, and LUU has a mitigating circumstances walk-through explaining what happens in those situations.

EndNote: Referencing made easy

EndNote is a handy tool to easily format and keep track of the references you use. This will save you a lot of time, as long as you use it consistently. And because it’s integrated into Library Search, you can easily export the books and journals you reference from your reading lists into your assignments.

Skills@Library are also running an online Endnote workshop on November 13 so you can up-skill from the comfort of your own home.

We send out regular updates for workshops in our newsletter. We also have plenty of helpful videos on our Instagram. Take a look!