Referencing

Introduction

Keeping track of sources of information in reports and lab books as you use them has several advantages, including avoiding plagiarism and making life easier when it comes to referencing at the end of the report.

Anything that you had to look up, or that isn't your original work should be referenced. Anything that your reader might not know should also be referenced.

How to reference

Referencing consists of two parts: a list of numbered references at the end of your report, and a pointer in the text.

For example, Young and Freedman might have the number [1] in your list, in which case you would place a [1] at the end of any sentence that uses information from Young and Freedman. Remember that equations are part of a sentence too, so place the reference at the end of the relevant sentence rather than by the equation

Key Points

• Published papers, reports, and articles are preferable over websites which can change/vanish. The aim is that your reader can go back to the source material.
• Where possible, go back to the original source – e.g. if you’re talking about the discovery of the neutron, quote James Chadwick’s original paper, not the physics textbook.
• Do not reference the laboratory script and avoid referencing the physics textbook where possible.
• When there is a digital object identifier (DOI), include this in your citation. It does not need to be an active link, you can just leave it as text. See below for examples on how to do this.
• You can directly quote, but this is rarely done in technical writing. Put things into your own words and be explicit if you are quoting someone else to avoid accidentally plagiarising.
• When comparing your results to a known value, you must include a reputable source for that number. Good sources include:
  • National Institute for Standards in Technology (NIST);
  • National Physical Laboratory (NPL);
  • Nuclear Data Sheets/National Nuclear Data Center (NNDC).

Formatting tips:

• The department prefers square brackets [ ] for references and curved brackets ( ) for equations – e.g. “The density of water is 1000 kg m^-3 [1]” and “Using Eq. (1)”.
• Number the references in the order that they appear in the report, then list them in the References section in that order.
• A reference to the source of a figure should go in the figure’s caption. You must reference any figures that are not yours.
• Generally, there’s no need to cite individual pages of a book; just cite the book as a whole.
• Group references – e.g. [1-5, 8, 11] rather than [1][2][3][4][5][8][11].

There are plenty of solutions to make referencing easier and many ways to present the references in the report.

If you are using Microsoft Word, it includes a referencing tool you can use to store references which can be re-used several times throughout your course without having to type them out every time. It will put numbered (2) or named references (Katz, 2006) in your text and, more importantly, update these numbers as you update your list of references.

If you’re using LaTeX, a package called Bibtex can be used.

Writing your References

Regardless of exactly how your references look, they should be consistent throughout your paper and contain all the important information. Questions you should be able to answer just by looking at the list of references are: Who said what? Published? By whom? Where? When? Below is a list of information to keep track of and include in each entry with an example of what the reference may look like (adapted from the Physical Review referencing style).

Journal Article

• Author Name(s) - use "et al.” if there are several authors, usually more than 3
• Paper Title
• Journal Name
• Journal Details – Volume, issue number, etc.
• Year Published
• Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

Example: [1] A.D. Ludlow, et al., “Mass-Discrepancy Acceleration Relation: A Natural Outcome of Galaxy Formation in Cold Dark Matter Halos.” Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 161103 (2017). doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.161103.

Books

• Author Name(s)
• Exact Title
• Publisher Name and City
• Date Published (year)
• Edition and volume
• Specific pages of interest, if needed
• ISBN, or Digital Object Identifier (DOI), if it has one.

Example: [2] C.S. Adams and I.G. Hughes, Optics f2f: From Fourier to Fresnel (Oxford University Press, 2018), pp.177-191. doi: 10.1093/oso/9780198786788.001.0001

Web Pages

• Author, if available
• Page Title
• Website Name
• Full Path to the Page
• Date Published
• Date Accessed – This is important for websites, as they are easy to change.

Example: [3] “Simulations.” PhET Interactive Simulations. https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/browse, (2023). Accessed 27 July 2023.

Conference Proceedings

• Authors
• Exact title
• Publisher, City of Publication, and Year
• Edition and volume
• Editors
• Pages of interest

Example: [4] M. Gierliński, C. Done, and D. Barret, “Phase-resolved Spectra of the Millisecond Pulsar SAX J1808.4-3658” in proceedings of ASP Conf. Ser. 251: New Century of X-ray Astronomy 251, ed. H. Inoue and H. Kunieda (Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2001).