Every project you complete at Newlane will require the use of citations (also called references). This is true of academic writing in general, whether you are reading a journal article, a textbook, or an academic monograph. Academic work is assessed not only on what is argued, but also on how responsibly and accurately sources are used.
This page is designed to help you understand the purpose and importance of citations, and also to demystify the work of providing citations (or references), and show some tools to make the work of citing simple and straightforward. To get started, we recommend viewing these two videos: Citations How To Video and Integrating Quotes Effectively.
Why do we reference?
Academic writing does not take place in isolation. It forms part of an ongoing scholarly conversation. A researcher may propose an idea or theory; another may test it, identify limitations, and refine it; later scholars may build further on these developments. Each stage depends on the work that came before it.
When we make use of the ideas, arguments, or data of others, we must make this visible to the reader. Referencing serves several key purposes:
- Acknowledgement: to give credit to the original authors for their work.
- Academic integrity: to avoid plagiarism, which is the presentation of another person’s work or ideas as one’s own without acknowledgement.
- Credibility: to demonstrate that a piece of work is informed by relevant scholarship and grounded in research.
- Traceability: to enable readers to locate the original sources for themselves.
Failing to acknowledge sources is a serious breach of academic standards. Proper referencing is therefore both an ethical obligation and a practical requirement of academic study.
How do we reference?
There are many different referencing styles (such as APA, Harvard, or Chicago). In this introduction, we focus on the principles common to all styles rather than on the detailed rules of any one system.
In order to give proper credit, a reference must usually include:
- the name of the author or authors,
- the title of the work,
- where and when it was published,
- and, where relevant, the specific location of the information (such as a page number).
Bibliography or reference list
The full information that we need to provide is actually quite a lot of information, so this comes at the end of the project in a reference list or bibliography. In the bibliography we typically include the following:
- Author name, e.g. William, C.W.
- Date of publication, e.g. 2004
- Title of text, e.g. The Complete Poems
- Name of publisher, e.g. Routledge
- Place of publication, e.g Oxford
- As various versions of books are sometimes published by the same publisher (e.g. all the Harry Potter books had both a UK publication and a US publication, which are different from one another) our reader needs to know which version we have used.
This complete reference will thus look something like this:
Williams, C.W. 2004. The Complete Poems. Routledge, Oxford.
In-text citations
In our main text, however, we would not add all the above information every time we use information from this book. Instead, we make use of in-text citations.
These are shortcuts that point the reader to the correct entry in the bibliography. They appear in brackets after the relevant information in the main text, as such:
One of the best poems in the world says that “so much depends upon a red wheel barrow” (Williams, 2004, p. 26).
Using the information in the brackets, a reader is then able to find the exact book that was used, and even has access to the precise page where these lines appear. Note that every in-text citation must appear in the bibliography.
Referencing videos or newspaper articles
Physical texts are one source that we may use in our projects, but we may also use information from a video online, from an online text (like a pdf), or from another website. In these cases we would provide as much relevant information as we can find.
Here is an example for a video:
Newlane University. 2024, 13 February. ‘Introduction to academic referencing.’ YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qefbeRhITg. Accessed 2/19/2024.
In this case the publisher is YouTube and I have also added a link to the video to make it easy for my reader to find, and I have noted the date I accessed the video.
A newspaper article, for example, will include the name of the journalist, the date of the newspaper, the name of the article, and the name of the newspaper. Like so:
Watts, J. 2025, 29 October. ‘America’s super-rich are running down the planet’s safe climate spaces, says Oxfam’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/29/americas-super-rich-running-down-planet-safe-climate-spaces-oxfam.
Quoting and paraphrasing
There are generally two ways to make use of the ideas of others or data we have found in other publications. We can quote directly or paraphrase. But we have to reference both of these, as even if we use different words, we are still making use of another’s ideas.
Quoting directly means that we use another’s words verbatim.
“There is no substitute for sustained, attentive reading in the development of critical understanding” (Joplin, 1982, p. 32).
Paraphrasing means to use different words to convey the same information.
Joplin argues that developing strong critical understanding depends fundamentally on engaging in careful and extended reading, and that no alternative practice can replace this process (Joplin, 1982, p. 32).
Some referencing tips:
Use references wisely. Using references should help or support the argument you are making, but they should not be used to make your argument for you. When a reference appears in a paper it should immediately be used in a meaningful manner, such as being explained or described.
Avoid lengthy quotations. If you find that the bulk of one of your paragraphs consists of direct quotations, see if you can either paraphrase or break up the quotation a little bit. Try to isolate the most important parts of the quotation and use those.
While referencing may at first seem technical, with practice it becomes much easier. The aim is not to be perfect with referencing, but rather to be consistent, honest and to try to provide clarity about where ideas come from.