Using and citing your information
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1. Evaluating resources 2. Citing or referencing |
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3. What you need to know about copyright |
Evaluating Resources
Any reading material recommended for your course has obviously been evaluated by the lecturers. But when you have to find your own information, you need to judge its quality yourself. Before you use any information, you should evaluate it with regard to relevance, currency and reliability.Relevance
After you have analysed your topic, you will be in a position to tell whether the article in question covers all the important aspects of the topic, whether it is sufficiently in-depth, whether it is pitched at the right level: not too general or basic, but not too complex or specialised. If you are required to examine a certain period or country, this needs to be checked also. Last but not least, make sure that the type of information you have found is appropriate for your topic.Currency
This relates to the date of publication. In rapidly evolving areas of research you will need very current information. Examine the date of publication of the book or journal. With web pages, check the date when it was last updated. If any references are listed, look at their dates as well.Reliability and Accuracy
You may feel you are not qualified to judge this, but if your article was published in a scholarly journal, it has already been examined by the editors. Refereed or peer reviewed journals only publish articles that have been evaluated by experts in the relevant field.If you are using other sources, for instance information published on the Internet, you should check that details of the author or organisation responsible are included and avoid sources that do not disclose those details. You can also look for the authors' qualifications and where they are employed. The domain in the URL indicates if it is a college or university (.edu), a government body (.gov), or a political or commercial organisation (.org or .com); this allows you to make some inferences as to how objective or reliable the information may be.
Do not trust information that is stated without indicating its sources, and if the sources are stated, try to work out if they are reliable. The type of language used will allow you to judge whether the information is mostly factual, opinion or propaganda.
Citing or Referencing
Plagiarism
Essays, theses and assignments need to formally recognise the sources from which you have obtained information. Presenting another person's work as your own by copying it without due acknowledgement is plagiarism. You can find out more from the University's policy Student Plagiarism: course work.
Referencing or citing is a formal way of acknowledging sources of information and ideas you have used in your assignment. It identifies the sources so they may be verified. You need to reference ideas and theories, facts, figures as well as direct quotations, from both published and unpublished sources.
For more details and examples see under Guidelines for Referencing in your Unit of Study Manual ENGG 1803 Professional Engineering on page 11.
Reference Styles
There are a number of styles you may follow, one of the most commonly used is the Harvard Style. Referencing styles follow rules of punctuation and other details for setting out a bibliography, and for citing within the text of an assignment. The two guides below explain by examples, covering a variety of print and electronic sources.- Curtin University of Technology Library's guide to Harvard Referencing (printable document)
- University of Technology Sydney Library's Referencing Guide: Harvard Examples (web guide)
What you should do
- Keep accurate and complete details of all the sources you use. For journal articles you need article title, author/s, journal name, date, volume, issue and page numbers. For books you also need the publisher's name.
- Get into the habit from the beginning. It will become easier and save you time. Storing the information electronically is more convenient than hardcopy.
- Find out which style of referencing is required by your lecturers.
More Help
Go the the WriteSite for online support to help you develop your academic and professional writing skills (you need to login with your UniKey). - See Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students, produced by staff of Virginia Tech, University of Illinois, University of Texas and Georgia Tech. It contains good advice, models, and exercises, and has an appendix about 'documenting of sources' which is about referencing.
- See also the courses offered by the University of Sydney Learning Centre
What you need to know about copyright
It is important that you are aware of the information about copying for your research or study.
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