Academic Skills

Referencing & Plagiarism

Referencing is an important part of academic work. It puts your work in context, demonstrates the breadth and depth of your research, and acknowledges other people’s work. You should reference whenever you use someone else’s idea

For more detail on how to reference, click here.

What is referencing?

Referencing is a way of showing when someone else's work has been used to support ideas presented in a text, article, videocast, research study or other piece of work. Referencing is widely used in academic writing and commercial publishing.

When should you reference in your work?

EITHER quotes someone else directly

OR paraphrases someone else’s work, i.e. puts it into their own words.

Leaving referencing until the last minute creates avoidable stress and always takes longer than you expect. Check out our recommended tools for collating referencing information in our Study Support Tools page

What happens if you don't reference?

This is called Plagiarism.

Plagarism is the use of other people’s ideas, concepts and theories as if they were your own. You may well have heard more severe definitions, which use words like ‘stealing’, ‘theft’ and ‘cheating’ – these negative, accusatory definitions can be distressing, but don’t worry; a knowledge of plagiarism and how it works can actually benefit your approach to your work and development of ideas and arguments.

How can I check my work for the similarity of others' work?

Turnitin is a piece of software used by lecturers / markers and students to determine how many exact matches there are between your submission and information from websites, online periodicals and other resources.

Click here to visit the Turnitin Student Resources Hub.

What referncing system does UWS use?

The standard referencing style at UWS is Cite Them Right Harvard - this is sometimes shortened to CTR Harvard.

If you study Law or Psychology, or with the Scottish Baptist College you will use different styles - please see the Other Referencing Styles tab for more details.

If you've studied at UWS before you may be used to our previous referencing style UWS Harvard. Please note that from the beginning of Academic Year 2021 - 2022 UWS Harvard should no longer be used. CTR Harvard is now the accepted referencing style.

Look at this brief guide to referencing at UWS

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the advantages of using CTR Harvard over other referencing styles?

Accessibility: some features of UWS Harvard were incompatible with updated accessibility guidelines.
CTR Harvard is more compatible with bibliographic software such as EndNote.
CTR Harvard is widely used throughout UK Higher Education institutions therefore staff and students new to UWS are likely to be using a referencing style with which they are already familiar.
CTR Harvard is accompanied by an excellent textbook - UWS Library has multiple copies of both the print, and electronic versions of this text. Please note that the ebook can be accessed from both on, and off, campus
The Cite Them Right textbook also covers the other Referencing styles used at UWS: APA for Psychology; OSCOLA for Law and the Chicago style of referencing for the Scottish Baptist College

What are CTR Harvard examples?

Go to this page

Click on "Cite Them Right Referencing Examples" at the top of the page and then select the type of material from the drop down menu to see relevant examples.

Please note that these are a selection of the most commonly used types of material such as book & chapters, web pages, journals etc. If you cannot find an example listed then please refer to:

Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2019) Cite them right: the essential referencing guide. 11th rev. edn. London: Red Globe Press.

Print and electronic copies are available from UWS Library. Access to the ebook is available from both on and off campus - use your UWS username and password to log in