A brief guide to referencing

Searching

Finding theses

The theses of many Australian universities are available in digital format. Most will be searchable using the resources below and may also be available via library catalogues or an institutional repository.

Referencing tools

Organising your references is a vital part of research and its important to have a good system.

A good place to start for more detail on referencing is your university library. They will have a large repository of information that will set you on your referencing journey.

A good, user-friendly and integrative referencing program is a must for any resarcher. Below is a short description and my thoughts on the most commonly used tools.

Zotero

Website FREE

My recommendation!

Zotero is free, independent open-source project! It depends on the support of its users and developer community.

The pros of Zotero are many, some include:

  • Zotero is the only software that automatically senses research on the web.
  • Over 9,000 citation styles to choose from
  • Organise and share your collections
  • Sync capability, making it easy to access your library from any computer and moving your library onto your new computer is a breeze!

There is lots of documentation available. Start here for official Zotero information. Some useful library guides available from Melbourne Uni, Monash and Harvard.

Zotero is free, however your cloud storage comes with 300MB of storage. You can integrate it with your own preferred cloud storage (e.g. dropbox, google drive etc) or you can pay to upgrade. Going over the 300MB limit won’t affect you adding in citations it just means that any attachments will not be saved on your cloud account, however you could still just storage them locally fine.

Here is a presentation I gave on getting started in Zotero - link

Mendely

Website FREE

EndNote

Website $$
EndNote is probably one of the most commonly used referencing programs. It is a paid program, however most universities make it available for staff and students for free. However when you loss your institution log in details you will need to start your referencing again. This is one of the biggest reasons I advocate againist using EndNote. In addition the program is very large and is known for crashing computers, especially if you do not keep your version current.
With that all said there is a wealth of information available on how to use EndNote, here to get you started.

 

Work by Siobhon Egan

siobhon.egan@murdoch.edu.au