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Oxford Referencing

Oxford referencing is a citation system used in academic writing to acknowledge sources. It is important to use a referencing system, to indicate the depth of research and to avoid plagiarism. Referencing also allows readers to consult the sources for themselves. Referencing systems tend to fall into two broad groups: those that quote information about the sources within the text, and those which use footnotes. Oxford referencing uses footnotes in conjunction with a bibliography, sorted into alphabetical order by authors' surnames. 

The mechanics of using footnotes within Oxford Referencing Word Processing systems include easy to use footnote insertion routines. In Microsoft Word this facility is found under the menu item "Insert", then "Reference" and "Footnote". The Oxford Referencing standard is to place the footnote at the bottom of the page. A footnote reference consists of a superscript number, like this , with a matching entry at the bottom of the same page (see below) giving the details of the source being referenced.

Worked examples of using Oxford referencing 1. Referencing a Book With Oxford referencing the information given in the footnote is comprehensive, and consists of the author(s)'s full name, the title of the work being quoted, the publisher, the year published and the page in that book where the information appears, if that is relevant. For example, suppose that I am using a (imaginary) text book called Guide to Oxford Referencing by a totally fictitious author called Joseph Bloggs, published by an equally fictitious publisher called Academic Publishers, based in New York, in 1998, and that the information I have given in this paragraph appears on page 22 of Bloggs' book. Using Oxford referencing, the reference would be inserted at the end of the sentence which concludes the passage which uses ideas sourced from his work, and the information printed at the bottom of the page (see below). Note that the title of the work is in italics to differentiate it from the other information. Then Oxford referencing assembles all the information about all the sources used in the article together in a bibliography at the end of the article. Staying with this example, the bibliography entry for this author and work would be as follows:

Bloggs, J. Guide to Oxford Referencing. Academic Publishers, New York, 1998. Note the differences compared to the same information in the footnote. In particular, the page number is no longer given, because the bibliography is simply a list of sources. If the same work needs to be referred to again in the article being written, the footnote can be significantly reduced, because the information about the source has already been given. For example, if this last sentence was referenced to the same work, but this time from page 23, the footnote would appear as follows (see below).

2. A Chapter in a book Imagine now that a text book in which each chapter is written by a different author is being referenced. Using totally fictitious data once again, the footnote could look like this ; please see the bibliography at the end of this article for the matching entry. Note that the chapter title is in quote marks, and the book title is in italics. The abbreviation "eds." stands for "editors".

3. An Article in a Journal Because different issues of the same Journal do not have different titles, here the volume and edition numbers become important when creating the reference. The relevant footnote could look like this and the bibliography entry is similar. Note that the footnote gives the page pertaining to the referenced information, whereas the bibliography gives the start and finish pages of the whole article within the journal.

4. Electronic Sources For electronic sources, references require an additional date, that on which the information was accessed. The reason for this is that internet based data can be altered after it has been quoted, unlike a book, which is printed on hard copy and is identical within the same edition wherever it is sold. Thus the reference is like a snapshot of the data on the day it was accessed. An E-Journal article could be referenced like this and the bibliography entry is similar. Note that 4:25-27 is shorthand for Volume 4, pages 25 to 27. Websites are referenced in much the same way, except that the web address should be for the page viewed, and not just the site's address. Note that in all examples footnotes use the author's full name (Alexander Smith), and the bibliography entry always has the surname first followed by the initial (Smith, A.).

5. Newspapers Newspaper articles are referenced as follows. An important consideration with newspapers is that the author of the article or news item is often anonymous. In these cases it is perfectly acceptable to omit this detail. The bibliography entry follows the usual pattern.

6. Secondary References Very often the author of a text book being used as a source has referred to some other work, which subsequently needs to be referenced. This is done as follows and the bibliography has to give both sources.

7. Model Bibliography for Oxford Referencing

Here is an example of what the bibliography for this article would look like under Oxford referencing. All works referred to, all authors, all websites and all publishers are completely fictitious.

Bloggs, J. Guide to Oxford Referencing. Academic Publishers, New York, 1998.

Brown, A. "The History of the Oxford Referencing System" in Comparative Referencing Systems eds. J. Brown and W. Owen. Academic Publishers, New York, 2003.

Brown, B. "Oxford Referencing Gets Top Marks" , The Oxford Morning Gazette, 15 Jan 2002, p. 2.

Durban, C. "Oxford Referencing Explained", British Journal of Referencing Systems, Vol. 2, Issue 3, pp 17-37.

Foley, E. "The Finer Points of Oxford Referencing". Students Journal of Academic Style, 4:25-27, http://www.journals.academics.org , 2007 (accessed 1st April 2007).

Jones, D. Oxford Referencing for Law Students. Academic Publishers, New York, 1997.

Osborne, F. A Compendium of Referencing Systems. University Printers, London, 2008.

Smith, A. "Why Use Oxford Referencing?", Smith Student Advice http://www.smithstudentadvice/referencingsystems/oxfordreferencing.htm 2006 (accessed 30 May 2006)