Citations and references
What needs to be cited?
All information that you did not know before you researched it needs to be cited, including:
- Quotations (the exact words of another author);
- Summarised or paraphrased information (anything that you write in your own words but which is not your own ideas) and definitions of terms.
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Quoting and paraphrasing is discussed in more detail in
Module 6 Plagiarism.
What does not need to be cited?
Facts and ideas that are considered common knowledge within a discipline do not need to be cited.
For example
- In the discipline of electrical engineering, Ohm's Law (which defines the relationships between power, voltage, current, and resistance) is considered common knowledge.
- Similarly, for physicists, Einstein's theory of relativity ( E=mc² ) would not need to be cited.
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More general examples include:
- Facts >> Canberra is the capital of Australia
- Widely known ideas >> Adam Smith is regarded as the father of economics
- Chemical symbols >> Oxygen = O2
- Scientific names >> Humans = Homo sapiens
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Strict formatting rules need to be followed to cite and reference correctly.
