References checklist

Remember to quote all ideas and thoughts that are not generally-known and are from other authors. Highlighting or annotating your own material can help you to remember what ideas are from other sources.

If you intend to use your former work, discuss it with your supervisor and remember to cite yourself.

Be precise and consistent: present the data correctly, both in the text and in the reference list.

At Corvinus, the recommended and commonly used standard is the APA.
We recommend using a reference manager software (Zotero, Mendeley).

Go through the list below to find the mistakes.

Checklist

General questions

• Did you just refer to a document you read?
• Did you use only necessary amount of text from external sources? Did you use as much external sources that were enough to support your ideas or argue with the information you have read?
• Does the quotation fit the sentence you wrote? Did you use punctuation (comma, colon – if necessary) to introduce the citation?

In-text citations

If the document had more than 3 authors, did you cite them so?: first author et al.,

Verbatim citation

• Did you quote reasonably?
  • Yes, because the original text was very apt.
  • Yes, the text is shorter than 40 words and it is important both in content and style.
  • Yes, because it is a definition.
  • Yes, because it is part of a textual analysis or interview or legislation etc.
• Shouldn’t you have written a paraphrase instead? Isn’t the quote too long?
• Did you check that all details were correct? (quotation mark, author’s surname, publication year, page number): Text “citation” (author, year, p. 20).
• For narrative citations, is the date in parentheses after the author? Author (year) E.g. Author (year) “quote” (p. 20).

Paraphrase:

• Did you avoid patchwriting? (Picking up texts from various sources to create a new text without adding new information.)
• Did you rewrite the content of the text with your own words or did you just omit words or substitute them with synonyms?
• Is it clear which part of the text comes from whom?
• Did you write the longer passages using several works?
• Does the citation include the author and the year?
• Did you put a comma between the author and the publication year when you indicated the source? E.g.: (Author, year)
• For narrative citations, have you put the date in brackets after the author’s surname? E.g.: (Author’s surname, year)
• Did you really use the paraphrase to reflect on the ideas?

Reference list

• Are all works in the reference list cited in the text?
• Have you listed up to 20 authors of a work?
• Did you separate the authors with a comma and put “&” before the last author? (Exc.: if there are more than 20 authors, there is no & in front of the last name.)
• If you referred to a work more than once in the text, did you still put it only once in the reference list, did not you?
• Are the references in alphabetical order?

If you are still unsure, apply for a Help – in scholarly literature, anti-plagiarism, references consultation session.