Referencing - tips for OU study

Referencing can be a pain in the bum. Every university seems to use a vaguely different system, and I see more comments about not being able to do it than any other specific part of TMAs. So, as the October term looms over the horizon, I thought I'd give a few tips.

There's an excellent guide to referencing on the OU website. If you're a student (and I can't imagine why you'd need it otherwise), you can find it here. It tells you how to reference EVERYTHING you can possibly imagine.

A reference is not a great mystery. It's not a special code. You don't need to be a genius to work them out. All a reference does is tell the reader of your essay EXACTLY where to find the source or evidence for what you've written.
You might reference a summarised theory, or a direct quotation. Always work on the principle that you must prove you haven't just made something up.

You should be able to get everything you require for the reference from the source.

A book reference has several parts:
AUTHOR: By surname, or organisation. Sometimes this will be in the form of Surname, Initial. Often, it will be The Open University. 
YEAR: This is the year that the edition of the book published. It is bracketed.
TITLE: This will be the title of the unit, or the chapter in a book; or the book itself. If it's the title of the book, it should be italicised. If it's a chapter, it should be in inverted commas.
CITY/TOWN PUBLISHED: I don't know why they need this, but there we go.
PUBLISHER

So, a typical reference might read:
Heller, T. Muston, R. Siddell, M. and Lloyd, C. (2010) Working For Health, London, Sage

Or, if you're referencing a chapter:
Scott-Samuel, A. (2010), ‘Health Impact Assessment’ in Heller, T. Muston, R. Siddell, M. and Lloyd, C. Working For Health, London, Sage

Note with this example that you reference the CHAPTER, and then add the crucial word 'in' before referencing the book it's from.

I think this second example is where people trip up with the Open University.  

YOU ONLY EVER REFERENCE WHAT YOU HAVE READ. 

If you've read three lines of a quotation by Pliny in a coursebook, you reference the coursebook, not Pliny. Pliny may have written it originally, but you haven't read Pliny's book.
IGNORE the reference list at the end of each unit. It tells you the source for your OWN further reading, but unless you want to go and read the whole book the reference is taken from, you must only reference the coursebook.

A typical coursebook reference would be:
 
The Open University (2010), ‘Pluralism: Ways of Seeing and Ways of Knowing’ in The Open University, Working Towards Health In Everyday Life, Milton Keynes, Open University

Here, you have the author, the year, the name of the unit (in italics and inverted commas, don't forget them), the word IN and then the whole book reference. The author name may vary by unit, so check before you write the reference.

In-text referencing is a lot easier. All you need to do is put the author name, the year, and the page number (if necessary), in brackets immediately after the relevant bit of the essay. For example: (Scott-Samuel, 2010, p.34). If the reference covers more than one page, it would be: (Scott-Samuel, 2010, pp.34-47). Note that the full stop goes AFTER the reference, if it's at the end of a sentence.

Once you've got the hang of coursebook and textbook referencing, you can use the OU guide for everything else. The website and media sections are particularly useful.

To end, here are my handy and unorthodox referencing tips:

1. Do your end-of-text references BEFORE YOU START THE ESSAY. 

This goes against the grain, as you're supposed to reference at the end. But I find it much easier to assemble the resources for a TMA, write out all my references, and then not have to worry about them. It also gives a clearer idea of what you're going to be writing about and where to find things as you write. It may also be useful to save your basic reference for coursebooks and textbooks somewhere, so you don't have to think of them again from scratch with each TMA, especially on courses that are book-heavy.

2. Do your in-text references AS YOU GO ALONG.

Again, you'll often hear it said that you should do these at the end. Which is madness - how are you supposed to remember page references hours after you've written them?

3. Don't forget to ALPHABETISE your end of text references.

There is software that can do it for you. They should be alphabetised, A-Z, by author.

(N.B: Don't do your references in red, this is only for highlighting purposes....)