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Royal St. George’s College
SBI 3U
SBI 4U
Citation Guidelines
2009/10
Ms. J. Girvan
WHY REFERENCE?
Any source of information used in lab reports, essays, or projects must be cited. It is sometimes difficult to determine what you should cite when in doubt, cite it! It will never hurt you to have cited MORE than you think is necessary!
Always cite any literature that you read which supports or contradicts your findings. It is important that you lead the interested reader to the location of further information, and acknowledge ALL results or ideas that are not your own. In university, it will be important that you read and cite papers reporting the authors’ own research (primary sources) in addition to reviewing articles or general reference volume citations (secondary sources). You will almost always use secondary references in the Grade 11 and Grade12 courses.
There are numerous formats for literature citations across different disciplines and even journals within the same discipline. For this course, please follow the format outlined below. Be aware that different university programs will use formats that vary SLIGHTLY from this guideline.
Referencing MUST occur within the body of your report. These references are linked to the endnotes, which are found on the last page of your report.
CITATIONS WITHIN THE TEXT
Some examples of citations within the text are described below: Notice the use (or lack) of punctuation within the citation, and the relationship of the citation to the punctuation of the sentence.
a)Freeland and Choqunot (1997) demonstrated nutritional......
b)Sinclair et al. (1994) generalize hypotheses relating......
c)It is widely held that the abundance of large mammals is regulated by extrinsic factors, most commonly food supply (Hurst, 1998).
d)Competition will ultimately affect growth, fat accumulation, and ultimately reproduction and/or survival (Campbell 1985, 1983)
For a reference that has more than three authors you should use the phrase “et al” in your text. It means “and others”. In the endnotes, make sure you list all the authors.
e)Brown et al. (2005) suggest that……
LITERATURE CITED (ENDNOTES)
Make sure you reference every citation in your text. This is the place the reader looks to find the detailed information about the source you have cited in the text of your report.
Organize the entries alphabetically by the surname of the primary author. Do not number them.
Indent the second line of each reference so that the surname of the author stands out. This makes it easy to scan the list for a particular author.
Scientific names MUST be in italicsORunderlined.
The examples below outline the format that should be used for different types of sources. DO NOT place the heading “Journals” or “Books” on your Literature Cited page. It is only done here to organize the examples given. ALWAYS organize every entry alphabetically
Journals
Caughley, G. (1999). Eruption of ungulate populations with emphasis on Himalayan Thar in New Zealand. Ecology 51:5472.
Freeland, W.J., and D. Choquenot. (2001). Determinants of herbivore carrying capacity: plants, nutrients and Equus asinus in Northern Australia. Ecology 71:589
Textbooks
Campbell, Neil A., J.B. Reece & Lawrence G. Mitchell. (1999). Biology. Fifth Edition . Don Mills: Addison Wesley Longman Inc. pp. 5472.
Web Page Citations
Phillips, Richard. (2003) About Today’s Date. Online. Accessed: 18 March 2006.
NOTE: If the date of publication is not available (1996 on the example above), then don’t worry and leave it out!
REMEMBER: ASK FOR HELP IF YOU NEED IT!!!