Introduction

What is referencing?

Referencing means acknowledging someone else’s work or ideas. It is sometimes called ‘citing’ or ‘documenting’ another person’s work.
Referencing is a basic university requirement.
It is mandatory for all students to cite or acknowledge information that has come from other sources.
Without appropriate referencing students are in effect “stealing” the work of others - this is tantamount to academic fraud.

There are consequences if students fail to reference their assignments. These may include:

To draw on the ideas, language, data, and/or facts of others. (You are expected to read and research widely).
To provide depth and support to academic work through citation of theories or key writers whose work supports your answer, argument, or contention.
To support academic writing, essays, business reports and oral presentations.
To demonstrate your ability to synthesise and analyse ideas sourced through your research.
To acknowledge work from others that you have quoted, summarised, paraphrased, synthesised, discussed or mentioned in your assignments.
To provide a list of the publication details so that your readers can locate the source if necessary.
To demonstrate the level and breadth of research undertaken by a student.
References used correctly will benefit your work and add to your final grade.

RMIT Business uses a particular Harvard Style of referencing.

Each reference is indicated in-text by the author’s name and the date of the publication.
Footnotes are not used as the citation is written in the actual text.
Full details of how to reference are in the Written reports and essay: guidelines for referencing and presentation in RMIT business.

You reference whenever you have used a piece of information that comes from

You must cite the origins of the information you are using, whether you have copied the words directly or whether you have paraphrased.

If in doubt----REFERENCE!