Skip to Main Content
Libraries and Learning Skills

Engineering

Referencing and Plagiarism

Referencing is important in academic writing and an essential part of any of your assignments. It:

  • allows you to acknowledge your sources,
  • gives academic credibility to your work,
  • demonstrates your knowledge of a subject area,
  • prevents accusations of plagiarism.

You should always reference a source when:

  • using a direct quote
  • summarising a theory
  • discussing someone else's opinion
  • using case studies
  • quoting statistics or visual data
  • but not when stating your own opinion, observation or experience.

Plagiarism is "the wrongful... publication as one's own, of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas of another" (Oxford English Dictionary)

Referencing style guide

Picture of IEEE Reference Guide Handbook Engineering uses the IEEE referencing style and/or Harvard Referencing style.. A guide to using the IEEE style is available from the Library or as a PDF download.

This help guide covers the basic types of reference you will encounter.

 

 

Harvard referencing style.

You can download your referencing guide here.

A circle with the front cover of the Harvard Referencing Handbook in it and the title around the outside

Print options

The guides are available online in PDF (or Word if requested). An abridged version has been created containing books, journal articles and websites.

Reference management software

Reference management software helps you to store and organise your references and generate citations and reference lists. 

RefWorks

RefWorks is available to all students and staff, click here to log in.

To find out more about RefWorks there is online help or you can contact your Academic Subject Librarian.

EndNote

EndNote is a piece of reference management software that allows you to create your own personal reference database for your assignments, dissertation and research projects by importing information from online sources, such as the library website, journal article databases, and Google Scholar. Available to all students and staff at Lincoln. Click here for more information.