Agri-Food Technology

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)

If you need help with referencing, or have any questions, make an appointment with your Subject Librarian.

Agri-food technology uses the Harvard referencing style.

You can download your referencing guide here.

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.

• Harvard Referencing Handbook: Information sources - abridged

The Engineering Department at Lincoln also uses the IEEE referencing style as well as Harvard Referencing style. If you are asked to use IEEE referencing, 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.

• University of Lincoln IEEE handbook

• IEEE style guidelines

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

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.