Literature research guide

Crediting the source

Citation of one's sources is compulsory. This means that you have to put a reference in the text that shows what the original source is. This is to make things traceable (it's clear where your information comes from) and verifiable (you have understood and phrased the information you found correctly). When you don't cite your sources, you are guilty of plagiarism.

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is copying text, audio-visual material, thoughts or reasoning from others and passing them off as your own work. Often plagiarism goes hand in hand with copyright infringement, but that is not always the case.

You can avoid plagiarism by crediting the source when you:

• Use someone’s quote
• Use someone’s ideas, opinions, or theories (paraphrasing)
• Use information, such as statistics, graphs that contain data collected by someone else
• Use information such as drawings, pictures, or sound clips

There are several ways of referencing. At the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences the APA method is often used, but also IEEE and Chicago citation styles are used regularly.

In the "Tools, Training & Documentation" section you will find manuals for a variety of citation styles

APA

The video below explains more about processing and referencing information using APA. More knowledge clips on referencing with APA can be found on Project APA7's YouTube channel. Project APA is a partnership between several universities of applied sciences.

Citing

Citing means literally copying an excerpt from someone's publication. This can be parts of a text, but also a graph or image! It is permitted to copy parts of someone else's work provided that the rules of Article 15 of the Copyright Act are met.

Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is copying someone else's work in your own words. Here too, you are bound by copyright laws. The rules of paraphrasing and quoting are the same when it comes to referencing. In the text a reference has to be made to the author and year of publication. The complete reference has to be present in the bibliography.

Go to the manuals for referencing with a specific citation style

There are several tools that make it easier for you to manage your sources and create citations and bibliographies in the correct reference style.

We recommend that you choose one of these tools before you start your literature research and use it consistently. This will save you a lot of time.

• Endnote is one of the most comprehensive 'reference managers'. It allows you to search for literature, import and annotate PDF files, insert references in Word documents and generate lists of sources in APA style, among other things.
  Hogeschool Rotterdam offers Endnote free of charge to students and staff.
• Refworks is a user-friendly, fully web-based reference manager. You can create a free account including 100GB of cloud storage via RUAS.
• Zotero and Mendeley are popular and free reference managers.
  NB RUAS only offers support for Endnote and Refworks.
• If you don't want to use a separate reference manager, you can also keep track of your source references directly in Word. You have to install the APA7 reference style separately.
• Scribbr has an APA generator that allows you to quickly generate a citation.
• Many AI-tools also offer the possibility to generate citations and bibliographies.
  

NB You remain ultimately responsible for a correct bibliography. Also make sure you use the prescribed reference style (usually APA7).

For an overview of different tools, see also this infographic (Reference managers.pdf)