compile a bibliography for your research

14.1 Compiling Sources for an Annotated Bibliography

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Integrate your ideas with ideas from related sources.
• Locate, compile, and evaluate primary, secondary, and tertiary research materials related to your topic.

A bibliography is a list of the sources you use when doing research for a project or composition. Named for the Greek terms biblion , meaning “book,” and graphos , meaning “something written,” bibliographies today compile more than just books. Often they include academic journal articles, periodicals, websites, and multimedia texts such as videos. A bibliography alone, at the end of a research work, also may be labeled “References” or “Works Cited,” depending on the citation style you are using. The bibliography lists information about each source, including author, title, publisher, and publication date. Each set of source information, or each individual entry, listed in the bibliography or noted within the body of the composition is called a citation .

Bibliographies include formal documentation entries that serve several purposes:

• They help you organize your own research on a topic and narrow your topic, thesis, or argument.
• They help you build knowledge.
• They strengthen your arguments by offering proof that your research comes from trustworthy sources.
• They enable readers to do more research on the topic.
• They create a community of researchers, thus adding to the ongoing conversation on the research topic.
• They give credit to authors and sources from which you draw and support your ideas.

Annotated bibliography expand on typical bibliographies by including information beyond the basic citation information and commentary on the source. Although they present each formal documentation entry as it would appear in a source list such as a works cited page, an annotated bibliography includes two types of additional information. First, following the documentation entry is a short description of the work, including information about its authors and how it was or can be used in a research project. Second is an evaluation of the work’s validity, reliability, and/or bias. The purpose of the annotation is to summarize, assess, and reflect on the source. Annotations can be both explanatory and analytical, helping readers understand the research you used to formulate your argument. An annotated bibliography can also help you demonstrate that you have read the sources you will potentially cite in your work. It is a tool to assist in the gathering of these sources and serves as a repository. You won’t necessarily use all the sources cited in your annotated bibliography in your final work, but gathering, evaluating, and documenting these sources is an integral part of the research process.

Compiling Sources

Research projects and compositions, particularly argumentative or position texts, require you to collect sources, devise a thesis, and then support that thesis through analysis of the evidence, including sources, you have compiled. With access to the Internet and an academic library, you will rarely encounter a shortage of sources for any given topic or argument. The real challenge may be sorting through all the available sources and determining which will be useful.

The first step in completing an annotated bibliography is to locate and compile sources to use in your research project. At the beginning, you do not need to be highly selective in this process, as you may not ultimately use every source. Therefore, gather any materials—including books, websites, professional journals, periodicals, and documents—that you think may contain valuable ideas about your topic. But where do you find sources that relate to your argument? And how do you choose which sources to use? This section will help you answer those questions and choose sources that will both enhance and challenge your claim, allowing you to confront contradictory evidence and synthesize ideas, or combine ideas from various sources, to produce a well-constructed original argument. See Research Process: Accessing and Recording Information for more information about sources and synthesizing information.

Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources

In your research, you likely will use three types of sources: primary, secondary, and tertiary. During any research project, your use of these sources will depend on your topic, your thesis, and, ultimately, how you intend to use them. In all likelihood, you will need to seek out all three.

Primary Sources

Primary sources allow you to create your own analysis with the appropriate rhetorical approach. In the humanities disciplines, primary sources include original documents, data, images, and other compositions that provide a firsthand account of an event or a time in history. Typically, primary sources are created close in time to the event or period they represent and may include journal or diary entries, newspaper articles, government records, photographs, artworks, maps, speeches, films, and interviews. In scientific disciplines, primary sources provide information such as scientific discoveries, raw data, experimental and research results, and clinical trial findings. They may include published studies, scientific journal articles, and proceedings of meeting or conferences.

Primary sources also can include student-conducted interviews and surveys. Other primary sources may be found on websites such as the Library of Congress , the Historical Text Archive , government websites, and article databases. In all academic areas, primary sources are fact based, not interpretive. That is, they may be commenting on or interpreting something else, but they themselves are the source. For example, an article written during the 1840s condemning the practice of enslavement may interpret events occurring then, but it is a primary source document of its time.

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources , unlike primary sources, are interpretive. They often provide a secondhand account of an event or research results, analyze or clarify primary sources and scientific discoveries, or interpret a creative work. These sources are important for supporting or challenging your argument, addressing counterarguments, and synthesizing ideas. Secondary sources in the humanities disciplines include biographies, literary criticism, and reviews of the fine arts, among other sources. In the scientific disciplines, secondary sources encompass analyses of scientific studies or clinical trials, reviews of experimental results, and publications about the significance of studies or experiments. In some instances, the same item can serve as both a primary and a secondary source, depending on how it is used. For example, a journal article in which the author analyzes the impact of a clinical trial would serve as a secondary source. But if you instead count the number of journal articles that feature reports on a particular clinical trial, you might use them as primary sources because they would then serve as data points.

Table 14.1 provides examples of how primary and secondary sources often relate to one another.

Tertiary Sources

In addition to primary and secondary sources, you can use a tertiary source to summarize or digest information from primary and/or secondary sources. Because tertiary sources often condense information, they usually do not provide enough information on their own to support claims. However, they often contain a variety of citations that can help you identify and locate valuable primary and secondary sources. Researchers often use tertiary sources to find general, historical, or background information as well as a broad overview of a topic. Tertiary sources frequently placed in the secondary-source category include reference materials such as encyclopedias, textbooks, manuals, digests, and bibliographies. For more discussion on sources, see The Research Process: Where to Look for Existing Sources .

Authoritative Sources

Not all sources are created equally. You likely know already that you must vet sources—especially those you find on the Internet—for legitimacy, validity, and the presence of bias. For example, you probably know that the website Wikipedia is not considered a trustworthy source because it is open to user editing. This accessibility means the site’s authority cannot be established and, therefore, the source cannot effectively support or refute a claim you are attempting to make, though you can use it at times to point you to reliable sources. While so-called bad sources may be easy to spot, researchers may have more difficulty discriminating between sources that are authoritative and those that pose concerns. In fact, you may encounter a general hierarchy of sources in your compilation. Understanding this hierarchy can help you identify which sources to use and how to use them in your research.

Peer-Reviewed Academic Publications

This first tier of sources—the gold standard of research—includes academic literature, which consists of textbooks, essays, journals, articles, reports, and scholarly books. As scholarly works, these sources usually provide strong evidence for an author’s claims by reflecting rigorous research and scrutiny by experts in the field. These types of sources are most often published, sponsored, or supported by academic institutions, often a university or an academic association such as the Modern Language Association (MLA) . Such associations exist to encourage research and collaboration within their discipline, mostly through publications and conferences. To be published, academic works must pass through a rigorous process called peer review , in which scholars in the field evaluate it anonymously. You can find peer-reviewed academic sources in library catalogs, in article databases, and through Google Scholar online. Sometimes these sources require a subscription to access, but students often receive access through their school.

Academic articles, particularly in the social and other sciences, generally have most or all of the following sections, a structure you might recognize if you have written lab reports in science classes:

• Abstract . This short summary covers the purpose, methods, and findings of the paper. It may discuss briefly the implications or significance of the research.
• Introduction . The main part of the paper begins with an introduction that presents the issue or main idea addressed by the research, establishes its importance, and poses the author’s thesis.
• Review . Next comes an overview of previous academic research related to the topic, including a synthesis that makes a case for why the research is important and necessary.
• Data and Methods . The main part of the original research begins with a description of the data and methods used, including what data or information the author collected and how the author used it.
• Results . Data and methods are followed by results, detailing the significant findings from the experiment or research.
• Conclusion . In the conclusion, the author discusses the results in the context of the bigger picture, explaining the author’s position on how these results relate to the earlier review of literature and their significance in the broad scope of the topic. The author also may propose future research needs or point out unanswered questions.
• Works Cited or References . The paper ends with a list of all sources the author used in the research, including the review of literature. This often-overlooked portion of the composition is critical in evaluating the credibility of any paper that involves research.

Credible Nonacademic Sources

These sources, including articles, books, and reports, are second in authority only to peer-reviewed academic publications. Credible nonacademic sources are often about current events or discoveries not yet reviewed in academic circles and often provide a wider-ranging outlook on your topic. Peer-reviewed texts tend to be narrow and specific, whereas nonacademic texts from well-researched sources are often more accessible and can offer a broader perspective. These three major categories generally provide quality sources:

• Information, white papers, and reports from government and international agencies such as the United Nations , the World Health Organization , and the United States government
• Longer articles and reports from major newspapers, broadcast media, and magazines that are well regarded in academic circles, including the New York Times , the Wall Street Journal , the BBC, and the Economist
• Nonacademic books written by authors with expertise and credentials, who support their ideas with well-sourced information

To find nonacademic sources, search for .gov or .org sites related to your topic. A word of caution, however: know that sources ending in .org are often advocacy sites and, consequently, inherently biased toward whatever cause they are advocating. You also can look at academic article databases and search articles from major newspapers and magazines, both of which can be found online.

Short Informational Texts from Credible Websites and Periodicals

The next most authoritative sources are shorter newspaper articles or other pieces on credible websites. These articles tend to be limited in scope, as their authors report on a single issue or event. Although they do not often provide in-depth analysis, they can be a source of credible facts to support your argument. Alternatively, they can point you in the direction of more detailed or rigorous sources that will enhance your research by tracing the original texts or sources on which the articles are based. Usually, you can find these sources through Internet searches, but sometimes you may have difficulty determining their credibility.

Judging Credibility

To judge credibility, begin by looking for the author or organization publishing the information. Most periodical compositions contain a short “About the Author” blurb at the beginning or end of the article and often include a link to the author’s credentials or to more information about them. Using this information, you can begin to determine their expertise and, potentially, any agenda the author or organization may have. For example, expect a piece discussing side effects of medical marijuana written by a doctor to present more expertise than the same piece written by a political lobbyist. You also can determine whether bias is present; for example, the organization may promote a particular way of thinking or have an agenda that will influence the content and language of the composition. In general, look for articles written with neutral expertise.

The CRAAP Test

You may find the CRAAP test a helpful and easy-to-remember tool for testing credibility. This checklist provides you with a method for evaluating any source for both reliability and credibility. CRAAP stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. The CRAAP test, as shown in Table 14.2 , includes questions that can be asked of any source.

Sources with Clear Bias or Unclear Authority

The final type of source encompasses nearly everything else. Although they cannot be considered credible or valid to support your argument or claims, these sources are not necessarily useless. Especially when you are compiling sources at the beginning of a project, those with clear bias or unclear authority can be useful as you explore all facets of a topic, including positions within an argument. These sources also can help you identify topics on which to base your search terms and can even point you toward more credible sources.

Locating Sources

Academic article databases are the best starting places for finding sources. There are too many databases to cover them all in this chapter, but you would be wise to familiarize yourself with those to which you have access through your school or program. For further information on databases, see The Research Process: Where to Look for Existing Sources . In the long run, this knowledge will save you a good deal of time and a possible headache.

You will want to start with your college library website, which includes access to sources paid for by your institution. As a student, you should be able to access these quickly and easily. Another popular and wide-ranging database is Google Scholar . Google Scholar is helpful for finding sources across a wide range of topics. One drawback, however, is that it catalogues nearly all disciplines, so the results can be vast and unfocused. Therefore, when using Google Scholar, be as specific as possible, and add your academic discipline as a keyword. For example, when searching for information on climate change, add the keyword “environment” or “politics” depending on your research angle; otherwise, the results will include all disciplines and potentially bury the articles you seek. Google Scholar also has a feature labeled “Cited by,” which shows you other papers that cite the article in their review of literature relate to the topic. Writing Process: Informing and Analyzing contains more information about focusing your searches. Like clues to a mystery, one search can lead you to a wealth of related articles.

When you are able to identify potential sources by reading their abstracts or using Google Scholar, you may at times land on a publisher’s website that requires you to pay to read the full article. When you find yourself in a situation such as this, record information about the article—author(s), article title, journal title, publication date. It is likely that you will be able to use your school’s database to access the article. For information about other databases, consult The Research Process: Where to Look for Existing Sources .

Just as writing is recursive , requiring you to go back and forth between different stages of the process, you will likely return to your annotated bibliography at different points. You may begin by looking for sources related to your topic, or you may choose or narrow your topic after an initial database search for sources. If your project has a variety of possible topics, you may even start with a current issue of a leading journal in the field, find an article that interests you, and use that article to shape your topic selection. As a bonus, you will have your first reputable source. Later, as you refine your thesis, reasoning, and evidence, you may find yourself returning to your search for sources. Consider this hypothetical situation: You are developing an argument that examines the risk factors of childhood trauma that surface in later life. As you analyze the data from your sources, it occurs to you to find out whether any documented correlation exists between early trauma and resilience. So you return to Google Scholar and your university’s academic database to find more research based on this idea in order to revise your analysis by adding the new viewpoint.

One difficulty may be homing in on the keywords that will lead you to the sources you need. At this point, sources from the last two categories discussed may come into play: short pieces from credible websites and newspapers and other texts with clear bias or unclear authority. Less credible sources may lead you to better ones, particularly if you can identify the keywords used in them and then apply those keywords within academic databases. For more on developing useful keywords, consult The Research Process: Where to Look for Existing Sources .

Boolean Operators

Keyword searches can become frustrating, either yielding so much information that it seems impossible to sort through or narrowing the search so much that you miss important potential sources. One way to remedy this situation is to become familiar with Boolean operators , the basis of mathematical sets and database logic. Rather than searching with natural language only, you can use these operators to focus your search. The three basic Boolean operators are AND , OR , and NOT . Using these operators helps you search by linking necessary information, excluding irrelevant information, and focusing information. For example, if you have some pieces of information from tertiary sources, you may be able to use Boolean operators to find additional useful sources. A search string such as artificial intelligence (title) AND Buiten (author) AND 2019 (year) can yield the exact journal source you need. Here is a brief review of how to use the three operators:

• Use AND to narrow search results and tell the database to include all search terms in finding sources. If you want to find sources that include all of the search terms entered, use the AND operator. In Figure 14.11 , the darkest blue triangular section in the center of the Venn diagram represents the result set for this search, including all three terms. In many databases, including Google, AND is implied between each word. To exclude AND, use quotation marks. For example, Google would translate the search term ethics artificial intelligence as ethics AND artificial AND intelligence . To make your phrases more specific, use the AND operator combined with quotation marks: “ethics” AND “artificial intelligence” .
• Use OR to connect two or more similar concepts and broaden your results, telling the search engine that any of your search terms can appear in the results it gives you. The Boolean operator OR is represented by Figure 14.12 . Using the OR operator gives you a very large set of results.
• Use NOT to exclude results from a search. This operator can help you narrow your search, telling the search engine to ignore names or words you do not want included in your results. For example, if you know you don’t want self-driving cars in your search results, you might search for “artificial intelligence” NOT “self-driving cars” .

Choosing Sources

Choosing sources to include in your annotated bibliography may seem overwhelming. However, if you can find a few good academic articles as a starting point, use them to guide your research. Academic articles are efficient, scrutinized by experts in their fields, and organized in ways that aid readers in identifying key findings that relate to their argument. The following tips will help you choose solid sources to guide your research:

• Look for relevant scholarly articles. Even the briefest Google search can yield an overwhelming amount of content. Sift through it by looking first through academic databases to find high-quality sources relevant to your research.
• Read abstracts. As you sift through scholarly articles, you can get a good idea of what each one is about by reading the abstract. It includes the findings and will show you in about 100 words whether the paper holds relevance to your research.
• Skim. Once you have determined that an article may be useful, skim each section to glean the information you need. Closer and more extensive reading can come later as you develop and support your argument.
• Avoid getting bogged down in technical information or industry-specific jargon. The benefit of reading peer-reviewed research is that you know the reviewers have determined it to be solidly constructed. Therefore, even if you don’t understand some portions completely, you can still feel confident about using relevant information from the article.
• Work smarter by using the research provided. Once you have identified an article that is helpful to your research, use it to find more like it. Search for other publications by the authors; researchers often spend much of their careers researching one overarching topic or theme. Use the review of literature to identify related articles that may add to your research. You can also use the article’s bibliography to find additional sources. Or reverse engineer the process: use article databases to find other articles that cite the article in their literature reviews.

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A publication of the harvard college writing program.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources 

• The Honor Code
• Bibliography

If you are using Chicago style footnotes or endnotes, you should include a bibliography at the end of your paper that provides complete citation information for all of the sources you cite in your paper. Bibliography entries are formatted differently from notes. For bibliography entries, you list the sources alphabetically by last name, so you will list the last name of the author or creator first in each entry. You should single-space within a bibliography entry and double-space between them. When an entry goes longer than one line, use a hanging indent of .5 inches for subsequent lines. Here’s a link to a sample bibliography that shows layout and spacing . You can find a sample of note format here .

Complete note vs. shortened note

Here’s an example of a complete note and a shortened version of a note for a book:

1. Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 27-35.

1. Karen Ho, Liquidated , 27-35.

Note vs. Bibliography entry

The bibliography entry that corresponds with each note is very similar to the longer version of the note, except that the author’s last and first name are reversed in the bibliography entry. To see differences between note and bibliography entries for different types of sources, check this section of the Chicago Manual of Style .

For Liquidated , the bibliography entry would look like this:

Ho, Karen, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street . Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.

Citing a source with two or three authors

If you are citing a source with two or three authors, list their names in your note in the order they appear in the original source. In the bibliography, invert only the name of the first author and use “and” before the last named author.

1. Melissa Borja and Jacob Gibson, “Internationalism with Evangelical Characteristics: The Case of Evangelical Responses to Southeast Asian Refugees,” The Review of Faith & International Affairs 17, no. 3 (2019): 80-81, https://doi.org/10.1080/15570274.2019.1643983 .

Shortened note:

1. Borja and Gibson, “Internationalism with Evangelical Characteristics,” 80-81.

Bibliography:

Borja, Melissa, and Jacob Gibson. “Internationalism with Evangelical Characteristics: The Case of Evangelical Responses to Southeast Asian Refugees.” The Review of Faith & International Affairs 17. no. 3 (2019): 80–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/15570274.2019.1643983 .

Citing a source with more than three authors

If you are citing a source with more than three authors, include all of them in the bibliography, but only include the first one in the note, followed by et al. ( et al. is the shortened form of the Latin et alia , which means “and others”).

1. Justine M. Nagurney, et al., “Risk Factors for Disability After Emergency Department Discharge in Older Adults,” Academic Emergency Medicine 27, no. 12 (2020): 1271.

Short version of note:

1. Justine M. Nagurney, et al., “Risk Factors for Disability,” 1271.

Nagurney, Justine M., Ling Han, Linda Leo‐Summers, Heather G. Allore, Thomas M. Gill, and Ula Hwang. “Risk Factors for Disability After Emergency Department Discharge in Older Adults.” Academic Emergency Medicine 27, no. 12 (2020): 1270–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/acem.14088 .

Citing a book consulted online

If you are citing a book you consulted online, you should include a URL, DOI, or the name of the database where you found the book.

1. Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 27-35, https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1215/9780822391371 .

Bibliography entry:

Ho, Karen. Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street . Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1215/9780822391371 .

Citing an e-book consulted outside of a database

If you are citing an e-book that you accessed outside of a database, you should indicate the format. If you read the book in a format without fixed page numbers (like Kindle, for example), you should not include the page numbers that you saw as you read. Instead, include chapter or section numbers, if possible.

1. Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), chap. 2, Kindle.

Ho, Karen. Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street . Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Kindle.

• Citation Management Tools
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• Examples of Commonly Cited Sources
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PDFs for This Section

• Citing Sources
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How to Write a Bibliography for a Research Paper

Do not try to “wow” your instructor with a long bibliography when your instructor requests only a works cited page. It is tempting, after doing a lot of work to research a paper, to try to include summaries on each source as you write your paper so that your instructor appreciates how much work you did. That is a trap you want to avoid. MLA style, the one that is most commonly followed in high schools and university writing courses, dictates that you include only the works you actually cited in your paper—not all those that you used.

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Get 10% off with 24start discount code, assembling bibliographies and works cited.

• If your assignment calls for a bibliography, list all the sources you consulted in your research.
• If your assignment calls for a works cited or references page, include only the sources you quote, summarize, paraphrase, or mention in your paper.
• If your works cited page includes a source that you did not cite in your paper, delete it.
• All in-text citations that you used at the end of quotations, summaries, and paraphrases to credit others for their ideas,words, and work must be accompanied by a cited reference in the bibliography or works cited. These references must include specific information about the source so that your readers can identify precisely where the information came from.The citation entries on a works cited page typically include the author’s name, the name of the article, the name of the publication, the name of the publisher (for books), where it was published (for books), and when it was published.

The good news is that you do not have to memorize all the many ways the works cited entries should be written. Numerous helpful style guides are available to show you the information that should be included, in what order it should appear, and how to format it. The format often differs according to the style guide you are using. The Modern Language Association (MLA) follows a particular style that is a bit different from APA (American Psychological Association) style, and both are somewhat different from the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS). Always ask your teacher which style you should use.

A bibliography usually appears at the end of a paper on its own separate page. All bibliography entries—books, periodicals, Web sites, and nontext sources such radio broadcasts—are listed together in alphabetical order. Books and articles are alphabetized by the author’s last name.

Most teachers suggest that you follow a standard style for listing different types of sources. If your teacher asks you to use a different form, however, follow his or her instructions. Take pride in your bibliography. It represents some of the most important work you’ve done for your research paper—and using proper form shows that you are a serious and careful researcher.

Bibliography Entry for a Book

A bibliography entry for a book begins with the author’s name, which is written in this order: last name, comma, first name, period. After the author’s name comes the title of the book. If you are handwriting your bibliography, underline each title. If you are working on a computer, put the book title in italicized type. Be sure to capitalize the words in the title correctly, exactly as they are written in the book itself. Following the title is the city where the book was published, followed by a colon, the name of the publisher, a comma, the date published, and a period. Here is an example:

Format : Author’s last name, first name. Book Title. Place of publication: publisher, date of publication.

• A book with one author : Hartz, Paula.  Abortion: A Doctor’s Perspective, a Woman’s Dilemma . New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1992.
• A book with two or more authors : Landis, Jean M. and Rita J. Simon.  Intelligence: Nature or Nurture?  New York: HarperCollins, 1998.

Bibliography Entry for a Periodical

A bibliography entry for a periodical differs slightly in form from a bibliography entry for a book. For a magazine article, start with the author’s last name first, followed by a comma, then the first name and a period. Next, write the title of the article in quotation marks, and include a period (or other closing punctuation) inside the closing quotation mark. The title of the magazine is next, underlined or in italic type, depending on whether you are handwriting or using a computer, followed by a period. The date and year, followed by a colon and the pages on which the article appeared, come last. Here is an example:

Format:  Author’s last name, first name. “Title of the Article.” Magazine. Month and year of publication: page numbers.

• Article in a monthly magazine : Crowley, J.E.,T.E. Levitan and R.P. Quinn.“Seven Deadly Half-Truths About Women.”  Psychology Today  March 1978: 94–106.
• Article in a weekly magazine : Schwartz, Felice N.“Management,Women, and the New Facts of Life.”  Newsweek  20 July 2006: 21–22.
• Signed newspaper article : Ferraro, Susan. “In-law and Order: Finding Relative Calm.”  The Daily News  30 June 1998: 73.
• Unsigned newspaper article : “Beanie Babies May Be a Rotten Nest Egg.”  Chicago Tribune  21 June 2004: 12.

Bibliography Entry for a Web Site

For sources such as Web sites include the information a reader needs to find the source or to know where and when you found it. Always begin with the last name of the author, broadcaster, person you interviewed, and so on. Here is an example of a bibliography for a Web site:

Format : Author.“Document Title.” Publication or Web site title. Date of publication. Date of access.

Example : Dodman, Dr. Nicholas. “Dog-Human Communication.”  Pet Place . 10 November 2006.  23 January 2014 < http://www.petplace.com/dogs/dog-human-communication-2/page1.aspx >

After completing the bibliography you can breathe a huge sigh of relief and pat yourself on the back. You probably plan to turn in your work in printed or handwritten form, but you also may be making an oral presentation. However you plan to present your paper, do your best to show it in its best light. You’ve put a great deal of work and thought into this assignment, so you want your paper to look and sound its best. You’ve completed your research paper!

Back to  How To Write A Research Paper .

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Academic Integrity Toolkit

• Introduction
• What do we mean by academic integrity?
• Getting a good mark
• Useful terms for referencing
• Using your reading list
• Researching your assignments
• Building references into your writing
• Referencing your research
• Citing less common materials

Bibliographies and reference lists

How do i compile a bibliography.

• Example bibliography

Is this bibliography correct?

• Avoiding unintentional plagiarism
• Using Turnitin
• Teaching and learning materials

Note that we have updated the example references on this page to use the Cite Them Right version of Harvard (detailed in our Citing references guide linked below). We are planning to update the PDFs below in Summer 2023. In the meanwhile please contact  [email protected]  if you would like us to update a specific document.

• Handout: Compiling a Bibliography
• Exercise: Compiling a Bibliography
• Compiling your bibliography (video) Watch this brief video tutorial for more on the topic.

a list of all the materials you consulted in your research for your assignment.  

A reference list is…

a list only of the materials you refer to in your assignment (whether by direct quotation, paraphrase, direct or indirect mention).

You may be asked to provide either one or both with your assignment – check the instructions. If you find that you have a lot of materials in your bibliography which are not cited in your text, read over your work again and check that you haven’t forgotten to include a citation where your ideas have been influenced by reading those materials.

Three principles to follow:

• Put your materials in order in a single list (all materials in one list unless you are told to do otherwise for your discipline) so that your reader can find them and associate them with the relevant in-text citation. (Depending on the style, that may be in alphabetical order of author's surname, or by number.)
• Give full bibliographic details in the correct order and with the correct punctuation and layout for the referencing style you’ve been asked to use.
• Be consistent!

If you are unable to view this video on YouTube it is also available on YuJa - view the Compiling a bibliography video on YuJa (University username and password required)

An example bibliography using the Cite Them Right Harvard style referencing:

Look at this bibliography and identify any errors you find:

Adapted from Neville, C. (2008)  Referencing exercises . LearnHigher and University of Bradford. Available at:  http://www.learnhigher.ac.uk/Students/Referencing.html  (Accessed: 9 May 2013).

These are the answers to the exercises:

Adapted from Neville, C. (2008)  Referencing exercises . LearnHigher and University of Bradford. Available at:  http://www.learnhigher.ac.uk/Students/Referencing.html  (Accessed: 9 May 2013). 9/5/13.

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Write it Right - A guide to Harvard referencing style

• Referencing
• Referencing & Citing
• Paraphrasing

The Reference List

Differences between a reference list and a bibliography, compiling your reference list or bibliography.

• Elements in References
• Journal articles
• Online journals
• Newspaper articles
• Online newspapers
• Internet sources
• Government and legal publications
• Patents and standards
• Miscellaneous
• The reference list is a detailed list of all the sources that you have cited within your work, including books, eBooks, journal articles, theses, webpages etc. 
• Items are listed in alphabetical order in the reference list according to the main author/editor’s surname.
• This means that regardless of the order in which the in-text citations appear within your work, these items are all listed alphabetically by author/editor in the reference list. 
• This explains why the Harvard referencing style is also known as the ‘author-date’ style.
• The reference list is an alphabetical list of all the sources that you cited in the text of your assignment. 
• A bibliography is a separate list, presented in the same format as a reference list, however, it includes all the sources you consulted in the preparation of your assignment, not just those you cited. 
• In other words, a bibliography presents the same items as a reference list, but it also includes references to all the additional research you carried out, so it shows your extra effort. 
• All in-text references must be included in an alphabetical list, by author/editor’s surname, at the end of the work. As stated earlier, this is known as the reference list. A bibliography is a list of all works you used in preparation of the work, but which were not necessarily cited/referred to.
• This list must not be numbered.
• When there is no author/editor, use the title (book, journal, newspaper etc.)
• References in your reference list must be a full description of the in–text citations.
• If there is more than one publication by the same author, arrange the works in chronological order.
• In your reference list/bibliography the following abbreviations are accepted:

- (ed.) editor  - (eds) editors  - col. column - comp(s). compiler/compilers - edn. edition - et al. and others - n.d. no knowledge of the date - no. number - par. paragraph - s.l. no place of publication - s.n. publisher unknown - vol. volume

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• Harvard Style Bibliography | Format & Examples

Harvard Style Bibliography | Format & Examples

Published on 1 May 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on 7 November 2022.

In Harvard style , the bibliography or reference list provides full references for the sources you used in your writing.

• A reference list consists of entries corresponding to your in-text citations .
• A bibliography sometimes also lists sources that you consulted for background research, but did not cite in your text.

The two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. If in doubt about which to include, check with your instructor or department.

The information you include in a reference varies depending on the type of source, but it usually includes the author, date, and title of the work, followed by details of where it was published. You can automatically generate accurate references using our free reference generator:

Harvard Reference Generator

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Table of contents

Formatting a harvard style bibliography, harvard reference examples, referencing sources with multiple authors, referencing sources with missing information, frequently asked questions about harvard bibliographies.

Sources are alphabetised by author last name. The heading ‘Reference list’ or ‘Bibliography’ appears at the top.

Each new source appears on a new line, and when an entry for a single source extends onto a second line, a hanging indent is used:

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Reference list or bibliography entries always start with the author’s last name and initial, the publication date and the title of the source. The other information required varies depending on the source type. Formats and examples for the most common source types are given below.

• Entire book
• Book chapter
• Translated book
• Edition of a book

Journal articles

• Print journal
• Online-only journal with DOI
• Online-only journal without DOI
• General web page
• Online article or blog
• Social media post

Newspapers and magazines

• Newspaper article
• Magazine article

When a source has up to three authors, list all of them in the order their names appear on the source. If there are four or more, give only the first name followed by ‘ et al. ’:

Sometimes a source won’t list all the information you need for your reference. Here’s what to do when you don’t know the publication date or author of a source.

Some online sources, as well as historical documents, may lack a clear publication date. In these cases, you can replace the date in the reference list entry with the words ‘no date’. With online sources, you still include an access date at the end:

When a source doesn’t list an author, you can often list a corporate source as an author instead, as with ‘Scribbr’ in the above example. When that’s not possible, begin the entry with the title instead of the author:

Though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there is a difference in meaning:

• A reference list only includes sources cited in the text – every entry corresponds to an in-text citation .
• A bibliography also includes other sources which were consulted during the research but not cited.

In Harvard referencing, up to three author names are included in an in-text citation or reference list entry. When there are four or more authors, include only the first, followed by ‘ et al. ’

In Harvard style referencing , to distinguish between two sources by the same author that were published in the same year, you add a different letter after the year for each source:

• (Smith, 2019a)
• (Smith, 2019b)

Add ‘a’ to the first one you cite, ‘b’ to the second, and so on. Do the same in your bibliography or reference list .

To create a hanging indent for your bibliography or reference list :

• Highlight all the entries
• Click on the arrow in the bottom-right corner of the ‘Paragraph’ tab in the top menu.
• In the pop-up window, under ‘Special’ in the ‘Indentation’ section, use the drop-down menu to select ‘Hanging’.
• Then close the window with ‘OK’.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2022, November 07). Harvard Style Bibliography | Format & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 12 March 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/referencing/harvard-bibliography/

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Jack Caulfield

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The Quintessence of Basic and Clinical Research and Scientific Publishing pp 657–665 Cite as

How to Create a Bibliography

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• Samuel Sorkhi 4 ,
• Saager Chawla 4 &
• Mahadevan Raj Rajasekaran 5  
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This chapter describes the fundamental principles and practices of referencing sources in scientific writing and publishing. Understanding plagiarism and improper referencing of the source material is paramount to producing original work that contains an authentic voice. Citing references helps authors to avoid plagiarism, give credit to the original author, and allow potential readers to refer to the legitimate sources and learn more information. Furthermore, quality references serve as an invaluable resource that can enlighten future research in a field. This chapter outlines fundamental aspects of referencing as well as how these sources are formatted as per recommended citation styles. Appropriate referencing is an important tool that can be utilized to develop the credibility of the author and the arguments presented. Additionally, online software can be useful in helping the author organize their sources and promote proper collaboration in scientific writing.

• Referencing
• Harvard and Vancouver styles
• Referencing software
• Scientific writing

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Rohan Reddy, Samuel Sorkhi & Saager Chawla

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Mahadevan Raj Rajasekaran

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Reddy, R., Sorkhi, S., Chawla, S., Rajasekaran, M.R. (2023). How to Create a Bibliography. In: Jagadeesh, G., Balakumar, P., Senatore, F. (eds) The Quintessence of Basic and Clinical Research and Scientific Publishing. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1284-1_39

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How to Write a Research Paper: Compiling the Bibliography

All your sources in one place

Write a bibliography.

A bibliography is a list of the sources you used to get information for your report. It is included at the end of your report, on the last page (or last few pages).

You will find it easier to prepare your final bibliography if you keep track of each book, encyclopedia, or article you use as you are reading and taking notes. Start a preliminary, or draft, bibliography by listing on a separate sheet of paper all your sources. Note down the full title, author, place of publication, publisher, and date of publication for each source.

Also, every time a fact gets recorded on a note card, its source should be noted in the top right corner. (Notice that in the sample note card , The World Book , Volume 2, page 21, has been shortened to: WB, 2, p.133.) When you are finished writing your paper, you can use the information on your note cards to double-check your bibliography.

When assembling a final bibliography, list your sources (texts, articles, interviews, and so on) in alphabetical order by authors' last names. Sources that don't have authors (encyclopedias, movies) should be alphabetized by title. There are different formats for bibliographies, so be sure to use the one your teacher prefers.

General Guide to Formatting a Bibliography

For a book:.

Author (last name first). Title of the book . City: Publisher, Date of publication.

For an encyclopedia:

Encyclopedia Title , Edition Date. Volume Number, "Article Title," page numbers.

For a magazine:

Author (last name first), "Article Title." Name of magazine . Volume number, (Date): page numbers.

For a newspaper:

Author (last name first), "Article Title." Name of newspaper , city, state of publication. (date): edition if available, section, page number(s).

For a person:

Full name (last name first). Occupation. Date of interview.

For a film:

Title , Director, Distributor, Year.

Disc title : Version, Date. "Article title," pages if given. Publisher.

Magazine article:

Author (last name first). "Article title." Name of magazine (type of medium). Volume number, (Date): page numbers. If available: publisher of medium, version, date of issue.

Newspaper article:

Author (last name first). "Article title." Name of newspaper (Type of medium), city and state of publication. (Date): If available: Edition, section and page number(s). If available: publisher of medium, version, date of issue.

Online Resources

Author of message, (Date). Subject of message. Electronic conference or bulletin board (Online). Available e-mail: LISTSERV@ e-mail address

World Wide Web:

URL (Uniform Resource Locator or WWW address). author (or item's name, if mentioned), date.

EXAMPLE: (Boston Globe's www address)

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Developing a Working Bibliography

A working bibliography is a tool that can aid in keeping an ongoing and detailed list of sources for a specific project. These sources can include any source that may potentially be useful or relevant to the project. The sources may also narrow to a specific idea as the focus for the piece narrows. A working bibliography has two main purposes:

• To keep a record of the sources a writer has already examined or plans to examine.
• To record the publishing details of each source a writer utilizes or cites so that the sources can be properly referenced in a Works Cited or References List at the end of the document.

Creating a Working Bibliography

Having a working bibliography can help keep the sources more organized while examining and collecting sources. A working bibliography can also allow the writer to organize and reorganize the sources in different ways throughout the writing of the piece. There are multiple ways a writer could organize a working bibliography. A few examples of this are by the author, the source type, or by the usability of the source for the writer’s purpose. The organization should be aligned with what would best serve the writer for that specific project.

Having a working bibliography can also save time later in a project. This is due to the writer already having the information they may need available. When creating a working bibliography, using the citation format required by the instructor or head researcher is another good way to be able to save time. When in doubt about which citation format is being used, it is best to ask the instructor or the head researcher. Generally, writing the source information as a citation can be useful. Otherwise, arranging the necessary information in a list for each source can also work.

Information in a Working Bibliography

Collecting the following information on each source, no matter what kind of source it is, will help with creating a citation for a Works Cited  or  References List .  This information can also help the writer find and access the source. Some types of sources, like books or periodical journals, have specific information that is recommended for them in a citation. For any type of source, some information about the source that can be useful are:

• The author's full name
• The editor's full name (if available)
• Title of the source
• Name of the publication and publication information on the source
• The date the source was created (or last updated)
• The date you viewed/ accessed this source

Examples of a Working Bibliography

Below are two examples for a working bibliography. One example is in a citation format. The citation style used is MLA. The other example is in a list format for the information about the sources. Both are organized by authors last names (a-z).

Working Bibliography for Modern and Contemporary Poetry Essay (Citation format)

Kindley, Evan. “To Err Is Poetic.” The New York Review of Books.  Feb. 2021 issue. February 11, 2021.  https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/02/11/to-err-is-poetic/.

Sellers, Bridget. “Millennial Poetics: A Study of Contemporary Poetry and Its Developing Trends.” Pursuit: The Journal of Undergraduate Research at the University of Tennessee. pp. 189-97. https://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit/vol7/iss1/21.

Vuong, Ocean. “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.” Poetry Foundation. 2014. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57586/on-earth-were-briefly-gorgeous .

Working Bibliography for Modern and Contemporary Poetry Essay (List Format)

Source #1: “To Err Is Poetic”

• Author: Evan Kindley
• Publication: (website) The New York Review of Books
• Publication date: Feb. 11, 2021
• Issue: Feb. 2021
• Link: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/02/11/to-err-is-poetic/

Source #2: “Millennial Poetics: A Study of Contemporary Poetry and Its Developing Trends”

• Author: Bridget Sellers
• Publication: (found on Ebsco) Pursuit: The Journal of Undergraduate Research at the University of Tennessee
• Page numbers: pp. 189-97
• Link: https://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit/vol7/iss1/21

Source #3: “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.” (poem)

• Author: Ocean Vuong
• Publication: (found on) Poetry Foundation , (original publisher) Poetry Magazine
• Original Publication date: 2014
• Link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57586/on-earth-were-briefly-gorgeous 

Norway, Despina, Mike Palmquist, & Peter Connor. (2022). Developing a Working Bibliography. Writing@CSU . Colorado State University. https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/guide.cfm?guideid=26

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General Information

The information in this guide will help you create properly formatted bibliographies, work cited lists, footnotes, and in-text notes for most research projects undertaken at Dickinson. If the style you need is not listed, please contact a librarian for help.

Annotated Bibliographies

• Annotated Bibliographies in Chicago Style
• Annotated Bibliographies in MLA Style

An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and other materials that also includes a short statement about the work's value. Click on a link above to learn how to write an annotated bibliography according to the appropriate style for your class.

Also check out the Writing Center's YouTube video How to Write an Annotated Bibliography .

Distinguishing Among Source Types

Bibliographies

What is the Purpose of Writing a Bibliography?

Taking other people's ideas and presenting them as your own is a violation of college policy . When you are writing a research paper, you must tell your readers which ideas were not your own. A bibliography will help you do this.

Positively, compiling a bibliography will help you learn about your topic, discover the experts and important writings in your field, and will direct your readers who want to learn more about your topic to other resources. The act of forming a bibliography will also help to familiarize you with keywords you can use to conduct more extensive searches, and will help you to form your own original opinions about the subject.

What is a Bibliography?

A bibliography is a list of citations made up of all the sources you consulted in preparation for writing a research paper. Even if you do not directly quote an item in your research paper, you should still cite it in your bibliography if you used it to gain knowledge you did not previously have. Each citation in the bibliography is a description of the essential elements of each work consulted. This includes, but is not limited to, the title, author, publisher, and date of publication of each work. Citations are constructed using strict rules regarding punctuation, text format, and paragraph indentation. Each citation style (Chicago , APA , ASA , GSA and MLA) has different rules. The bibliography in a typical research paper is presented in alphabetical order by the the first item listed (usually the author).

Dickinson College's Policy

Dickinson College's Official Policy on Citing Sources and Plagiarism

It is necessary for you to give proper credit to all of the resources you use in your research papers. Plagiarism is a violation of Dickinson's Student Code of Conduct , and is a specific form of cheating defined in the code as follows:

• To plagiarize is to use without proper citation or acknowledgment the words, ideas, or work of another. Whenever one relies on someone else for phraseology, even for only two or three words, one must acknowledge indebtedness by using quotation marks and giving the source, either in the text or in a footnote.
• When one borrows facts which are not matters of general knowledge, including all statistics and translations, one must indicate one's indebtedness in the text or footnote. When one borrows an idea or the logic of an argument, one must acknowledge indebtedness either in a footnote or in the text. When in doubt, footnote. (Academic Standards Committee, November, 1965)

For more information from the Writing Center about how NOT to plagiarize, see Professor Lape's short presentation, How Not to Plagiarize .

Additionally, read our guide on Academic Integrity and How to Avoid Plagiarism .

Zotero  is a free, open source Bibliographic Management Tool recommended by Dickinson librarians. Please visit the Zotero Guide  for more information about what Zotero is and how to use it.

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14.1: Compiling Sources for an Annotated Bibliography

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Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Integrate your ideas with ideas from related sources.
• Locate, compile, and evaluate primary, secondary, and tertiary research materials related to your topic.

A bibliography is a list of the sources you use when doing research for a project or composition. Named for the Greek terms biblion , meaning “book,” and graphos , meaning “something written,” bibliographies today compile more than just books. Often they include academic journal articles, periodicals, websites, and multimedia texts such as videos. A bibliography alone, at the end of a research work, also may be labeled “References” or “Works Cited,” depending on the citation style you are using. The bibliography lists information about each source, including author, title, publisher, and publication date. Each set of source information, or each individual entry, listed in the bibliography or noted within the body of the composition is called a citation .

Bibliographies include formal documentation entries that serve several purposes:

• They help you organize your own research on a topic and narrow your topic, thesis, or argument.
• They help you build knowledge.
• They strengthen your arguments by offering proof that your research comes from trustworthy sources.
• They enable readers to do more research on the topic.
• They create a community of researchers, thus adding to the ongoing conversation on the research topic.
• They give credit to authors and sources from which you draw and support your ideas.

Annotated bibliography expand on typical bibliographies by including information beyond the basic citation information and commentary on the source. Although they present each formal documentation entry as it would appear in a source list such as a works cited page, an annotated bibliography includes two types of additional information. First, following the documentation entry is a short description of the work, including information about its authors and how it was or can be used in a research project. Second is an evaluation of the work’s validity, reliability, and/or bias. The purpose of the annotation is to summarize, assess, and reflect on the source. Annotations can be both explanatory and analytical, helping readers understand the research you used to formulate your argument. An annotated bibliography can also help you demonstrate that you have read the sources you will potentially cite in your work. It is a tool to assist in the gathering of these sources and serves as a repository. You won’t necessarily use all the sources cited in your annotated bibliography in your final work, but gathering, evaluating, and documenting these sources is an integral part of the research process.

Compiling Sources

Research projects and compositions, particularly argumentative or position texts, require you to collect sources, devise a thesis, and then support that thesis through analysis of the evidence, including sources, you have compiled. With access to the Internet and an academic library, you will rarely encounter a shortage of sources for any given topic or argument. The real challenge may be sorting through all the available sources and determining which will be useful.

The first step in completing an annotated bibliography is to locate and compile sources to use in your research project. At the beginning, you do not need to be highly selective in this process, as you may not ultimately use every source. Therefore, gather any materials—including books, websites, professional journals, periodicals, and documents—that you think may contain valuable ideas about your topic. But where do you find sources that relate to your argument? And how do you choose which sources to use? This section will help you answer those questions and choose sources that will both enhance and challenge your claim, allowing you to confront contradictory evidence and synthesize ideas, or combine ideas from various sources, to produce a well-constructed original argument. See Research Process: Accessing and Recording Information for more information about sources and synthesizing information.

Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources

In your research, you likely will use three types of sources: primary, secondary, and tertiary. During any research project, your use of these sources will depend on your topic, your thesis, and, ultimately, how you intend to use them. In all likelihood, you will need to seek out all three.

Primary Sources

Primary sources allow you to create your own analysis with the appropriate rhetorical approach. In the humanities disciplines, primary sources include original documents, data, images, and other compositions that provide a firsthand account of an event or a time in history. Typically, primary sources are created close in time to the event or period they represent and may include journal or diary entries, newspaper articles, government records, photographs, artworks, maps, speeches, films, and interviews. In scientific disciplines, primary sources provide information such as scientific discoveries, raw data, experimental and research results, and clinical trial findings. They may include published studies, scientific journal articles, and proceedings of meeting or conferences.

Primary sources also can include student-conducted interviews and surveys. Other primary sources may be found on websites such as the Library of Congress ( https://openstax.org/r/Library_of ), the Historical Text Archive ( https://openstax.org/r/Historical_Text ), government websites, and article databases. In all academic areas, primary sources are fact based, not interpretive. That is, they may be commenting on or interpreting something else, but they themselves are the source. For example, an article written during the 1840s condemning the practice of enslavement may interpret events occurring then, but it is a primary source document of its time.

Figure \(14.2\) This letter of resignation by President Richard Nixon (1913–1994), written in 1974, is an example of a primary source. (credit: “Letter of Resignation of Richard M. Nixon, 1974” by Former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, officially a work of the U.S. government/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

Figure \(14.3\) Original poetry, such as this mirror-writing poem by Caroline Fitzgerald, is an example of a primary source. Manuscripts, journals, and diaries are primary sources. (credit: “Caroline Fitzgerald poem in mirror writing flipped” by Caroline Fitzgerald (1865–1911)/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

Figure \(14.4\) This map of Scandinavia from 1730 is an example of a primary source. (credit: “1730 Homann Map of Scandinavia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and the Baltics - Geographicus – Scandinavia” by Johann Homann (1664–1724)/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

Figure \(14.5\) Government documents, such as the United States Constitution, are primary sources. (credit: “Constitution of the United States, page 1” by U.S. National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources , unlike primary sources, are interpretive. They often provide a secondhand account of an event or research results, analyze or clarify primary sources and scientific discoveries, or interpret a creative work. These sources are important for supporting or challenging your argument, addressing counterarguments, and synthesizing ideas. Secondary sources in the humanities disciplines include biographies, literary criticism, and reviews of the fine arts, among other sources. In the scientific disciplines, secondary sources encompass analyses of scientific studies or clinical trials, reviews of experimental results, and publications about the significance of studies or experiments. In some instances, the same item can serve as both a primary and a secondary source, depending on how it is used. For example, a journal article in which the author analyzes the impact of a clinical trial would serve as a secondary source. But if you instead count the number of journal articles that feature reports on a particular clinical trial, you might use them as primary sources because they would then serve as data points.

Figure \(14.6\) Infographics are secondary sources that combine text and graphics to summarize information about a topic. (credit: “Youth Vaping Risks” by nhs.gov/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

Table \(14.1\) provides examples of how primary and secondary sources often relate to one another.

Tertiary Sources

In addition to primary and secondary sources, you can use a tertiary source to summarize or digest information from primary and/or secondary sources. Because tertiary sources often condense information, they usually do not provide enough information on their own to support claims. However, they often contain a variety of citations that can help you identify and locate valuable primary and secondary sources. Researchers often use tertiary sources to find general, historical, or background information as well as a broad overview of a topic. Tertiary sources frequently placed in the secondary-source category include reference materials such as encyclopedias, textbooks, manuals, digests, and bibliographies. For more discussion on sources, see The Research Process: Where to Look for Existing Sources.

Figure \(14.7\) Textbooks are examples of tertiary sources. (credit: “Programming language textbooks” by User:K.lee/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)\

Authoritative Sources

Not all sources are created equally. You likely know already that you must vet sources—especially those you find on the Internet—for legitimacy, validity, and the presence of bias. For example, you probably know that the website Wikipedia is not considered a trustworthy source because it is open to user editing. This accessibility means the site’s authority cannot be established and, therefore, the source cannot effectively support or refute a claim you are attempting to make, though you can use it at times to point you to reliable sources. While socalled bad sources may be easy to spot, researchers may have more difficulty discriminating between sources that are authoritative and those that pose concerns. In fact, you may encounter a general hierarchy of sources in your compilation. Understanding this hierarchy can help you identify which sources to use and how to use them in your research.

Peer-Reviewed Academic Publications

This first tier of sources—the gold standard of research—includes academic literature, which consists of textbooks, essays, journals, articles, reports, and scholarly books. As scholarly works, these sources usually provide strong evidence for an author’s claims by reflecting rigorous research and scrutiny by experts in the field. These types of sources are most often published, sponsored, or supported by academic institutions, often a university or an academic association such as the Modern Language Association (MLA). Such associations exist to encourage research and collaboration within their discipline, mostly through publications and conferences. To be published, academic works must pass through a rigorous process called peer review , in which scholars in the field evaluate it anonymously. You can find peer-reviewed academic sources in library catalogs, in article databases, and through Google Scholar online. Sometimes these sources require a subscription to access, but students often receive access through their school.

Academic articles, particularly in the social and other sciences, generally have most or all of the following sections, a structure you might recognize if you have written lab reports in science classes:

• Abstract . This short summary covers the purpose, methods, and findings of the paper. It may discuss briefly the implications or significance of the research.
• Introduction . The main part of the paper begins with an introduction that presents the issue or main idea addressed by the research, establishes its importance, and poses the author’s thesis.
• Review . Next comes an overview of previous academic research related to the topic, including a synthesis that makes a case for why the research is important and necessary.
• Data and Methods . The main part of the original research begins with a description of the data and methods used, including what data or information the author collected and how the author used it.
• Results . Data and methods are followed by results, detailing the significant findings from the experiment or research.
• Conclusion . In the conclusion, the author discusses the results in the context of the bigger picture, explaining the author’s position on how these results relate to the earlier review of literature and their significance in the broad scope of the topic. The author also may propose future research needs or point out unanswered questions.
• Works Cited or References . The paper ends with a list of all sources the author used in the research, including the review of literature. This often-overlooked portion of the composition is critical in evaluating the credibility of any paper that involves research.

Figure \(14.8\) Articles from peer-reviewed academic journals such as this one are among the most credible sources you can use. (credit: “The perception of odor objects in everyday life a review on the processing of odor mixtures” by Thierry Thomas-Danguin, Charlotte Sinding, et al./Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0)

Credible Nonacademic Sources

These sources, including articles, books, and reports, are second in authority only to peer-reviewed academic publications. Credible nonacademic sources are often about current events or discoveries not yet reviewed in academic circles and often provide a wider-ranging outlook on your topic. Peer-reviewed texts tend to be narrow and specific, whereas nonacademic texts from well-researched sources are often more accessible and can offer a broader perspective. These three major categories generally provide quality sources:

• Information, white papers, and reports from government and international agencies such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the United States government
• Longer articles and reports from major newspapers, broadcast media, and magazines that are well regarded in academic circles, including the New York Times , the Wall Street Journal , the BBC, and the Economist
• Nonacademic books written by authors with expertise and credentials, who support their ideas with wellsourced information

To find nonacademic sources, search for .gov or .org sites related to your topic. A word of caution, however: know that sources ending in .org are often advocacy sites and, consequently, inherently biased toward whatever cause they are advocating. You also can look at academic article databases and search articles from major newspapers and magazines, both of which can be found online.

Figure \(14.9\) Information from credible sources, such as the World Health Organization, provides value to your research. (credit: “WHO World Health Organization on Coronavirus pandemic COVID-19” by https://www.nursetogether.com/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

Short Informational Texts from Credible Websites and Periodicals

The next most authoritative sources are shorter newspaper articles or other pieces on credible websites. These articles tend to be limited in scope, as their authors report on a single issue or event. Although they do not often provide in-depth analysis, they can be a source of credible facts to support your argument. Alternatively, they can point you in the direction of more detailed or rigorous sources that will enhance your research by tracing the original texts or sources on which the articles are based. Usually, you can find these sources through Internet searches, but sometimes you may have difficulty determining their credibility.

Judging Credibility

To judge credibility, begin by looking for the author or organization publishing the information. Most periodical compositions contain a short “About the Author” blurb at the beginning or end of the article and often include a link to the author’s credentials or to more information about them. Using this information, you can begin to determine their expertise and, potentially, any agenda the author or organization may have. For example, expect a piece discussing side effects of medical marijuana written by a doctor to present more expertise than the same piece written by a political lobbyist. You also can determine whether bias is present; for example, the organization may promote a particular way of thinking or have an agenda that will influence the content and language of the composition. In general, look for articles written with neutral expertise.

The CRAAP Test

You may find the CRAAP test a helpful and easy-to-remember tool for testing credibility. This checklist provides you with a method for evaluating any source for both reliability and credibility. CRAAP stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. The CRAAP test, as shown in Table 14.2, includes questions that can be asked of any source.

Sources with Clear Bias or Unclear Authority

The final type of source encompasses nearly everything else. Although they cannot be considered credible or valid to support your argument or claims, these sources are not necessarily useless. Especially when you are compiling sources at the beginning of a project, those with clear bias or unclear authority can be useful as you explore all facets of a topic, including positions within an argument. These sources also can help you identify topics on which to base your search terms and can even point you toward more credible sources.

Figure \(14.10\) Websites and periodicals with clear bias or without clear authority may be useful in pointing you in the direction of more credible sources. (credit: skylarvision/Pixabay, CC0 1.0)

Locating Sources

Academic article databases are the best starting places for finding sources. There are too many databases to cover them all in this chapter, but you would be wise to familiarize yourself with those to which you have access through your school or program. For further information on databases, see The Research Process: Where to Look for Existing Sources. In the long run, this knowledge will save you a good deal of time and a possible headache.

You will want to start with your college library website, which includes access to sources paid for by your institution. As a student, you should be able to access these quickly and easily. Another popular and wide-ranging database is Google Scholar ( https://openstax.org/r/Google_Scholar ). Google Scholar is helpful for finding sources across a wide range of topics. One drawback, however, is that it catalogues nearly all disciplines, so the results can be vast and unfocused. Therefore, when using Google Scholar, be as specific as possible, and add your academic discipline as a keyword. For example, when searching for information on climate change, add the keyword “environment” or “politics” depending on your research angle; otherwise, the results will include all disciplines and potentially bury the articles you seek. Google Scholar also has a feature labeled “Cited by,” which shows you other papers that cite the article in their review of literature relate to the topic. Writing Process: Informing and Analyzing contains more information about focusing your searches. Like clues to a mystery, one search can lead you to a wealth of related articles.

When you are able to identify potential sources by reading their abstracts or using Google Scholar, you may at times land on a publisher’s website that requires you to pay to read the full article. When you find yourself in a situation such as this, record information about the article—author(s), article title, journal title, publication date. It is likely that you will be able to use your school’s database to access the article. For information about other databases, consult The Research Process: Where to Look for Existing Sources.

Just as writing is recursive , requiring you to go back and forth between different stages of the process, you will likely return to your annotated bibliography at different points. You may begin by looking for sources related to your topic, or you may choose or narrow your topic after an initial database search for sources. If your project has a variety of possible topics, you may even start with a current issue of a leading journal in the field, find an article that interests you, and use that article to shape your topic selection. As a bonus, you will have your first reputable source. Later, as you refine your thesis, reasoning, and evidence, you may find yourself returning to your search for sources. Consider this hypothetical situation: You are developing an argument that examines the risk factors of childhood trauma that surface in later life. As you analyze the data from your sources, it occurs to you to find out whether any documented correlation exists between early trauma and resilience. So you return to Google Scholar and your university’s academic database to find more research based on this idea in order to revise your analysis by adding the new viewpoint.

One difficulty may be homing in on the keywords that will lead you to the sources you need. At this point, sources from the last two categories discussed may come into play: short pieces from credible websites and newspapers and other texts with clear bias or unclear authority. Less credible sources may lead you to better ones, particularly if you can identify the keywords used in them and then apply those keywords within academic databases. For more on developing useful keywords, consult The Research Process: Where to Look for Existing Sources.

Boolean Operators

Keyword searches can become frustrating, either yielding so much information that it seems impossible to sort through or narrowing the search so much that you miss important potential sources. One way to remedy this situation is to become familiar with Boolean operators , the basis of mathematical sets and database logic. Rather than searching with natural language only, you can use these operators to focus your search. The three basic Boolean operators are AND , OR , and NOT . Using these operators helps you search by linking necessary information, excluding irrelevant information, and focusing information. For example, if you have some pieces of information from tertiary sources, you may be able to use Boolean operators to find additional useful sources. A search string such as artificial intelligence (title) AND Buiten (author) AND 2019 (year) can yield the exact journal source you need. Here is a brief review of how to use the three operators:

• Use AND to narrow search results and tell the database to include all search terms in finding sources. If you want to find sources that include all of the search terms entered, use the AND operator. In Figure \(14.11\), the darkest blue triangular section in the center of the Venn diagram represents the result set for this search, including all three terms. In many databases, including Google, AND is implied between each word. To exclude AND, use quotation marks. For example, Google would translate the search term ethics artificial intelligence as ethics AND artificial AND intelligence . To make your phrases more specific, use the AND operator combined with quotation marks: “ethics” AND “artificial intelligence” .

Figure \(14.11\) Search results for AND (CC BY 4.0; Rice University & OpenStax)

• Use OR to connect two or more similar concepts and broaden your results, telling the search engine that any of your search terms can appear in the results it gives you. The Boolean operator OR is represented by Figure 14.12. Using the OR operator gives you a very large set of results.

Figure \(14.12\) Search results for OR (CC BY 4.0; Rice University & OpenStax)

• Use NOT to exclude results from a search. This operator can help you narrow your search, telling the search engine to ignore names or words you do not want included in your results. For example, if you know you don’t want self-driving cars in your search results, you might search for “artificial intelligence” NOT “self-driving cars” .

Choosing Sources

Choosing sources to include in your annotated bibliography may seem overwhelming. However, if you can find a few good academic articles as a starting point, use them to guide your research. Academic articles are efficient, scrutinized by experts in their fields, and organized in ways that aid readers in identifying key findings that relate to their argument. The following tips will help you choose solid sources to guide your research:

• Look for relevant scholarly articles. Even the briefest Google search can yield an overwhelming amount of content. Sift through it by looking first through academic databases to find high-quality sources relevant to your research.
• Read abstracts. As you sift through scholarly articles, you can get a good idea of what each one is about by reading the abstract. It includes the findings and will show you in about 100 words whether the paper holds relevance to your research.
• Skim. Once you have determined that an article may be useful, skim each section to glean the information you need. Closer and more extensive reading can come later as you develop and support your argument.
• Avoid getting bogged down in technical information or industry-specific jargon. The benefit of reading peer-reviewed research is that you know the reviewers have determined it to be solidly constructed. Therefore, even if you don’t understand some portions completely, you can still feel confident about using relevant information from the article.
• Work smarter by using the research provided. Once you have identified an article that is helpful to your research, use it to find more like it. Search for other publications by the authors; researchers often spend much of their careers researching one overarching topic or theme. Use the review of literature to identify related articles that may add to your research. You can also use the article’s bibliography to find additional sources. Or reverse engineer the process: use article databases to find other articles that cite the article in their literature reviews.

How to Create a Bibliography for your Thesis: Step-by-Step Guide

As you near the completion of your thesis, one essential task to tackle is creating a bibliography . a bibliography is a list of all the sources you have cited or referenced in your thesis. it provides readers with valuable information about the texts, articles, and other materials you have consulted during your research. follow this step-by-step guide to effortlessly create a comprehensive and accurate bibliography for your thesis..

Step 1: Understand the Formatting Style

Before you begin compiling your bibliography, familiarize yourself with the required formatting style. Common styles include APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard. Check your institution’s guidelines or consult with your thesis advisor to determine which style you should adhere to. Each style has specific rules for citing different types of sources, so understanding these guidelines is crucial.

Step 2: Collect Information

Ensure that you have gathered all the necessary information about each source you have cited. For books, note down the author(s), title, publication year, publisher, and place of publication. For articles, take note of the author(s), article title, journal name, volume number, issue number, page numbers, and publication date. Websites require the URL and the date you accessed the information. Remember to record this information accurately to prevent any errors in your bibliography.

Step 3: Organize Your Sources

Group your sources based on their type, such as books, articles, websites, or interviews. Keeping them organized will make it easier to create your bibliography later on. You can use a spreadsheet or a bibliography management tool to categorize and track your sources effectively.

Step 4: Follow the Formatting Guidelines

Now that you have all your information sorted, it’s time to begin compiling your bibliography. Use the formatting style’s guidelines to structure the information correctly. Remember to present the author’s name(s) in the prescribed format (last name, first initial or full name) and follow the appropriate punctuation and capitalization rules.

Step 5: Arrange Your Bibliography

Organize your bibliography in alphabetical order based on the author’s last name (or title if there is no author). If you have multiple works by the same author, arrange them chronologically, starting with the earliest publication. Maintain consistency in formatting throughout your bibliography, ensuring that each entry follows the same style and structure.

Step 6: Review and Proofread

Thoroughly review each entry in your bibliography for accuracy and completeness. Check for any missing information or errors in formatting. Avoid relying solely on automated citation generators, as they may introduce mistakes. Take the time to proofread your bibliography meticulously to ensure it meets all the requirements.

Step 7: Double-Check the Details

Before finalizing your bibliography, cross-check all the details against the original sources. Verify the accuracy of author names, titles, dates, and other essential information. This attention to detail will enhance the credibility and professionalism of your thesis.

Step 8: Seek Feedback

Once you have completed your bibliography, consider seeking feedback from your advisor or a peer. A fresh set of eyes may catch any errors or inconsistencies that you may have overlooked. Incorporating feedback will help you improve the overall quality of your bibliography.

Creating a bibliography for your thesis requires careful attention and adherence to formatting guidelines. By following this step-by-step guide, you can create a comprehensive and polished bibliography that showcases your research effort and supports the validity of your thesis.

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The best way to keep a Bibliography as you work

A bibliography is a collection of the sources used when preparing for an assignment. This includes those that were not referenced in text but still helped with idea formation. Although bibliographies are an essential part of our academic life, many of us fail to keep track. In the end, we rush to compile our bibliographies, and can fail to format our citations correctly when confronted with a long list of sources to organise. In this article, we have some tips for keeping track of those sources for your bibliography.

First, start early. The sooner you get organised and build a good habit of keeping track of your sources, the easier it will be to compile your bibliography later. This is absolutely essential if you’re working on multiple assignments at once, or a big research project. Unlike a reference list, with a bibliography it’s important to keep track of the material that helped you form your ideas, which is why starting early is key. However, if you’ve already started the research process, still take some time to pause and get your current sources organised.

Second, familiarise yourself with your referencing format. Later, we’ll discuss citation generators and reference management but it’s always good to ensure you’re up to date with how things work. This allows you to spot if there’s details missing from your citations. Likewise, this knowledge can help you present your final bibliography in the correct format. For example, APA requires references to be indented and double spaced. This information can help you to compile a professional looking bibliography, and show your ability to pay attention to detail.

Third, find a system that works for you. There are a few digital tools out there, genei included. Zotero and Mendeley are two popular tools for collecting, organising and referencing your research papers. These tools support word processors, allowing you to insert citations directly into your document. You can keep track of your ideas by highlighting and annotating PDFs within the software too. Likewise, our tool at genei allows you to organise, annotate and cite your sources in one place. You can research, plan and write in genei with its word processing and note-taking functionality .

However, genei also aims to make the research process more efficient with AI-powered summarisation, keyword extraction and search features. You can find related reading by following the reference lists from one paper to another, and form your ideas by creating linked notes between multiple sources. You can easily generate citations for your current paper, and related papers in the overview tab. It's a good idea to try using such tools early on to figure out what you like, so you can develop a consistent and efficient system.

Alternatively, if you’re looking for a more hands-on, non-digital approach, you can use flashcards. The bibliography card method can help you keep track of your sources and related ideas. It’s important to stay on top of the process and create a card each time you come across a source.Or, if you don't mind going digital but prefer not to use a dedicated research tool, then software like Notion is a good option. You can take a similar ‘card’ style approach that can be organised using tags. Notion is a useful tool for planning and organising your studies in general, so it might be a good idea to even use this tool alongside the reference managers we discussed above. You can learn more here: Notion Bibliography Template , Build a Bibliography in Notion and Use Notion for Research . 

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How to Write a Bibliography

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A bibliography is nothing more than a written list of your sources, outlining everything you used in the creation of the work, even if you didn’t cite it directly. This is something that almost all students will be asked to compile and add to their works at some point. Bibliographies are generally used in academic documents and from a student’s point of view they are most commonly used within your undergraduate or master’s dissertation. But what does a bibliography actually look like? When is a bibliography used? And how do you create a bibliography for your essay or research paper? Here’s everything you need to know about how to write a bibliography:

What is a Bibliography?

For many students creating a bibliography can be a daunting prospect, and part of the reason for this is that many students aren’t sure what a bibliography is. The good news is that a bibliography is much simpler than it sounds. A bibliography is nothing more than a list of all of the sources that you have used to help you write an essay or other extensive document. This includes not only the sources that you have directly quoted or referred to in your essay but also any works that you have read throughout your research for the piece. Even if a work is not cited directly, if you have read it as part of your essay preparation, or if your essay has otherwise been influenced by the work then it should be included and cited in your bibliography.

Bibliographies are commonly used in academic documents , such as at the end of an undergraduate or master’s level dissertation. But brief and less formal versions of bibliographies can also be used at the end of a journalistic piece, presentation, or video to lend them legitimacy and to visibly demonstrate that they have been well-researched. But academia is the main focus of the bibliography. So, if you’re thinking of pursuing further education and studying at degree level then it’s important that you understand what a bibliography is and how to create one. If an undergraduate essay or dissertation doesn’t include a properly cited and formatted bibliography, then it isn’t completed. As the way students access information has changed, so too has the information that you can include in your bibliography. Traditionally these were lists of books, essays and articles, but now websites, videos, and other multimedia sources should be cited in your bibliography too if they are accessed as part of your research.

There are many benefits of using a bibliography. These include:

• Demonstrating to your tutor, instructor, or anyone else assessing your essay that you have conducted the necessary research for your assignment and that you know how to put together a robust and comprehensive bibliography.
• Crediting the authors of any source materials that you have based your piece on for the research that they have conducted, ensuring that your piece does not appear plagiarised because all source materials used in your piece have been fully cited.
• Finally, as well as benefitting the authors you have cited and your tutor, the primary reason a bibliography should be included in your work is to benefit your readers. It will make it much easier for them to find the sources you have cited, read those works themselves, and conduct their own research on the same topic too. Bibliographies play an essential role in sharing knowledge and advancing understanding of a subject.

When is a Bibliography Used?

We have established that bibliographic information is descriptive information about a piece of work. Now we need to assess when we will need this bibliographic information: when is a bibliography used? Bibliographies are generally used in a wide range of academic research projects and disciplines. Secondary school students, college students and distance learning students, university students and postgraduate students may all be required to create bibliographies in their academic works. The bibliography in a research paper or project is typically one of the last pages of the paper adding to the piece after your own content but before any appendices.

The terms bibliography, references and cited works are often used interchangeably, but these three are actually unique ways of referencing your work and your sources. A “Works Cited” list is an alphabetical list of works cited or sources you specifically called out while composing your paper. This differs from a bibliography because you don’t need to include any additional sources that you have read or that may have otherwise influenced your piece in a works cited list. As a general rule, this means that works cited lists are much shorter than bibliographies. Reference lists are very similar to works cited lists, but they are written in APA (American Psychological Association) format, whilst bibliographies often use the Harvard referencing system . Reference lists are arranged alphabetically by the author’s last name. Whilst cited works and reference lists are similar, bibliographies are very different. A bibliography should list all the material you have consulted in preparing your essay, whether you have actually referred to and cited the work or not. So even if you only read a page or two or a text, and don’t directly reference it in your work, it should still be included in your bibliography. For this reason, bibliographies include longer references and are significant blocks of text.

Primary and Secondary Sources

The sources that you will cite within your academic works fall into two main categories: primary sources and secondary sources. But students often have difficulty differentiating between the two. However, the differences between primary sources and secondary sources are easy to work out. If you are quoting a first-hand account of something, or an original work, then this is a primary source.

Some examples of primary sources include: news articles, photographs, autobiographies, novels and short stories, letters and diary entries, and original works of art. From a multimedia point of view, documentaries, radio broadcasts and podcasts, and recordings of music or speeches are also considered to be primary sources. Working with a primary source means that you examine the source material, analyse it, and then reach your own conclusions. If you read a novel and then write an essay about its themes, for example, then you are using the novel as your primary source and you draw your own conclusions from it. In science-based subjects, any research or data you gather for yourself, by conducting your own studies or research, is considered to be a primary source. But if you are analysing data that has been gathered by someone else then this is then considered to be a secondary source. This example is important because it demonstrates that primary sources don’t always have to be documents you have created yourself: if you’re taking raw data that has been produced by someone else then this is still considered a primary source.

Secondary sources differ from primary sources because they are further removed from them. If a piece of art is the primary source, for example, then an essay analysing that piece of art would be considered to be a secondary source. Other examples of secondary sources include: textbooks that discuss other concepts, theories, or source material, biographies written about other famous figures, works written by critics or other academics and key political commentary. In short, a primary source provides direct access to material which you can then discuss and analyse, whilst a secondary source requires you to look at the material through the lens of another person or another point of view. If you are reading another critic’s analysis of a work, then their perspective is likely to have some influence on your critical approach or opinion. For this reason, many academics believe primary sources to be more reliable than secondary sources. But that is a one-dimensional approach: working with secondary sources can be beneficial because it allows you to understand how others perceive the work you are discussing. It also provides a clear insight into the cultural perspective that surrounds the work.

Types of Bibliography

There is no singular type of bibliography: different kinds of academic work require different kinds of bibliography, and they are each laid out and formatted slightly differently. Some of the main types of bibliography that you need to be aware of include:

• Analytical bibliography. This is a bibliography that analyses the route that a work makes from its initial manuscript stage to publication. When creating an analytical bibliography you should not only detail the high-level information about a cited source, such as the title and the name of the author, but also more specific details about the work, such as its number of pages, any illustrations it includes, and even the type of binding it is held together with.
• Annotated bibliography. As the name suggests, this type of bibliography includes annotations. An annotation is a short note that concisely and clearly explains why you chose each of your sources. Each annotation included within an annotated bibliography is usually just a few sentences long but will provide your readers with valuable insight into your view of the source. Although they are similar to literature review bibliographies, annotated bibliographies do not discuss how the research is conducted in the same level of depth.
• National bibliography. Source material is categorised into groups depending on where they were published, or the time period in which they were published. Often texts in a national bibliography are organised by region or nation.
• Personal bibliography. If you have included a range of pieces in your essay that are unpublished works, or hard-to-find works, then a personal bibliography is the best way to list these. This type of bibliography is best used for academic pieces that focus on multiple works by the same author: biographically focused pieces, for example.
• Corporate bibliography. As the name implies, a corporate bibliography will group sources in relation to specific organisations or corporations.
• Subject bibliography. Finally, sources within subject bibliographies are grouped depending on which subjects they cover. Generally, these bibliographies list primary and secondary sources, which makes them more in-depth. Other bibliographies on this list may not always outline both primary and secondary sources in this way.

Information Required from Print Sources

All of the bibliographic material that you will need from print sources can be found on their title page. The information that you will need to include in your citation will depend on the type of bibliography that you are compiling, but regardless of what citation style is being used, there are key pieces of information that you will always need to collect in order to create the citation in a bibliography. This information is:

• The name of the author you are citing.
• The title of the publication you are citing.
• Article title (if using a journal or magazine article).
• The volume number of the journal, magazine or encyclopaedia you are citing, or the edition you are citing in the case of a printed publication.
• Date of publication.
• Place of publication.
• Page number(s) relevant to your research, and that you are citing within your work.

Information Required from Web Sources

The way in which you will cite a website or other web sources differs from the way in which you would cite a traditional printed text. The way in which you will cite a web source will depend on whether you are citing an online article or a web page. In the case of a web article, you will need to share:

• The author and/or editor name of the web piece that you are citing.
• The title of the website that you are citing.
• Company or organisation that owns or posts to the website.
• URL (website address).
• The date that you accessed the information you are citing and, where possible, the date that the information you are citing was originally published.

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Thank you. payment completed., you will receive an email from us to confirm your registration, please click the link in the email to activate your account., there was error during payment, orcid profile found in public registry, download history, understanding and writing a bibliography in an academic paper.

• Charlesworth Author Services
• 05 March, 2022

A bibliography is a list of sources appended to a research paper for readers to consult if they wish to obtain more information on anything covered in the paper in question. Although ‘bibliography’ and ‘ references ’ are terms that are often used as synonyms, we must clarify at the outset that they are not actually the same thing. This article offers information about a bibliography and also explains how it differs from a reference list.

Common use of bibliography

While some academic work also includes bibliographies, one of the best ways to understand the context for using a bibliography is with reference to fiction novels . While developing the content for a fiction novel, the author may do extensive background reading and research on a specific issue (e.g. medical procedures, a historical period) in order to (re)create scenarios and events within the novel that reflect real life as accurately as possible.

However, it is unlikely that they would directly cite these references within the novel. The list of background reading that they did, or recommend to readers should they wish to explore the topic further, would instead be compiled as a ‘Bibliography’ or ‘ Recommended reading ’ at the end of the book.

Bibliography vs. References

References (sometimes also titled ‘ Works Cited ’) give more detailed information about the sources cited in, or referred to, within the body of the paper. You would commonly see ‘References’ lists in academic work, such as journal articles or books.

On the other hand, a bibliography offers the same level of information about the sources that are consulted while preparing the paper but not specifically referred to within the text itself. 

As these serve distinctly different purposes, it is useful to note, therefore, that any publication can contain both a list of references and a bibliography .

(Follow the) Naming Convention

Some publishers and institutions may request that authors use the word ‘Bibliography’ instead of ‘References’. (This, perhaps, is the reason for the common confusion between the two.) It is not uncommon for students to be asked to submit essays and Masters or Doctoral dissertations/theses using the heading ‘Bibliography’ to refer to the list of references they have cited within their work. However, this is likely more of an exception than a rule and will depend on the individual publisher’s/institution’s specific requirements.

As such, it’s important to always check the submission requirements as you prepare any written work for examination or review. (Read more here about following journal guidelines: Understanding and following the Information for Authors )

Compiling sources for a bibliography

The mechanics of writing and formatting the details of your sources will be the same, irrespective of whether that section is titled ‘References’, ‘Works Cited’ or ‘Bibliography’. 

The specifics of how you write those sources depend entirely on which style or reference guide you are using (whether that is a personal choice or the preferred requirements of a journal/publisher/institution to whom you are submitting your work). It is therefore very important to check and understand the journal or publication requirements (including their preferred referencing style guide ) before you write and submit your paper (or thesis, or book etc.), so that you can format your sources, along with the rest of your manuscript, correctly.

Formatting sources for a bibliography

The tiny, intricate details required for writing and formatting sources can be very challenging. However, remember that if you supply all the necessary elements of a reference, a reference formatting professional (such as a proof-reader or a copy editor) or service can then format and punctuate each reference easily. Alternatively, you might prefer to use a referencing software/programme as you write, such as Endnote, Mendeley or Zotera, which allows you to select your preferred referencing style and formats all your sources accordingly.

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