Sociology Referencing Guide

Plagiarism

Do not plagiarise, directly or indirectly, the work of any author. All sources used in your essays/assignments must be clearly cited. Students should not be in any doubt that plagiarism is treated as a very serious offence in this department and by the University. When detected it can lead to you failing the essay, or the course. Students have been expelled or suspended from the University for copying other students' work, or for plagiarism.

The most common forms of plagiarism are:

a) copying segments of a book, or articles and presenting it as your own work.
 
b) changing slightly the work of someone else and presenting it as your own work. Simply to change a word here and there, or juxtapose sentences in a different sequence will not avoid the charge of plagiarism. This form of plagiarism causes the most problems for students, so if in doubt - reference. There is no academic value in paraphrasing but in the source being paraphrased and that is why it must be referenced. You should restrict the use of paraphrasing and show where it begins and ends.

c) presenting the ideas of some author(s) as your own. To avoid presenting a plagiarised assignment, it is essential to acknowledge fully all sources of information with direct and indirect quoting. You will and it a help when taking notes to clearly outline what is a direct quote, as not only does it help you to locate the source quickly (you should note the pages), but it should also help you avoid mistaking it as your own work.

Examples of Referencing NOT plagiarised: 

Direct: "To a large degree culture determines how members of a society think and feel, it directs their actions and determines their outlook on life." (Haralambos 1980, 3).  Indirect: Haralambos (1980, 3) suggests that culture affects the way we think, feel and act.

Paraphrasing:

Requires full citation and page number(s).   Haralambos presents data on the earnings of manual and non-manual workers. Briefly his data (Haralambos 1980, 51) indicates that manual workers earn less, work longer hours, have less career prospects, in fact their earnings tend to drop as they get older, they have little security and that the available data does not take into account the fringe benefits that non-manual workers gain. Avoiding sexism in language and writing   The words 'man', 'he', and 'him' are often used to describe human beings of either sex. This cannot be dismissed as an insignificant literary convention for it inevitably gives the impression that women are absent, silent, or simply less important than men.   When reference is to either or both sexes, but not specifically to the male sex, the words 'man' and 'men' should be avoided. There are plenty of alternatives, such as 'person', 'people', 'human beings', 'men and women'. It is unacceptable to use 'man' to mean humanity in general - women constitute over half the world's population.   Avoiding 'he', 'his', and 'him', can be more difficult, since the repeated use of 'he' or 'she', 'his or hers', 'him or her' can be clumsy. But 'they', 'their', 'them' can often be used instead - or the term s/he.  

Examples for

The man in the street... put Ordinary people; people in general
Mankind put Humanity; human beings; people Man-made put Synthetic; artificial; manufactured
The inequality of man put Inequality among;
Chairman/Foreman put Supervisor;

The following comments probably relate more to general authorship than to those submitting to a professional journal, but may, in some circumstances, be helpful to authors.   Men and women should not be presented as stock characters, employing sexual, social or vocational stereotypes. Members of both sexes should be represented as whole human beings, with human strengths and weaknesses, not 'masculine' and 'feminine' ones; women should not only be characterised as emotional, sentimental, dependent, passive, inferior, gentle, etc., and nor should men only be characterised as dominant, strong, sensible, superior, unemotional, etc. Women should also not be represented in terms of their marital status or relation to their husband's job; women constitute about 40% of the workforce and two-thirds of these women workers are married. Modifiers ('woman doctor', 'authoress') should also be avoided; terms like 'doctor', 'nurse' should be assumed to include both men and women. It would not be assumed that all consumers are housewives; men and women, single and married, all go shopping.

Examples for

John Smith and his wife Jane put John and Jane Smith A farmer and his wife put A farming couple Male nurse put Nurse Housewives are affected by put Householders are affected by

Bibliographic Style Manual

Bibliography
 
A bibliography is a list of all the works that have contributed ideas or information to your paper. A bibliography should be listed alphabetically and must observe the following punctuation styles. This style manual is based on the Australian Government Publishing Service Style Manual. You may underline instead of using italics: 

i) For books:

Author's surname, initial(s). Date, Title, Publisher, Place of publication.   Baldwin, A. L. 1967, Theories of Child Development, Wiley and Sons, New York.   Butler, J. D. & Walbert, D. F. (eds) 1986, Abortion, Medicine and the Law, Fact on File Publications, New York.   Clarizio, H. C. (ed.) 1970, Contemporary Issues in Educational Psychology, Allyn and Bacon, Boston.   Gillespie, N. C., Lewis, R. J., Pearn, J. H., Bourke, A. T. C., Homles, M. J., Bourke, J. B. & Shields, W. J. 1986, 'Ciguatera in Australia: Occurrence, clinical features, pathophysiology and management', Medical Journal of Australia, vol. 145, no. 11-12, pp.584-90.   Jenkins, J. J. & Pateron, D. 1961, Studies in Individual Difference, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York.   Strunk, W. Jr & White, E. B. 1979, The Elements of Style, 3rd edn, Macmillan, New York.

ii) For a Chapter in a Book

Chapter author's surname, initial(s). Date, 'Chapter title', in Book title, eds Author's initial. Surname, Publisher, Place of publication.   Blaxter, M. 1976, 'Social class and health inequalities', in Equalities and Inequalities in Health, eds C. Carter & J. Peel, Academic Press, London.   Garton, S. 1989, 'Aboriginal History', in Australian Studies: A Survey, ed. J.Walter, Oxford University Press, Melbourne.

iii) For journals:

Author's surname, initial(s). Date, 'Title of article', Journal name, volume, issue number, page numbers.   Erikson, E. H. 1959, 'Identity and the Life Cycle', Psychological Issues, vol.1, pp.50-171.   Singh, P. 1994, 'Generating Literacies of "Difference" from the "Belly of the Beast"', The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.17, no.2, pp.92-100.

iv) For newspapers:

Author's surname, initial(s). Date, 'Title of article', Newspaper, day and month, page numbers.   Adams, P. 1987, 'Black and white and read no more?', Weekend Australian Magazine, 7-8 February, p.2.   Sydney Morning Herald, 1998, 'Captain's baptism of fire', 27 June, p.13.

v) For government publications:

Office of the Status of Women 1981, Fair Exposure, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.

vi) For lectures and interviews:

Vasta, E. 1995, 'Australian Multiculturalism', lecture in Race and Ethnic Studies, Sociology Program, University of Wollongong, 11 October.

vii) For films, videos, television and radio broadcasts:

Nobody's Children (two-part television production) 1989, ABC Television, Director and Producer David Goldie. 

viii) For works which bear no specific author' name on the title page:

The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary 1992, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, Melbourne.   Commonwealth Printing and Publishing Manual 1988, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.

ix) For works sponsored authorised by an agency, association, corporation or some other organisation:

Ansett Transport Industries Ltd 1984, Annual Report 1983-84, ATI, Melbourne.

x) For unpublished papers:

Keeves, J. P. 1965, Overseas contributions to Australian Classroom Practices in Primary School Mathematics, paper presented at the Annual Conference of O.I.E.R., Brisbane, February.

xi) World Wide Web:

Author's surname, initial(s). Date, Title [Type of medium], Available URL: [Date of accession].   Mitchell, William J. 1995, City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn [Home Page, Online]. Available URL: http://wwwmitpress.mit.edu/City_of_Bits/index.html. [Accessed 5 December 1995]. 

xii) Electronic Mail:

Author's surname, initial(s). Year, Subject of the message [e-mail to recipient's name] [Online], Available e-mail: recipient's e-mail address. [Date Sent].   Corliss, B. 1992, New from Seattle [e-mail to X.Li] [Online], Available e-mail: XLI@UVMVM.UVM.EDU. [Sent September 16].

xiii) Electronic Discussion Group:

Author's surname, initial(s). Year, Subject of Message, Electronic Discussion Group [Type of medium], Available e-mail: LISTSERV@e-mail address. [Date Sent].   Hurst, J. A. 1992, International finance questions, Business Libraries Discussion List [Online], Available e-mail: BUSLIB_L@IDBSU.BITNET. [Sent September 10].

The System of Referencing

All references to books, articles and other sources are to be identified at an appropriate point in the text by the name of author, year of publication, and pagination, thus

i) If the author's name is in the text, follow it by the year of publication and page reference in parenthesis:
 
As Taba (1959, p.95) has shown in his analysis of class...
 
ii) If the author's name is not in the text insert at an appropriate point surname, year of publication, and page reference in parenthesis:

According to some studies of the school in Australia, (see Watts 1967, p.29), ....

iii) Where two authors are involved, cite both surnames:

Brown and Thompson (1976, p.86) suggest . . .
 
iv) Where more than two authors are involved, cite the first name followed by 'et al.':

Connell et al. (1962, p.171) propose . . .
 
v) For institutional authorship supply sufficient detail for positive identification:

Recent figures on the incidence of mental illness among migrants (Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council 1988, p.26) show that . . . .
 
vi) Separate multiple citations by semicolons:

As several studies of class have show (Lawton 1973; Smith 1992) . . .
 
vii) If two or more works by the same author(s) and published in the same year are cited, they should be distinguished from each other by the letters a, b, c etc., as required:

(Taba 1956a, 1956b).

viii) Where the original author has been quoted or cited by another author:

(Lake in Bulbeck 1993, p.170).

ix) Where sources are not available in printed form:

For a lecture, interview, etc.
(Smith 1995)

Film, video recording or television production.
(Four Corners 1994)