How to Write a Research Report
Whenever we do research, write an assignment or an essay for school work we need to indicate where we found information, otherwise we are guilty of plagiarism, i.e. stealing someone else's ideas without acknowledgment or saying that we have done so. Read more about this by looking at the Australian Copyright Council website and Plagiarism.
We need to say we have used the internet, books, pictures, videos, or other materials even if we use the ideas and re-write them in our own words or change them. If we use pictures or other work from the Internet or book in a public arena like our own web page, we sometimes even have to obtain the original author's permission.
At the end of our work, we need to place a list of works cited. There are many different formats for referencing systems and the Harvard Style is only one of them.
The Harvard Style is a referencing system that is very simple to follow. The main thing is that we need to be consistent when we quote a reference or present our citations, so that each time we do it in the same way.
To include a BOOK in your list of References or Bibliography follow the order below - take special note of the punctuation used after each entry:
- Author's surname, initials or given name.(full stop)
- Year of publication. (in brackets) (full stop)
- Title of book and subtitle. (underlined or italicised) (full stop)
- Publisher, (comma)
- Place of publication. (full stop)
- page number(s) if applicable
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Citing References in Your Assignment
To download a six page Word document that outlines the process of adding references and bibliographies to your assignment, click on this link - Framework for Adding References and Bibliographies. You can also read through the information below for detailed help on the topic.
Whenever we make a direct quotation from a work or paraphrase what an author has said (i.e. re-write a section in your own words), we must acknowledge this within our essay. In the course of our essay, we have a brief reference to the items we used. We must list in brackets both the author of the work, the year of publication and the page number (if necessary).
Here the actual words copied from the book are in quotation marks.
Many experts believe that "green eggs and ham" (Seuss, 1994, p. 10) are delicious and nutritious.
Similarly, if we re-state or paraphrase, the author’s words, we must still include the same information. Here, as we mention the author directly, we need to place only the page number in brackets.
Seuss always believed you should only eat fried food. What complements ham best is not yellow eggs but green (p. 10).
Alternatively, the author's surname may be integrated into the text, followed by the year of publication in brackets, or parentheses. The full reference must then be listed at the end of your essay.
While you can have bacon instead of ham, Seuss (1994) has shown that in the perfect breakfast you should only ever have green eggs.
Here, though we have re-stated the idea in our own words, we still need to indicate where we found the idea.
Nutritionists believe that the 21st Century spells the decline of the yellow yolk egg; the way forward is green. (Seuss, p. 10).
Here, we have found the same idea in a number of different works, or are summarizing a number of works on the same subject, so we need to use all the authors. Also, if we read the ideas scattered over a number of pages or the whole book, we do not need to indicate page numbers.
The moon is definitely rock and dust. (Smith, Jones, Brown).
If you are using books by authors with the same surname, add an initial.
“The moon is red dust”, (B. Smith, p. 11) and “The moon is golden rock” (S. Smith, p. 2) contradict this idea.
If quoting from the same author who has written different books, add the title.
Jones (The Eternal Moon, p. 7) says the moon is rock from the earth. He argues (Jones, The Solar System, p. 8) this was in the time of the dinosaurs.
Sometimes you may have to use a quotation that you found in another source that was quoting from the original. For such indirect quotations, use "qtd. in" to indicate the source.
Smith says that schools are merely "babysitting agencies” (qtd. in Murray, p. 39).
When citing web pages
use author if possible in the same way, otherwise use title.
We must list full details of the work
in our list of works cited or reference list or bibliography at the
end of our assignment. The list should be alphabetical, so it is easy
for a reader to find your full reference.
When handwriting use underlining instead of italics. If there is no author, list title first. If there is no date, write n.d. For magazines or journals use full dates in preference to volume and issue numbers.
Reference
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