SSPSSR GUIDE TO CITING REFERENCES
THE IMPORTANCE OF CITING REFERENCES
The aim of this handout is to outline the academic conventions for citing
references so that you can apply them to your own essays and dissertations.
Your essays should contain references to published literature because it is
necessary to acknowledge the work of others and to state the sources of ideas
and information. If you cite someone else’s work without attribution you may
fail the essay on the grounds of plagiarism.
You should also use references to demonstrate your knowledge of the field.
Whoever is marking your work will want to see evidence of wide reading,
thoroughness, attention to detail and a familiarity with the relevant literature.
Finally, references enable the reader to trace your sources if they want further
information.
You need to give a reference when you draw on a source for:
 your general inspiration
 a particular theory, argument or viewpoint
 specific information e.g. statistics and case studies
 direct quotations
 text you paraphrase rather than quote directly.
SYSTEMS OF CITING REFERENCES
There are three distinct systems for citing references:
1. Author-Date system, also referred to as the Harvard system
2. Notes system (footnotes or endnotes)
3. Numbered list system
In addition, there exist many styles of citing references. Most journals and
publishers have their own unique ‘house style’. Within a style, the layout of
references for books, journal articles and book chapters will be different.
This handout explains how to use the
Author-Date system and the ‘Kent Harvard’ style.
This is the recommended style to use in SSPSSR modules.
LCEM
Last updated February 16
REFERENCING IN THE TEXT
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In your text you never mention the titles of books or articles, or URL of
websites. You only mention the author(s) and the date of publication.
Never use footnotes for references.
Never use Latin abbreviations.
Make sure you use the author’s name in the text, not the editor’s.
Avoid citations from lectures.
Books and journal articles
Where you have paraphrased an argument or drawn a piece of evidence from
a cited work put the author’s name and the year of the work in parentheses.
You should identify the page numbers too:
… The ‘social democratic’ welfare state was sought and brought about
from the bottom up by those who stood to benefit most - the working
class (Van Kersbergen, 1995, p.66). …
Where there are more than two authors use et al (Smith et al, 2003) but write
authors out in full in the reference list.
If the author’s name occurs naturally in the text, the year follows in
parentheses:
… Thus Gomulka (1999) concludes that the low level of service provision
urgently needs to be addressed. …
Direct quotations
If you are giving a direct quotation you must identify the page numbers:
Campaigners argue that as “it is women who will live with the
consequences of these decisions, women need to be at the centre of
decision-making” (Green, 1996, p.25).
For a long quotation indent the text like this:
Norman and Verhulst noted that:
Few other disciplines relate quite as closely to everyday life as
Social Policy, which deals with issues relating to employment,
income, health and education. The subject appeals to students
who are interested in contemporary social and political issues
that shape our lives (Norman and Verhulst, 2003, p.9).
Long quotations should be avoided because they don’t count as your own
work and the marker may suspect that you copied out the passage because
you don’t understand it!
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‘Quoted in’ citations
Try to avoid second hand quotes. Only use them when the original source is
unavailable.
Hence, “to reach the goal of halving child poverty by 2010 will require
substantially more redistribution to the poorest families” (Newburn, in
Brewer, 2003, p.101).
List the book by Brewer in the reference list.
Web sites
Do not give the URL in the text, but the organisation or author:
Insurance benefits were raised by 22 per cent just before the 1955 election
(Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2001).
Other points
Use letters to distinguish between works by one author in a single year.
Hay (1977a, 1977b) argued that business had an interest in economic
efficiency and containment of working class demands.
Use initials to distinguish between two authors with the same surname.
This kind of theory has been elaborated by neo-Marxists (Hall, R., 1977).
In extreme cases welfare policy is regarded as a form of social control
(Hall, A., 2000).
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REFERENCING IN THE REFERENCE LIST
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The reference list is a list of works referred to in your essay.
Put it at the end of the essay.
Begin each source on a new line.
List the references in alphabetical order by the first author’s surname. It
is important that the author surname and date of publication are listed
first, as this enables the reader to move between the text and reference
list easily.
List the references by date order if you have more than one text by the
same author.
Books
Include the following information. The order is:
 Author(s), surname first
 Date of publication (in brackets)
 Title and subtitle (if any) underlined or highlighted or in italics but be
consistent. The title has the main words capitalized
 Place of publication if known
 Publisher
Baldock, J. and C. Ungerson (1994). Becoming Consumers of Community
Care: Households within the Mixed Economy of Welfare. York: Joseph
Rowntree Foundation.
Chapter in a book
Include the following information. The order is:
 Author of chapter, surname first
 Date of publication (in brackets)
 Title of chapter. The chapter title may be put in single quotation marks.
 “in” followed by
 Editor(s) or author(s) of collected work, surname first
 Title of collected work, underlined or highlighted or in italics but be
consistent
 Place of publication if known
 Publisher
Barry, N. (1999). Neoclassicism, the New Right and British Social Welfare.
in: Page, R. M. and R. Silburn eds. British Social Welfare in the Twentieth
Century. London: Macmillan.
Use the abbreviations “ed” or “eds” for edited works.
You must distinguish between authors and editors. For instance, in the above
example, the in-text citation would mention Barry (1999), NOT the book’s
editors.
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Article in a journal
Include the following information. The order is:
 Author(s)
 Year of publication (in brackets)
 Title of the article. The article title may be put in single quotation
marks.
 Title of the journal. The journal name is treated as a book, underlined
or highlighted or in italics but be consistent
 Volume and part number, month or season
 Page numbers of the article
Clasen, J. (2002). Modern Social Democracy and European Welfare State
Reform. Social Policy & Society, 1(3), 67-76.
Include the volume and part number and page numbers of journal articles. In
the above example: 1 is the volume number, 3 is the part number, 67-76 are
the page numbers.
Web site
Include the following information. The order is:
 Author/editor/organisation
 Year, if known (in brackets)
 Title, underlined or highlighted or in italics but be consistent
 [Internet site]
 Available: <URL>. Note the common convention of using < and > to
delineate the start and end of a URL
 Accessed date
Institute for Fiscal Studies. Fiscal Facts: Unemployment Benefit Rates.
[internet site]. Available: <www.ifs.org.uk/taxsystem/unempben.shtml>
Accessed 11 May 2001.
You can shorten the URL as long as you give enough information for the
reader to locate the citation. You must give the date accessed, as web pages
can change.
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