Referencing refers to acknowledging the ownership of resources used in your academic writing to provide information necessary to identify and retrieve the work cited in the text. There are many type of referencing but most commonly used referencing are APA referencing Style.
APA referencing style is an author-date referencing system published by the American Psychological Association. There are two components in the APA referencing style,
In text citation and their corresponding reference list entries. With anything that you have read, used and reference to in your academic writing, you must:
1. Acknowledgement in text.
2. Include in your reference list.
The basics of a reference list entry of a thesis are,
Author. The surname is followed by the first initial.
Year of publication(in round brackets)
Title of Thesis( in italics)
Level of Thesis [in square brackets]
University [in square brackets]
Database or Archive Name
URL
A reference list is the only source you refer to in your writing. The aim of the reference list is to allow your source to be found by your reader. It also gives credit to the author you have consulted for their ideas. All references cited in the text must appear in the reference list.
A bibliography is different from a reference list as it lists all sources used during your research and background reading.
List all sources cited in your paper by using a consistent citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, and Chicago). You need to ensure that each reference includes complete bibliographic information, including author(s), title, publication year, and source as well. It should be in this order. We are always glad to help you for your thesis references as well. You need to specify the citation style or format which is mainly used for referencing sources in your thesis, such as APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, or IEEE as well. You need to make sure that there is some consistency in citation style throughout the thesis and you need to follow the guidelines which were provided by your academic institution or publisher as well.
As a PhD scholar, it’s important to note that you need to mention any citation management software or tools that you have thoroughly used to organize, manage, and format your references in the thesis, which mainly includes such as Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, or RefWorks in etcIts very important to discuss how such citation management software are thoroughly used in the citation process and you need to ensured that there is some accuracy and consistency in your referencing part as well. Just try to explain a very important criterion that is mainly used to select your sources for inclusion in the reference list which mainly includes the relevance to the research topic, or any credibility of the author or publisher, or any currency of the publication etc.
