References

Whenever you draw upon information contained in another paper, you must acknowledge the source. All references to the literature must be followed immediately by an indication of the source of the information that is referenced, for example, "A drop in dissolved oxygen under similar conditions has been demonstrated before (Norris, l986)."

If two authors are involved, include both surnames in this reference. However if more authors are involved, you may use 'et al', an abbreviation of Latin meaning 'and others'. In general you should not use the abbreviation in the full reference at the end of the article, although some journals permit this. If two more articles written by the same author in the same year are cited, most journals ask you to add suffixes 'a', 'b' etc in both the text and the reference list.

If you include in your report phrases, sentences or paragraphs repeated verbatim from the literature, it is not sufficient to simply cite the source. You must include the material in quotes and you must give the number of the page from which the quote was lifted. For example: "Day (l979: 3l) reports a result where '33.3% of the mice used in this experiment were cured by the test drug; 33.3% of the test population were unaffected by the drug and remained in a moribund condition; the third mouse got away'".

A list of references ordered alphabetically by author's surname, or by number, depending on the publication, must be provided at the end of your paper. The reference list should contain all references cited in the text but no more. Include with each reference details of the author, year of publication, title of article, name of journal or book and place of publication of books, volume and page numbers.

Formats vary from journal to journal, so when you are preparing a scientific paper for an assignment, choose a journal in your field of interest and follow its format for the reference list. Be consistent in the use of journal abbreviations.