Referencing – Rules, Queries, Harvard etc.

Hello madam Trephena, i would like to ask you , how can i reference a PDF file, for example am using the FRC codes 2016 for my rap-topic 17,
i accessed the file from http://www.frc.org.uk and the PDF file name is The UK Corporate Governance Code, so how can i bring this to my RAP as a reference both as citation and in the reference list

Hi,

I searched on the forum but cannot find proper answer. Could you please tell me how to reference F3 BPP financial reporting course notes?

Thanks a lot

Hi @trephena @ehsan

I submitted my obu in period 33 but on result day i found out my result is witheld.

I panicked because i am 100% sure i did not copy off anything so i started going through my RAP to find what could have gone wrong and i noticed 3 things. Can you please tell me if I would fail on referencing because of these 3 mistakes i made ( i should have caught them sooner ).

1. When i have made a point, i referenced it properly. But in some cases I repeated the same exact point but i did not reference it as i assumed that the reader read this in my earlier passages in my report so it is not needed. It is VERY obvious that i have talked about it before. Please tell me if this will fail me.

2. For one book reference i referenced the book but i only put pg.611 as my citation and reference even tho i used pages 611-613. It is very obvious that i got info from page 613 as well. However i reference the book properly, just the pages are incomplete. Please tell me if this is a major mistake?

3. For one of my citations, i accidentally put the in-text citation BEFORE the actual sentence.

I have reference every information in my RAP and paraphrased it and did not copy anything. What are my chances?

I really appreciate your response as i have been critically assessing my own RAP to know for sure why my result is witheld.

Thank you in advance

You do not get your result deferred because of a few errors in referencing. If the marker thought you did not reference appropriately the normal course of action is to fail on assessment criterion 6.

Deferral comes about because either the marker or moderator felt there was something irregular with your work and a member of the ACO agreed there was a case to answer.. There are different reasons for work to be referred to the ACO. It is possible you had copied and pasted too much material into your work even though you may have referenced it. Depending on exactly how much or what you had pasted a decision is made either to do a straight fail on 6 or to refer – for example when it is the SLS it is referred if the Turnitin percentage is considered to be too high. Every piece of work goes through the electronic checking system and matches in the SLS will always be either to other students or OBU exemplars. The markers take the view that the SLS should reflect a,student’s individual personal experience and if the matches are too great it obviously does not.

Another reason for deferral is that your spreadsheet may have been found to be too similar to another student’s. Apparently some mentors give the student an Excel file to work from and this is a breach of the academic regulations that your work should be all your own.

Apparently OBU is also cracking down on what they term ‘over-mentoring’ – they believe mentors in certain countries provide templates for students to work from ( the mentor usuall calls them samples) but they also are in breach of the academic rules as they result in work that is not really the student’s own. In such cases mentors can receive warnings or be removed from the mentor list too.

If none of these apply then you are likely eventually to be cleared after the ACO has investigated. There is a forum topic on ACO referral / result deferred – so use these key words in the search facility to find it and post any new post there as your issue (a) relates to that topic and (b) unlikely to be a straightforward referencing problem

@trephena Hi trephena. I have failed the RAP in my previous submission and i would prefer if you guide me through the comments of the marker. As it specifically mentions about referencing i am posting the comment here. Please do have a look and let me know on which part i must be working particularly.

Marker’s comments
3. Evaluation of information, analysis and conclusions Fail
Reasons for fail and advice for improvement:
”There are too many instances of statements with no evidence to demonstrate the source of the information relied upon. To give just one example, from page 20; you say that “Aitken Spence PLC administers seminars and workshops, on ethical behaviours and practices on anti-corruptions for its employees routinely” where is the source for this? Later on that page “Aitken Spence PLC also believes that the strong set of core value pointed out in the conduct gives them a competitive advantage … code of ethics … Contravention of the above is considered as serious offence and disciplinary actions are taken on the same” but it is not apparent to the reader where any of this came from and so your conclusion at the bottom of page 20 cannot be validated. There is useful work in this report and you are on the right lines but more evidence of secondary data sources needs to be developed in your resubmission to establish a greater element of objectivity. You can gain this information by widening your sources of secondary data to include business press, trade journals, academic and other media and this will give a more critical edge to your evaluation.”

6. Information gathering and Referencing Fail
Reasons for fail and advice for improvement:
”Your referencing system needs some work to make clearer to the reader the secondary data sources you are relying on at different parts of your report. Clear, consistent and systematic evidence is required for statements and assertions made in the report. Make sure that you provide evidence of secondary data sources throughout your resubmission. More detail is needed about the source of figures, tables and other graphics”

@meilliures – have you consulted The Open Tuition Ultimate Guide to Referencing your RAP? See our homepage http://www.opentuition.com/obu

You must avoid making any statements that are not supported by valid references. Your fail seems to be based mainly on lack of referencing and is a fairly common reason for failure (the reason I put together the Guide) and remember to reference the source for all Graphs, tables etc.

Read all 3 parts of our Guide and your understanding of this should help you overcome the problem

for example i have cited from a website of Vodafone. so i have kept the author as http://www.vodafone.qa . therefore the citation comes as (Vodafone 2017) . but is it necessary that it should be this way – (Vodafone,2017). so should i manually add comma in between .?

should i mention page numbers in the citation or in the bibliography ?
i am very confused with the referencing part. please let me know as soon as possible
for websites , the author should be the website name ?
for eg , vodafone website it should be Vodafone or http://www.vodafone.qa ?

I dont know which software u are using, but your referencing should be according to Harvard – Angalina, if it conforms that it is ok. Search net for Harvard – Angalina. Don’t think a comma really is a material stuff.

You must add page number if the document is long and with many pages. Anything above 1 page is long.

No need to worry if it is online or not – just reference correctly.

Hi there,

Do i need in every reference that i used to write the page number where i found it?

Let’s say i am writing about what is Pestel and its limitations and i found from 3 books relevant ideas and i want to reference them… is it right to reference like that (Andrew, 2014; Elliott, 2015; Giovanni, 2016). or do i need to include everyone their page number like (Andrew, 2014:55; Elliott 2015:134)??

I didnt include any page numbers and all the books i gave them back to library? Is it too much difference? or only the annual reports to do it with page numbers?

Thank you again.

The reference list must be uploaded as a totally separate file. It should NOT be included as Part 4 otherwise it messes up the word count and the markers will not thank you for that.

When submitting you will have the opportunity to upload the appendices as separate files and also separate files for Excel and PoweRPoint too.

Hi Guys,

I saw on forum many different proposals how annual report should be included in reference list, so I will ask straight, below is correct?

Ryanair Holdings, (2015). Annual Report. [online] Available at: https://investor.ryanair.com [Accessed 19 March 2017].

Thank you in advance!