Referencing – Rules, Queries, Harvard etc.

Everything needs to be referenced to a reliable source and sufficient details supplied so the comment can be traced to the document where it can be read in the appropriate context. This may or may not necessarily be the original source depending on the circumstances. With websites as you may need to give an appropriate name e.g. Open tuition.com however there MUST also be a link to the correct page that supports the commentary. General website references e.g Reuters.com and no link are as useless as a chocolate teapot!

Hey @trephena

Quick couple of referencing questions!

First, after following the guidance in the Information Pack I was under the impression you only needed a page number if you are quoting directly, not if you’re paraphrasing a statement or point. So that’s where I’m at with my referencing. This is contrary to the Golden Rules! Do I have to go back and dig out page numbers? ?

Secondly I have used a couple of direct quotes. For instance, the CEO saying that they had effective yield management. I’m of the opinion that that was positive spin on poor occupancy rates and set out why I thought so, so wanted his statement verbatim. Should I still paraphrase?

And finally, I’ve used Microsoft Word’s referencing tool which is pretty good. It uses the correct designators, generates an alphabetical list etc, but it lists web sources slightly different to that in the Information Pack.

For example it would list:

Author, Year, Article Title [Online], URL and date accessed.

It’s not listing the publication (The Telegraph, say). I could go in and manually add the text but was wondering if there was something I was doing wrong that could do it automatically. I am, for example, putting ‘The Telegraph’ in the Website Name field.

Thanks!

O.

Thanks or your quick response @trephena

I’ll try and put page numbers in if I have time, after all, I want to make the marker’s life easy!

Great news on direct quotes, I do believe the ones I’ve used add value. It’s not a case of me not understanding a point; I believe he chose his word carefully, and never benchmarks occupancy, only RevPAR. The scamp.

Re: question 3, the in-text citation appears as, say, (Peston, R., 2014), and in the reference list it appears as:

Peston, R., 2014. UK economy back at pre-crisis level. [Online]
Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28479902
[Accessed 24 March 2018].

So I’ve no fears that the marker won’t find the quote, it’s just a shame that ‘BBC News’ hasn’t been included automatically.

One final question: is it possible to upload what is ready and save progress, rather than submit the same time? I’m conscious of the servers becoming too busy to accept files, so to upload what I have at the moment might be a smooth move.

Thanks, O.

Please when referencing tables do I have to put the three Annual statements for each of the companies? i.e: ABC,2015; ABC 2016… and XPY,2015; XPY 2016.

Alright great, thank you ma’am.

If this was the source you have cited above and it was written by Hoyle then yes this is correct. Have you consulted the Open Tuition Ultimate Guide to Referencing your RAP as that sets out most of the important rules about in text references and how to show these in your reference list?

See http://www.opentuition.com/obu

Hello please do I also need to reference the background information about the company I chose?

If this is the only reuters reference from 2018 then (Reuters.com, 2018) in the text would be fine however if others from 2018 are used then you would need to distinguish them from each other with (a), (b), (c) etc. In you list you should give it the article title as it helps the reader.

I have an online article, it says “China will introduce foreign investors to trade in domestic iron ore futures from May 4, according to the country’s securities regulator.”
How do I reference this please,is it (author of the article, date) or (Securities regulator, date)
I’m confused on which designator and source material to use.

It may be a case of trying to shut the gate after the horse has bolted (I await the result of my May 2018 submission), but I’ve only recently happened upon the idea that ‘Investopedia’ is not a source that OBU are keen on.

This is somewhat concerning for me as I referenced them 6 times for definitions of financial ratio formulae (such as gross profit, net debt/EBITDA etc.).

Is anyone aware of why the site is not considered reliable? Besides the -pedia suffix, I can’t see that it shares anything else in common with oft-lamented Wikipedia, which has the fair criticism of being editable by just about anyone with an email address. Investopedia, by contrast, is in the business of educating investors through information and articles authored by editors and analysts – it is not editable by all and sundry, to the best of my knowledge. It therefore provides much detail on financial ratios, indispensable tools for analysing financial statements, and therefore hugely useful for Topic 8.

I would be most disappointed to fail for this, especially as it was not highlighted by my Mentor as an area of concern.

Has anyone had an experience of failing their RAP for the inclusion of Investopedia as a source?

Alright thanks.

The rule for referencing is that you should be referring to the published source of the statement (so the reader can read it for themselves).

Unless the securities regulator has published the document then you cite the author of the article or journal the statement was published in (the reader needs to be able to locate it).
So for example with the Corporate Governance when referring to the Code you would use the FRC (Financial Reporting Council) for this and would only use an author if they were discussing some finer details of this Code in a published articled which they had written. However it would be wrong to use the FRC for such an article as they haven’t written it!