It is essential to acknowledge the ownership of resources used in your academic writing. At AUT we use the APA reference style (6th edition) to format references. In-text citations and a reference list are the two components of the APA referencing style. With anything that you have read, used and referred to in your academic writing, you must:
- acknowledge in text (i.e. in the work / assignment/ essay you are writing)
- include in your reference list (i.e. the list at the end of your work of all the sources you refer to)
This APA referencing style guide provides some insight into APA style rules and examples based on the Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition).
APA Style Guide to Electronic References (6th edition, 2012)
Academic integrity
Academic integrity involves the acknowledgement of your own and other peoples’ written work, images, audio files, or their ideas. The only content which you do not need acknowledge is common knowledge.
Plagiarism
When you use someone else’s ideas or words in your writing without acknowledging (referencing) where they came from, this behaviour could be classified as plagiarising or academic dishonesty.
Work can be plagiarised from many sources: books, articles, websites, course notes, other students’ assignments, even your own earlier assignments.
Plagiarism can occur by mistake if you are not careful. Always write down the title and author of a work when you take notes from it. Learn more about plagiarism and how to avoid plagiarism on our “Academic & Research Integrity”guide.