5 Reference management

At undergraduate study, referencing may have appeared as a very black and white process, where you followed prescribed rules and guidelines. As a postgraduate researcher, referencing forms a role of utmost importance to how you convey information and maintain your academic integrity.

New referencing challenges will confront you on your postgraduate learning journey. You will be referring to possibly a broader range of sources, a greater number of them, and over a longer period. You are likely to be publishing journal articles, giving presentations, and submitting a thesis … and generating new knowledge within the body of knowledge of your subject discipline.

How will you keep track of your references? You will need a system to record, store and easily retrieve them.

How will you make sense and meaning from all that you read? You will need a system for your own notes, ideas and reflections on what you find.

Reference management software is one solution to both of these needs.

Reference management software

Allows you to:

• Store and manage PDFs of sources such as journal articles, book chapters, reports, podcasts, websites and more source types in your own personalised library, on a single platform. Use folders and tagging for organisation.
• Store source details of publications to use in your assignments.
• Create accurate and consistent citations.
• Save yourself time from manually compiling references, and from making errors, as citations may be created automatically.
• Enable digital reading and enhance learning. With the use of note-taking and text highlighting features helping you make sense of your research, do a thematic analysis of literature and draw out consistent findings.
• Easily locate your sources and your notes saved to your personal library with full-text search facilities.
• Share sources among users or across multiple machines for individual or collaborative research projects.
• Reformat your citations to use different referencing styles for publication purposes beyond your studies.
• Access your personalised library beyond your studies. Select a free to use software, otherwise you are likely to lose access with subscription-based tools when you leave your law school.

Which reference management software should you use?

Software such as Zotero, Mendeley, Jurism, Refworks or EndNote will help you organise your references, insert citations, and automatically create your reference list. Check with your supervisor or lecturer to identify the approved referencing style that you will be using for your work. When you are certain of your referencing style, select a compatible reference management software from the table below.

Compatibility of Referencing Styles with Reference Management Software

* Some software attract subscription fees that the university covers whilst you are enrolled as a student.