Example: (Smith, 2019, p. 10) Every citation, regardless of the source type, should follow the same basic format: (Author, year, page). Include page numbers whenever possible to give your reader the exact location of your source. A useful rule of thumb is that you need to have a good reason not to include a page reference. If your reference runs over a range of pages it should look like this: (Smith, 2019, pp. 10-15).
Citing More Than 3 Authors
Example: (Smith et al, 2016, p. 20). If the material you are referencing has more than 3 authors or more than 3 attributed creators you should abbreviate your citation for the sake of neatness. “Et al” is an abbreviation of et alia, the Latin phrase meaning “and others.”
Citing Something That Has No Named Author
Example: (Irish Management Institute, 2020, p. xii). When there is no obvious author you can defer to the corporate author or the publisher. Internal company reports, for example, are rarely attributed to named individuals, and some books might only be attributable to their publisher if there is no named author or editor.
Citing When the Year is Unclear
It is rare for printed material not to include a publication or copyright date. Web content can be less clear. Web pages often include copyright and date information in the footer. Documents retrieved online might include similar information if you look at their file properties. If you are unsure of a date you can put it in square brackets, e.g. (Adams, , p. 42). Another example is: (Adams, [198?]). If the date a web page is not clear you could attribute it without certainty to the current year, e.g. (Adams, ).
Citing Something You Cannot Source First-Hand
Example: (Adams, 1979, p. 42, cited in Smith, 2020, p. 80). You may sometimes want to use the same reference that somebody else has made to another source. It is always advisable to source material first-hand. In some cases, however, that is not always possible and you may need to cite a source second-hand. In the above example I have read Smith. Smith has cited Adams and now I would like to cite Adams second-hand. My citation makes that clear to my reader. Sources cited second-hand have no place in a bibliography. Following the example above, Smith belongs in my bibliography and Adams does not.
Citing Something That Has No Page Numbers
Not all source types will have page numbers, e.g. video, audio and web pages. There is nothing to be done if that is the case. There are, however, other sources that you might expect would have page numbers but do not, e.g. some e-readers do not include page numbers. You can refer to the chapter instead in such a case.
Example: (Darwin, 1859, ch. 2).
Example: Tooze, A. (2018) Crashed: how a decade of financial crises changed the world. London: Allen Lane.
Template: Author (Year) Title in italics. Place of publication: Publisher.
It is always best to take the title from the title page inside the book. Information about the publication of a book such as the place of publication, the publisher, and the date of publication will appear as a colophon on the title page and/or on the copyright page. Any edition other than a first edition should be acknowledged as such:
Example: Bryman, A., Bell, E. (2015) Business research methods. 4th edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chapters in Edited Books
An edited volume or edited collection is a collection of chapters or essays written by different authors. When you cite a chapter or essay from an edited volume you cite the author of that chapter as opposed to the editor of the whole volume.
Example: Stout-Rostron, S. (2013) ‘Gender issues in business coaching’, in Passmore, J., Peterson, D.B., Freire, T. (eds) The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of the psychology of coaching and mentoring. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Template: Author of chapter (Year) ‘Title of chapter in single quotation marks’, in Editor(s) (eds) Title of book in italics. Place of publication: Publisher.
E-book references are almost identical to print references with a few differences depending on their source, i.e. if they are from a library database or if you have purchased one on an e-reader.
Example of a library e-book: Lencioni, P. (2002) The five dysfunctions of a team: a leadership fable. Dawsonera [Online]. Available at: https://www.dawsonera.com (Accessed: 9 April 2019).
Template for library e-books: Author (Year) Title in italics. Name of collection/database in italics [Online]. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).
Example of an e-reader e-book: Lencioni, P. (2002) The five dysfunctions of a team: a leadership fable. Amazon.co.uk [e-book reader]. Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk (Accessed: 2 July 2019).
Template for an e-reader e-book: Author (Year) Title in italics. Title of download website in italics [e-book reader]. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).
Example: Luccasen, R.A., Thomas, M.K (2010) ‘Simpsonomics: Teaching economics using episodes of “The Simpsons”‘, The Journal of Economic Education, 41(2), pp. 136-149.
Template: Author (Year) ‘Title of article in single quotation marks’, Title of journal in italics, volume(issue), pp. x-xx. The page range, indicated by pp., refers to the page range of the article in its entirety not to your own cited page references.
Example: Draper, S. (2019) The afternoon nap which changed the world of chemistry. Available at: https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2019/0403/1040447-the-post-lunch-nap-which-changed-the-world-of-chemistry/ (Accessed: 9 April 2019).
Template: Author (Year) Title of web page in italics. Available at: URL (Accessed: the date you accessed the web page).
Example: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (2017) Education transforms lives [Online]. Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000247234 (Accessed: 9 April 2019).
Template: Author (Year) Title in italics [Online]. Available at: URL (Accessed: the date you accessed the report online).
Reports are very similar in style to books. If you are referring to a report that you have in print you cite it like this:
Example: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (2017) Education transforms lives. Paris: UNESCO.
Tutor/Class Material From Moodle
Example: ó’Ceallaigh, M. (2019) ‘Leadership styles’. Module 1: An introduction to leadership [Online]. Available at: http://www.imi.learnonline.ie (Accessed: 14 March 2020).
Template: Author/Tutor (Year) ‘Title’. Name of module in italics [Online]. Available at: http://www.imi.learnonline.ie (Accessed: the date you accessed the material online).
Remember to differentiate between the types of material you might get in class. This example is for lecture slides or handouts created by a lecturer as opposed to something created by somebody else that a lecturer has supplied.
Audio-book references are, depending on the source/format, very similar to print and e-book references.
Template for an e-audio book: Author (Year) Title in italics. Title of download/streaming website in italics [audio-book]. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).
Template for a audio book on CD: Author (Year) Title in italics [audio-book]. Place of publication: publisher.
Template for a podcast: Author/presenter (Year) ‘Title of podcast’, Title of download/streaming website in italics [podcast]. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).
Template for radio programmes: Title of programme (Year) Name of radio channel, date and month of transmission. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).
Example: Ryan, A. (2001) Leadership and cat domestication. PhD thesis. University College Cork [Online]. Available at: https://cora.ucc.ie (Accessed: 1 April 2019).
Template: Author (Year) Title in italics. Degree. Awarding body [Online]. Available at: URL (Accessed: the date you accessed the dissertation online).
Example: Jensen, O. (2018) Strategy Assignment 2. Unpublished diploma assignment. Irish Management Institute.
Template: Author (Year) Title in italics. Degree. Awarding body.
Example: Gillespie, Y. (2017) Company Report. Unpublished report.
Template: Author (Year) Title in italics. Unpublished material.
Pre-Publication / Draft Material
Sometimes a preprint version of a scholarly paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a journal may be available from an online repository. A postprint is a digital draft of a journal article after it has been peer reviewed. Jointly, postprints and preprints are often called eprints. Both may differ from the final published version of an article so they need to be acknowledged as different.
Example: Daskalaki, M. (2012) ‘Recontextualizing new employee induction: Organizational entry as a change space’ [preprint]. To be published in The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 48(1). Available at: http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/17762/1/Daskalaski-M-17762.pdf (Accessed: 2 November 2018).
Template: Author (Year) ‘Title of article’ [preprint]. To be published in Title of the journal in italics, volume(issue). Available at: URL (Accessed: the date you accessed the paper online).
Government Publications / Legislation
Example: Ireland. Department of Agriculture (2018) Spring Cereal Recommended Lists 2018 [Online]. Available at: https://www.agriculture.gov.ie/media/migration/publications/2018/SpringCerealRecommendedLists2018100118.pdf (Accessed: 4 October 2019).
Template: Country. Name of department/committee/house of parliament (Year) Title of report or statute in italics [Online]. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).