BIOL112 and ENVR101, that are not related, both have assignments due on Friday. The referencing for both assignments have been giving Damian and I, plus others on AskLive, headaches this week. I’ll try to clarify a few of the problems for anyone who fields a question from one of the students on AskLive.

BIOL112 – CSE Style

The CSE style, for which we have a referencing guide on our website, abbreviates Journal titles. At the top of the guide is a link to a page of helpful links that can provide abbreviations for particular journals or words. Some students may be using EndNote. While EndNote can do abbreviations it’s a bit complicated for most first years. I’ve spoken with the Academic who is coordinating the assignment and they will accept both full and abbreviated journal titles.

Also, on our guide for CSE the generic example of a journal reference includes ‘notes’ at the end of a reference. In CSE jargon this is simply any additional information that is not required for the reference but enhances it in some way such as the language of the document, it’s ISSN number etc etc. I have asked eServices to add an explanation of this to the guide. It also mentions notes in a few other examples so have asked to have the explanation added to all of them plus a general explanation at the start.

ENVR101 – Harvard Style

The students have been asked to use Harvard and given the Imperial College London Harvard Style guide. This version of Harvard does not match either the versions we have in our referencing help page or the styles available for EndNote. There is huge variation. This is unfortunately often the case with ‘Harvard’ as there is no single authoritative version and it really just refers to author-date styles. Damian has talked to the coordinator for this assignment and they are aware there may be variation in referencing especially if students are using EndNote. They will not be marked down for using one of EndNote’s Harvard styles. If they are doing it manually they should follow the Imperial College style NOT the versions on our help pages.