Oxford Referencing - What is it? And how to use it
All you need to know about Oxford Referencing
Oxford referencing, otherwise known as the documentary-note citation system, is predominantly used in research works in certain philosophy and history departments. The documentary-note system includes the following elements; citations in the paper body, using a raised number, and a footnotes list at the foot of each page for all citations on that page. An annotated bibliography is included at the end providing the details of each source and sometimes additional material consulted in writing the paper.
Superscript numbers with corresponding footnotes in Oxford citation style should be employed each time concepts or arguments are proffered. These numbers are placed at the end of a sentence rather than directly after the words referred. For direct quotes however, they should be inserted plainly after where possible.
A few Examples
When summarising or paraphrasing an author's ideas the superscript number should be applied as follows:
Spiro Kostof asserts that Ghantija, on the Maltese island of Gozo, is the oldest building type to be discovered.1
For a direct quote the same sample would be written as follows:
Spiro Kostof notes, ‘Ghantija is a wholly man made form, which is to say it is thought out and reproducible. As such, it is the first true building type…..'1
If a quote is over 30 words, it should be started on a new line and be indented approximately 10mm from the left-hand margin. A superscript number is used at the end but quotation marks do not need to be added.
For secondary sources whereby an author cites another author and you want to use what the first author has said the primary author should be cited using a superscript number in the same way as the aforementioned examples.
Footnoting refers to inserting a number at the end of a sentence for each reference. The corresponding bibliographic information is then provided in note form at the foot of the page. The numbers are marked consecutively in the order in which the references appear in the assignment. The first reference to an article in a footnote must provide the same full bibliographic details as you would provide in a reference list at the end of the essay. Any further references to the same article can use Latin abbreviations such as ibid. (short for ibidem, meaning ‘in the same place'). This is used to refer to the same reference as the one immediately above it. The abbreviation op.cit. (short for opera citato, meaning ‘in the work cited') refers to an item that has already been referenced in full earlier in the essay, but does not follow directly from the one above. It is important to note that these abbreviations should consistently be presented in lower case roman font with the full-stops included.
At the foot of the page, the text should be written as author's first name, surname, title of the book, then year of publication, publisher, place and page number. Their location in the text of the assignment is indicated by the raised superscript number in the main body of the text. The easiest way to insert a footnote is to use the ‘insert' function on the toolbar and select ‘footnote'. A footnote would thus be written as follows:
1 Richard Cashman, Paradise of Sport: The Rise of Organised Sport in Australia, 1995, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, p.57.
In the reference or bibliography list at the end books should be listed as surname of author (in capitals), first name, title of book (in italics), place of publisher, name of publisher and year of publication:
GIBBS, Graham. Teaching students to learn: a student-centred approach. Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1981.
For books by an editor the order is title (in italics), author, place of publisher, name of publisher, year:
Philosophy of education. Edited by R.S. Peters. London, Oxford University Press, 1973.
For an article in an edited book, the order would be surname and initials (in capitals), title of article, ‘in', title of author who wrote the book (in capitals), title of book (in italics), place of publication, name of publisher and year of book:
HIRST, P.H. What is teaching? in PETERS, R.S., Philosophy of education. London, Oxford University Press, 1973.
For journal articles the author and initials are written in capitals, followed by the title of the article, the name of the journal (in italics), part number, volume number (in brackets), date (including the month) and page numbers of the article (the date and page numbers are separated by a colon):
KHOO, G.K. Accounting for leases. The Chartered Accountant in Australia, 46(5): Nov. 1975: 19-23.
For references cited in another work the order would be author of the primary source (in capitals), followed by title, place of publisher, name of publisher and date:
The footnote would cite the secondary source and title first:
J.B. Morton, Diet of thistles, Cape, cited in W.J. Reichmann, Use and abuse of statistics, London, Penguin, 1964, p. 92.
For website articles, superscript numbers should be used in the main body of the text in the same way as for books and journal articles and the reference list at the end would be written as author, initial, title of article (in italics), name of site sponsor, year, retrieved day/month/year, web address:
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Building approvals, Australia, cat. no. 8731.0, ABS Ausstats, 2004, retrieved 3 November 2004, www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs%40.nsf/mf/8731.0?OpenDocument.
For an electronic journal article found on a database the bibliography or reference list should be written as author, initial, title of article (in inverted commas), title of journal (in italics), volume number, part number year, page number, date retrieved and database name:
Lobo, J, ‘Latin American construction at a glance', Construction Review, vol. 41, no. 1, 1995, pp. iv–vi, retrieved 5 November 2004, Expanded Academic ASAP database.
Newspaper articles should be written as author, initial, title of article (in inverted commas), title of newspaper (in italics), day, month, year, page numbers, followed by the letter ‘s' when the article is from a special, independently numbered section:
Edwards, P, ‘Mud, glorious mud', The Age, 20 October 2004, pp. 6-7s.
When compiling entries for a reference list or bibliography, the system is the same as footnotes with two exceptions. Firstly, a reference list is arranged alphabetically according to surname of authors and no numbers are used. Secondly, the surname of the author comes before the initials in the reference section, whereas footnotes put the initials of authors before the surname.
In conclusion, this section has assessed the Oxford citation style of referencing. This is more complicated and time-consuming than the Harvard referencing style as it uses footnotes, and the bibliography format differs slightly to the footnote or endnote format of attributing authors of books or articles. The Oxford system also differs from the Harvard system in that it generally uses a bibliography which consists of all the sources that were used to inform the paper but are not necessarily included in the main text. It is important to note that the Oxford style can be interpreted slightly differently by different individuals and institutions so it is essential that the writer checks what is required before embarking on an assignment.
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