Biosciences and Chemistry

Biosciences and chemistry referencing guidance by course

Please ensure you adhere to the referencing guidance provided by your course leaders or the teaching team that set your assignment. If you are in any doubt regarding which style of referencing you should be following check with your course leader or your teaching team that set the assignment as soon as possible!

If you are studying on a biology or biosciences based course at undergraduate and postgraduate level then you should follow the APA style.

If you are studying on a chemistry course at an undergraduate or postgraduate level then you should follow the numerical system used by Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) throughout your degree.

If in any doubt, check what referencing style is expected for your programme of study in advance of beginning your assessed work!

If you are studying at PhD level, you will use a variety of referencing formats and styles and should be advised by your supervisor on the specific style needed at specific times of your PhD.

Referencing is an essential part of academic writing.

It helps you acknowledge other people's work and establish your own ideas. You can find out more about referencing using APA on the Referencing at Sheffield Hallam University guide.

There are online tools for referencing that can be used to help you reference.

If you use an online referencing tool e.g. ProQuest Online or the Microsoft Word referencing tool, you still need to know what is required for a reference according to the referencing style you are using e.g. what information is required for a book reference and how it should be written.  This is important as you still need to check the references created by any online referencing tool to make sure that they are correct.

The Library Help with Referencing guide contains a section called I want to use RefWorks and is full of lots of useful information about getting started using these products and details of up-and- coming Library webinars - Getting started with ProQuest RefWorks.

Please be aware that although sharing of documents is possible using many referencing tools and apps, documents are covered by copyright law and sharing them is a breach of the law unless you own the copyright, copyright has been waived or the document is out of copyright.