References and bibliographies

For references or citations, the ETF uses the Harvard or author-date system, the common standard for English-language scientific and scholarly works. This simply means including the author’s name and year of publication within parentheses and inserting this reference at the end rather than the middle of the sentence (Smyth, 2002).

Full publication details are then given in the list of references which appears at the end of your publication, just before the index or annexes. If this list includes additional works which you have consulted but not mentioned in the text, you should call this ‘Bibliography’. Otherwise, you can just call it ‘References’.

Do not use the numbered system, with references numbered in order of appearance in the text, or the footnote system of referencing, where bibliographical details are inserted in a footnote at the bottom of the page. Both systems tend to be inflexible: a change in references at production stage means that the whole series need to be re-ordered and this means additional checking and delays.