Author-date referencing

Parenthetical referencing, is a citation system in which in-text citations are made using parentheses. They are usually accompanied by a full, alphabetized list of citations in an end section, usually titled "references", "reference list", "works cited", or "end-text citations". Parenthetical referencing can be used in lieu of footnote citations (the Vancouver system).

Parenthetical referencing normally uses one of these two citation styles:
* Author–date (also known as Harvard referencing): primarily used in the natural sciences and social sciences, and recommended by the American Chemical Society and the American Psychological Association (APA) (see APA style);
* Author–title or author–page: primarily used in the arts and the humanities, and recommended by the Modern Language Association (MLA) (see MLA Handbook).

Author–date (Harvard referencing)

In the author–date method (Harvard referencing), the in-text citation is placed in parentheses after the sentence or part thereof that the citation supports. The citation includes the author's name, year of publication, and page number(s) when a specific part of the source is referred to (Smith 2008, p. 1) or (Smith 2008:1). A full citation is given in the references section: Smith, John (2008). ''Name of Book''. Name of Publisher.

How to cite

The structure of a citation under the author–date method is the author's surname, year of publication, and page number or range, in parentheses, as in "(Smith 2010, p. 1)".
* The page number or page range may be omitted if the entire work is cited, as in "(Smith 2010)".
* Narrative style citations have the author appearing as part of the regular text sentence, outside parentheses, as in: "Jones (2001) revolutionized the field of trauma surgery."
* Two authors are cited using "and" or "&": (Deane and Jones 1991) or (Deane & Jones 1991). More than two authors are cited using " ''et al.''": (Smith ''et al.'' 1992).
* In some documentation systems (e.g., MLA style), an unknown date is cited as having "no date of publication" by the abbreviation for "no date" (Deane, n.d.).
* In such documentation systems, works without pagination are referred to in the References list as "not paginated" with the abbreviation for that phrase (n. pag.).
* "No place of publication" and/or "no publisher" are both designated the same way (n.p.) and placed in the appropriate spot in the bibliographical citation (''Harvard Referencing''. N.p.).
* A reference to a republished work is cited with the original publication date either in square brackets (Marx 8671967, p. 90) or separated with a slash (Marx, 1867/1967, p. 90). The inclusion of the original publication year qualifies the suggestion otherwise that the publication originally occurred in 1967.
* If an author published several books in 2005, the year of the first publication (in the alphabetic order of the references) is cited and referenced as 2005a, the second as 2005b and so on.
* A citation is placed wherever appropriate in or after the sentence. If it is at the end of a sentence, it is placed before the period, but a citation for an entire block quote immediately follows the period at the end of the block since the citation is not an actual part of the quotation itself. When citing quotes its advisable to insert the page number as this points directly to the page the content that has been used.
* Complete citations are provided in alphabetical order in a section following the text, usually designated as "Works cited" or "References." The difference between a "works cited" or "references" list and a bibliography is that a bibliography may include works not directly cited in the text.
* All citations are in the same font as the main text.
* Note that there is no official guide to Harvard citation style, consequently variations occur across various online Harvard citation and referencing guides. For example, some universities instruct students to type a book's publication date ''without'' parentheses in the reference list.

Examples

An example of a journal reference:

* Heilman, J. M. and West, A. G. (2015). "Wikipedia and Medicine: Quantifying Readership, Editors, and the Significance of Natural Language." ''Journal of Medical Internet Research'', 17(3), p. e62. doi:10.2196/jmir.4069.

Following is an explanation of the components, where the coloring is for demonstration purposes and is not used in actual formatting:


Heilman, J. M. and West, A. G.
(2015).
"Wikipedia and Medicine: Quantifying Readership, Editors, and the Significance of Natural Language."
''Journal of Medical Internet Research'',
17
(3),
p.e62.
doi:10.2196/jmir.4069.
* Author(s) first listed author's name inverted in the bibliography entry
* Year
* Article title
* Journal title in italic type
* Volume
* Issue
* Page numbers specific page number in a note; page range in a bibliography entry
* Digital object identifier

Examples of book references are:
* Smith, J. (2005a). ''Dutch Citing Practices''. The Hague: Holland Research Foundation.
* Smith, J. (2005b). ''Harvard Referencing''. London: Jolly Good Publishing.

In giving the city of publication, an internationally well-known city (such as London, The Hague, or New York) is given as the city alone. If the city is not internationally well known, the country (or state and country if in the U.S.) is given.

An example of a newspaper reference:
* Bowcott, Owen (October 18, 2005)
"Protests halt online auction to shoot stag"
''The Guardian''.

Advantages

* The principal advantage of the author–date method is that a reader familiar with a field is likely to recognize a citation without having to check in the references section. This is most useful in fields whose works are commonly known by their date of publication (for example, the sciences and social sciences in which one cites, say, "the 2005 Johns Hopkins study of brain function"), or if the author cited is notorious (for example, HIV denialist Peter Duesberg on the cause of AIDS).
* The use of author–date systems helps the reader easily identify sources that may be outdated.
* If the same source is cited more than once, even a reader unfamiliar with the author may remember the name. It quickly becomes obvious if the publication is relying heavily on a single author or single publication. When many different pages of the same work are cited, the reader does not need to flip back and forth to footnotes or endnotes full of " ibid." citations to discover this fact.
* With the author–date method, there is no renumbering hassle when the order of in-text citations is changed, which can be a scourge of the numbered endnotes system if house style or project style insists that citations never appear out of numerical order. (Computerized reference-management software automates this aspect of the numbered system British Medical Journal'', references had appeared in inconsistent styles in footnotes, referred to in the text using a variety of printers' symbols, including asterisks and daggers. Chernin writes that a 1903 festschrift dedicated to Mark by 140 students, including Theodore Roosevelt, confirms that the author–date system is attributable to Mark. The festschrift pays tribute to Mark's 1881 paper, writing that it "introduced into zoology a proper fullness and accuracy of citation and a convenient and uniform method of referring from text to bibliography." According to an editorial note in the ''British Medical Journal'' in 1945, an unconfirmed anecdote is that the term "Owen system" was introduced by an English visitor to Harvard University library, who was impressed by the citation system and dubbed it "Harvard system" upon his return to England.

Although it originated in biology, it is now more common in humanities, history, and social science. It is favored by a few scientific journals, including the major biology journal ''Cell''.

Author–title

In the author–title or author–page method, also referred to as MLA style, the in-text citation is placed in parentheses after the sentence or part thereof that the citation supports, and includes the author's name (a short title only is necessary when there is more than one work by the same author) and a page number where appropriate (Smith 1) or (Smith, ''Playing'' 1). (No "p." or "pp." prefaces the page numbers and main words in titles appear in capital letters, following MLA style guidelines.) A full citation is given in the references section.

Content notes

A content note generally contains useful information and explanations that do not fit into the primary text itself. Content notes may be given as footnotes or endnotes or even a combination of both footnotes and endnotes. Such content notes may themselves contain a style of parenthetical referencing, just as the main text does.

See also

* Comparison of reference management software

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

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Further reading

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* and – Includes section on "Grammar and Style" with hyperlinked "Citing the Internet: Formats for Bibliographic Citations".
* – Provides hyperlinked "Citation Guides" pertaining to the most commonly used citation guidelines, including parenthetical referencing. Also includes APA, Chicago, CBE, CSE, MLA, and Turabian style guidelines.
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