UKH

Can anybody suggest or recommend an app to use for the above, I've had a sudden dawning realisation that using one could save me a lot of time.

Many ta's.

In reply to Timmd:

Mendeley or Endnote are the usual ones.  Should be free for you if this is a university thing.

In reply to MG:

Endnote is better, especially if you can get your hands on an older version that is not yet as overloaded with features!

CB

In reply to Timmd:

Microsoft Word has an in-built referencing system allowing you to enter citations in the text with a single click and a complete, formatted bibliography can be entered with a couple of clicks too.

Under the references tab > Insert new citation > Add new source > complete the relevant fields.

In reply to Timmd:

Thanks all, a lecturer friend in London has recommended something called Paper3 too, lots to go on. I dare say not leaving formatting the references till the end when the mind is tired could also be a plan.  

A reference a day keeps the annoyance away.

In reply to Timmd:

Just to add another option, I've used Zotoro in the past as it was free & I also used it to store references. Worked OK but I suspect the likes of Endnote (which I didn't have access to) are better.

In reply to Doug:

Thanks. Have just submitted my 2nd to last work piece, have 3000 words to write (as an indication of weight/depth) by the end of June, now, but it being the last piece should help with focus, and the last ecology related piece I did I felt unsure due to struggling to meet near the word count, I felt I'd not done enough, and got told I was succinct and was given a 1st (at 1st year/level 4), so that's positive. 

In reply to Timmd:

How are you storing references that you have already used ? Ideally you would use the same software to store references & later produce your bibliographies for all papers, essays etc - be thankful that you don't have to repeatedly type/write the same references again & again (as was the case before word processors became available in the 1980s).

In reply to Timmd:

Use the one that is free from the university. We have Endnote Web for the students and it works well. However it is only as good as the entries. If lots of your citations have to be manually entered and you are going to do this only once or twice on the course, setting up a reference manager might not be a time saver. Papers is OK too as your colleague suggested. If you are going to spend the next few years going back to these then Endnote 20 is a good bet. I have had had Endnote since 1993 and my library is a very precious thing. 

In reply to Doug:

They're just in what I've typed in word and saved before uploading, but that's a good suggestion. The attention to detail needed in italicising the Vol number but no the comma after it before going back to none italicised is rather irritating, I think that's what has tipped me over the edge towards wanting to use an app (what difference does that make in the scheme of things?).

In reply to Timmd:

The software should do all that and if the references are standard will have them entered already. That said italisicing etc makes no difference. Just be consistent and clear - the styles are really for journals etc that have their own standards.

In reply to MG:

I have had it mentioned in feedback, as it happens, to stick to the structure of APA7. The more I enter them the more second nature it will become.

In reply to Timmd:

Fair enough. But, the software should do it all, and allow you to change to a different format if required. Manual formatting and  entry of references is a *huge* timewaster.

In reply to Timmd:

Mendeley has a nice browser plugin that will scout webpages and automatically download citations and pdfs and add to your library. Maybe Endnote also has something similar, but this is a huge timesaver in terms of building up the library initially.

In reply to Removed User:

Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/ ) does the same, at least with Chrome & Firefox, so I suspect Endnote & others do as well

In reply to MG:

Yes, it certainly is. 

In reply to Doug:

That's a great heads up. Time to crack on with my last piece of work.

In reply to MG:

I cannot recommend this comment highly enough!!! Referencing software makes life so much easier. It might feel like additional time or effort that you (Timmd) can't be bothered with but it's absolutely a false economy, especially on a 3/4 year course. Even if things always go to plan, manually adding citations and typing/formatting them all will take longer than the initial outlay to set up an Endnote/Mendeley/Zotero account (which all also let you add citations to them easily with a Chrome or Mozilla browser add on). However, the real benefit comes when you realise, half an hour before the submission deadline, that the assignment required you to reference Nature style and you've used Harvard throughout. This happened to me during my MSc but because I was using Mendeley it took me 30 seconds to fix. Had I done my references manually I'd have had to hand it in late and lose 5 marks.

P.S. In addition to making writing easier, they're also an excellent tool for document management. You can also use them as a handy way to store your pdfs and annotate and make notes on papers you've read - great if you forget who said what in which paper.

In reply to Timmd:

To be honest, i find the attitude of lecturers about precise following if the format with italics etc for references ridiculous. We didn't do it before word processors. It should either be automatically done or not at all.

Is just a way to Dock marks from students. 

Confession : I was a lecturer for almost 20 years.

Yes, use the university approved tool. If there isn't one,, I'd be surprised. 

In reply to Dave B:

Yep. It's a strange obsession of second rate academics.

In reply to MG:

I was third rate, so it's just the second tier, I'm guessing 

In reply to Dave B:

I wouldn't even know what the official citation format is that my students are supposed to use. As long as it is an established style used by one of the journals my field it is OK with me. If anyone asks, I prefer long styles (e.g Development) over numbers (Science). Makes it easier to read if you immediately know which papers they are referring to.

Still hacks me off that my son got some marks deducted in his last year of school for using a citation style common in biology for his field biological work on bats instead of the stupid footnotes the non-biologist teachers correcting his report were expecting. Humanities, style over substance as usual.

CB

In reply to cb294: I think your view on the humanities may be jaundiced by the marks your son achieved?

It depends on the field, but I think the observations from some people who work in the humanities can be rather astute and thought provoking, to do with society and how it can function, that it takes a certain kind of mind to look at things in abstract and to see trends. 

I seem to have the pattern for APA7 nearly engrained in my mind now, so that should help with double checking my references.

In reply to Timmd:

No the marks were still good. The point is that in humanities you have to be highly precise with your citations as 98% of their output is what philosopher A might have meant when he criticized the comments of B on a proposal made by C (to caricaturize the field).

IMO, the ONLY relevant contribution woud be to provide a better version of the proposal made by C, or an entirely new proposal on a different topic! Everything else is something between irrelevant dross and self referential wank.

As I said elsewhere, there is good work done in the humanities, in a wide field from musicology to history and sociology (just to name the first three subjects that come to my mind where I could name concrete examples of excellent work).

However, in particular in philosophy and many of the new "postmodern" subjects the entire method descends into wordplay, with the obsession over citation styles as a highly revealing side effect.

This is also why we have the "plagiarism crisis" concerning the doctoral theses of many prominent German politicians: They do some shallow thesis just for the title, and then get caught out by plagiarism hunters for not correctly citing stuff. This would not be an issue if their theses contained some actual effing original thoughts! It is characteristic that not a single such thesis was from the natural sciences!

Also, if I ran my own papers through a plagiarism detector (which our university recommends for correcting coursework) I would certainly get caught out for autoplagiarism. I don't give a shit, though: There simply are not that many different ways of describing the stem cell system I work with concisely and correctly, so of course I will reuse almost identical sentences in the introduction of each paper. The difference is that the actual work that follows is completely new and does not consist of regurgating other people's observations.

In reply to cb294:

Ah, I see, the same thought has occurred to me re how many ways one can describe things, it seems to come down to the joining words between the facts (at my current lowly level of study).

In reply to Timmd:

IMO (your course tutor may beg to differ) it is more important to include all the facts you need* as concisely as possible, never mind the joining words.

As a general advice, for some paper or thesis structured in the classic abstract / introduction / methods / results / discussion form I recommend starting with the end of the introduction, which should read as "here we asked the following questions: bla bla. For this, we chose the following approach, and found XYZ.

The intro then starts with some fact everyone agrees with (in my case that could be "life is cell based, therefore communication is important"), then describes the system you work with, and then argues that it is relevant to understand the concrete question. You have to make a serial argument that takes you reader along.

The discussion then can expand and put your results in context.

Title and abstract come last!

* but no more! The first draft for my first paper from my PhD could have been entitled "all I have read about ovaries", which was kind of missing the point of an introduction!