Thesis referencing guidelines

Basic principles of source referencing at Uniarts Helsinki

These guidelines are tailored for studies at Uniarts Helsinki, but they can also be adapted for various other texts, such as grant applications that include references. Some parts of the guidelines are language-specific, so follow the guidelines that are written in the same language as the one you are using in your thesis.

This material has been compiled based on resources from the American Psychological Association and the Chicago Manual of Style, as well as referencing guidelines compiled by different units of Uniarts Helsinki and other higher education institutions.

Whenever writing for a publication or platform, check what the publisher says about formatting in-text citations and the list of references. Pay particular attention to instructions regarding the use of italics, quotation marks and punctuation in references.

Select a referencing style

Ask your degree programme about which referencing style they recommend: the referencing style guide by the American Psychological Association (APA7) or the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS Author-Date system). Both of these referencing styles follow American English rules, which means, for example, that the order for dates is “Year, Month Day” in APA and “Month Day, Year” in CMOS in the list of references. The university’s official language variant is British English, which is why the thesis title and abstract page templates provided by the university mention dates in the “Day Month Year” order. Elsewhere in the document – in your actual thesis – stick to the spelling and other language conventions of the style guide that you are using.

You can find information on APA and CMOS referencing styles on the ArtPro website, which provides detailed instructions on citing various types of sources and what to do if the source does not have page numbers. The English ArtPro website is still a work in progress, so in the meantime, you can also visit the respective websites for the guides.

APA7 referencing guide on the ArtPro website

APA Style website

Chicago Author-Date style guidelines on the ArtPro website 

Chicago Manual of Style Online (login via the Uniarts Helsinki Library website)

That said, if you are more familiar with some other referencing style than APA or CMOS, you are allowed to go with that. The important thing is to choose one referencing style and to follow its norms consistently. 

The difference between the different citation styles is in the details: The name of the author and the publication year may be ordered differently, and the norms concerning punctuation and italics are different. However, all referencing styles are based on the same principles. A referencing system consists of two main elements: the in-text citation and the list of sources. The reference list catalogues all sources that have been used in the text, while a citation refers to one or several sources.

Reading and using sources in academic writing

When reading your sources, it is important that you take careful notes so you can keep track of which sources each idea is from. You are expected to provide in-text citations in your texts when referring to these sources.

You can paraphrase the thoughts from other sources in your own words or write a direct quote. In either case, you need to cite your source. Academic writing means that it is not enough to provide a list of references at the end of the document but instead, you must also explicitly state which source you are referring to within your text.

Proper referencing is part of expertise

By carefully citing sources, you give proper credit to other writers, artists and thinkers and avoid committing plagiarism. Plagiarism means the unauthorised use of someone else’s work or ideas. If a writer copies another person’s text directly or in a modified form and presents it – either carelessly or deliberately – as their own, it is considered plagiarism. Often, plagiarism results from the writer not being sufficiently familiar with the referencing system or being negligent and careless about citing sources. 

Uniarts Helsinki uses the Turnitin service to detect plagiarism in texts. It analyses the text and produces a report, which lists the sections that match content from any other sources. Turnitin helps the writer understand how well they have paraphrased the content taken from sources and where referencing and citation are lacking, which may result in parts of the text being considered plagiarised. Read more about Uniarts Helsinki’s plagiarism detection system Turnitin.

How to cite sources

References tell the reader where the idea or information presented in the text originates. These materials that influence or underpin your writing are called sources. A source can be a book, an online publication, a lecture, a recording of a performance or even promotional material for an artwork.

References help distinguish the writer’s own thoughts, insights and applications from those of others. They also allow the reader to locate the referenced source and verify the accuracy of the writer’s claims. References also guide the reader to find further information on the topic.

What can be used as a source?

There are many different types of source texts: physical books, research articles in scholarly journals, internet publications, doctoral dissertations and so on. The number and type of sources that you need to support your thinking and reasoning depend on the genre and objectives of your text. In a reflective essay you might refer to only a couple of sources, whereas a literature review is based on numerous research texts. In today’s reality of information overload and misinformation, it is important to critically examine the credibility of sources.

Source references are required (marked according to the recommended citation technique) whenever you:

• paraphrase and express other authors’ ideas in your own words 
• quote other authors’ words directly 
• refer to information or sets of data 
• reuse or modify a table or figure, even images taken from the internet that are free or under a Creative Commons licence 
• reuse a long passage of text or a commercially copyright-protected test exercise. 

Only refer to sources that you have actually read.

When are references unnecessary?

As the purpose of a reference is to support your own argumentation, general knowledge is not cited. General knowledge includes various widely accepted indisputable facts, for example that Finland became independent in 1917. However, what is considered such indisputable facts varies, as people’s knowledge also evolves and grows. If you are unsure about the indisputability of a fact, it is better to refer to a source. 

Dictionaries and encyclopaedias can only serve as research source material if the interpretation presented by a specific work is essential to the research or if it is quoted or discussed in the main text. For example, dictionaries may be used for defining certain concepts, but there is no need to include a reference to an encyclopaedia for biographical information about a historical figure unless, for instance, the main text compares conflicting information provided by different encyclopaedias. Current encyclopaedias are in electronic form and include, among others, Oxford Handbooks.

What kind of dialogue do you have with your sources?

When you use sources in your text, it is important to explain and indicate through references what constitutes your own thinking and which ideas originate from the sources. Sources can serve different purposes within your texts, which means that your dialogue with sources can take various forms. However, it is essential that you add your own reasoning closely to all references. This way, the reader understands why you have included the source’s ideas in your text.

Below are different ways to present information or ideas from a source.

Content-centred referencing style:

Short-term memory systems include sensory memory and working memory (Baddeley 1997, 9).

The topic has also been addressed by many other researchers of subordinate clauses (Chafe 1984; Ford 1993; Herlin 1998).

This kind of content-focused presentation of matters is neutral and does not question the accuracy of the information. It is suitable for situations where the writer introduces a phenomenon or a research field. It also does not emphasise the source author’s ownership of the idea. In such cases, the source does not need to be specially introduced. The reader can assume that the source meets the criteria of an academic reference.

Mentioning several studies in general terms shows that the writer is familiar with the research field of their topic but does not refer to any specific information at that point.

Author-centred referencing style:

Although Bakhtin rarely speaks of power, he writes that the speaker recognises the listener’s attitudes towards the hearer (Bakhtin 1981, 280).

According to Bakhtin (1981, 280), the speaker recognises the listener’s attitudes towards the hearer, whereas according to Hellas (2003, 76–78), the listener’s attitudes are not always perceptible to the speaker.

This type of presentation of matters emphasises the respective thinking of the source authors. This way of expression is necessary when the writer engages in dialogue with the source or compares the ideas of different sources, or when the source author is highlighted as an authority or the “owner” of the ideas. In author-centred presentation, the choice of reporting verb indicates the writer’s attitude towards the source.

Examples of neutral and opinionated reporting verbs:

Advocate, agree, allege, argue, articulate, assert, assume, attest, challenge, claim, consider, contend, convey, critique, declare, demonstrate, deny, describe, discuss, explain, hypothesise, illustrate, imply, insist, justify, maintain, mention, observe, opine, outline, point out, propose, reason, remark, report, speculate, state, suppose, surmise, theorise, think.

Other examples of ways to summarise ideas and opinions: According to Räisänen… In my opinion, Räisänen demonstrates… It can be inferred from Räisänen’s text that…

Paraphrasing

In academic and other expert writing, you are expected to explain information you have read from other sources in your own words rather than quote them directly. This is also called paraphrasing, and it is the most recommended way of using source material.

When paraphrasing, you repeat someone else’s ideas (or your own previously published thinking) in your own words. You can summarise and combine information from one or more sources, focus only on the most relevant points for you and place different sources in dialogue with each other. When you use a source in this way, you do not need to follow the same order of ideas in the source, as long as you convey the same meaning.

An example of paraphrasing in APA7 style:

In her study, Webster-Stratton (2016, pp. 152–153) described a case example of a 4-year-old girl who showed an insecure attachment to her mother; while working with the family, the therapist focused on increasing the mother’s empathy towards her child.

In CMOS Author-Date style:

In her study, Webster-Stratton (2016, 152–153) described a case example of a 4-year-old girl who showed an insecure attachment to her mother; while working with the family, the therapist focused on increasing the mother’s empathy towards her child.

Reserve direct quotes for specific situations

In direct quotation, the writer repeats the matter verbatim from another work or from their own previously published work. Instead of quoting directly, it is advisable to paraphrase the ideas presented in the sources. This way you can better adapt the material you have read to the context and writing style of your own text. A direct quote is justified in the following situations: 

• when you repeat the exact definition of a concept or phenomenon 
• often when referring to a legal citation 
• when you want to draw attention to the author’s way of expressing things 
• when you want to comment on a specific formulation of words. 

An example of a direct quote in APA7 style:

It can be difficult to describe effective teams because “high performance in one area does not lead to high performance in another area” (Ervin et al., 2018, p. 470). 

CMOS Author-Date style:

It can be difficult to describe effective teams because “high performance in one area does not lead to high performance in another area” (Ervin et al. 2018, 470).

Writing the list of references

The source information must be correct and detailed and include the author, year of publication, title and publication details so that the source can be identified and found in various databases. Regardless of the language used in the source, use the language you are using for writing your thesis when citing references (demonstrated through details such as Ed./Eds., In, ed.). 

Alphabetical order

List your sources according to the alphabetical order of the authors’ last names. If several sources have the same author, list the older source first.

Multiple sources by the same author

If the same author has multiple references from the same year, arrange the sources in alphabetical order by adding letters after the year: 

• Virtanen, V. (2022a), Virtanen, V. (2022b).

How to write the title and subtitle

If a work’s title includes a main title and a subtitle, use a colon between them, unless the work uses another punctuation mark. If the title includes a subtitle following a colon or dash, write it with a lowercase initial in Finnish works and with an uppercase initial in works in other languages. A subtitle following a question mark, exclamation mark or full stop always begins with an uppercase initial.

Source explanations

Source explanations should be provided in the same language as the rest of the thesis. If the thesis is written in English, use the following standard abbreviations and explanations: “In” (when listing an article in a collection), “Ed./Eds.” (when mentioning editor/editors), “p./pp.” (page/pages), “3rd ed.” (edition), “et al.” (when mentioning sources with several authors in in-text citations).

An example of a list of references in APA7 format

The list of example references below has subheadings, which indicate the type of source used. Do not categorise your sources following this format in your actual list of references.

Monograph:
Altrichter, H., Feldman, A., Posch, P., & Somekh, B. (2008). Teachers investigate their work: An introduction to action research across professions. Routledge.

Article in a scholarly journal:
Brownlee, J. L., Ferguson, L. E., & Ryan, M. (2017). Changing teachers’ epistemic cognition: A new conceptual framework for epistemic reflexivity. Educational Psychologist, 52(4), 242–252. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2017.1333430

Article in a collection:
Burnard, P. (2016). Introduction: The context for professional knowledge in music teacher education. In E. Georgii-Hemming, P. Burnard, & S. E. Holgersen (Eds.), Professional knowledge in music teacher education (pp. 1–15). Routledge.

Edited collection:
Easterby-Smith, M., & Lyles, M. A. (Eds.). (2011). Handbook of organizational learning and knowledge management (2nd ed.). Wiley.

Online publication (such as a report):
Ilmola-Sheppard, L., Rautiainen, P., Westerlund, H., Lehikoinen, K., Karttunen, S., Juntunen, M.-L., & Anttila, E. (2021). ArtsEqual: Tasa-arvo taiteen ja taidekasvatuksen palveluiden suuntana. ArtsEqual. https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-353-042-3

Article in an online journal:
Rämö, A. (2020, April 17). Tämä ei nyt ole ihan ookoo. Suomen Kuvalehti. https://suomenkuvalehti.fi/kulttuuri/shakespeare-on-rakenteellista-vakivaltaa-opiskelijaa-kohtaan-taidekoulut-luovivat-opiskelijoiden-vaatimusten-keskella/?shared=1148185-b8710b50-10

Dissertation or thesis:
Timonen, V. (2020). Co-constructing globalizing music education through an intercultural professional learning community: A critical participatory action research in Nepal (Studia Musica 83). Sibelius Academy. https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-329-171-3

Book/article that is currently in press
Partti, H. (in press). Mapping the field of composing pedagogy in Finland: From musical inventions to cultural participation. In A. Ziegenmeyer, J. Grow, M. Faultley, & K. Devaney (Eds.), The Routledge companion to teaching music composition in schools: International perspectives. Routledge.