Subject guides: French and Francophone Studies: Reference management

This guide provides a general introduction to Library resources relating to French and Francophone Studies.

University Guidance

Failure to accurately cite and reference in your academic work may be regarded as academic misconduct. It is important to be aware of the University of Edinburgh's guidance on academic misconduct.

What is academic misconduct?

Guidance on the ethical use of generative AI (Artificial Intelligence)

Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT) is developing rapidly and can be useful for certain tasks. However, you must use it ethically, which for academic work means not claiming output from generative AI tools is your own work. Doing so would be regarded as academic misconduct.

Before using generative AI, check with your tutor or supervisor if it is allowed within your School or in relation to a specific assignment. If you do use generative AI content within your work, then you should reference this as you would any other information. Cite Them Right provides guidance on how to reference generative AI in different referencing styles. You will need to log in using your student ID and password and then search for ‘generative AI’.

Cite Them Right - generative AI

If you use generative AI to help with any aspect of your assignment (for example, to help plan the structure) you should still acknowledge this, even if you did not use any content within your work. Make it clear which tool you used, what it was used for, and the date you used it.
For more information on AI use and academic work, consult the University’s guide for students.

Generative Artificial Intelligence guidance for students

Citing and avoiding plagiarism - training and tools

Citing and referencing demonstrate the breadth of your research and help avoid plagiarism. To understand more about plagiarism and how and why to avoid it, see the University of Edinburgh's Institute for Academic Development's (IAD) guide:

IAD - Referencing and avoiding plagiarism

LibSmart provides advice and activities on using Library tools to help you manage your information and use correct citation and referencing, including:

Cite Them Right
Using ‘My Favourites’ and the quick citation tool in DiscoverEd
Using Resource lists to create a bibliography
Libsmart

Cite Them Right explains and demonstrates how to cite, both in-text and in a reference list or bibliography, a wide range of material types: books, journal articles, lecture notes, law reports, web pages, computer games, live performances...

Harvard (author-date) is shown throughout but many material types are demonstrated in other citation styles too: APA, Chicago, MHRA, MLA, OSCOLA, Vancouver.

General information on referencing and plagiarism is also presented.

Cite Them Right Cite Them Right Online is a comprehensive guide to referencing.

Choosing a reference management software tool

If you just want to create formatted references and don't need to save them ZoteroBib (https://zbib.org/) is a free service that helps you build a bibliography instantly from any computer or device, without creating an account or installing any software.

If you want to do more, reference management software lets you store, annotate and group references and also automatically creates citations and reference lists in your documents.

There are a number of different reference management software tools available. For help in deciding which is right for you, please see our software comparison information below.

Reference Management tools - a few options and comparisons

Choosing a Reference Manager (Digital Skills course)

A workbook of course content is available on the Digital Skills Team's Documents Catalogue. You can also check Event Booking (students) and People & Money (staff) for scheduled dates of the "Introduction to reference managers" course.

If you experience any access issues, please contact the IS Helpline.

EndNote

EndNote is supported by the University and available as desktop run software and as a web application. Both versions provide automatic citing in the desktop version of Microsoft Word.

On-campus. The desktop version is installed on the open-access lab computers where the "Cite While You Write" plug-in is available on Microsoft Word.

Endnote for personal/home devices. Staff and students from subscribing Schools* can request an Endnote download to install the software on personal/home devices via Software Services.
*Does not include the Schools of Informatics, Maths, Physics.

EndNote online is the web based version and free to all. It is a much less powerful tool than EndNote desktop although more bibliographic output styles, import filters, connection files and storage space for file attachments can be added by registering for it via The Library's Web of Science subscription rather than directly.

EndNote online - registration via Web of Science & EndNote Cite While You Write (in Word)

Help
EdHelp
Clarivate/Endnote Support