Part I Concepts
6.1 Appropriate References
A reference is a description that identifies an information source. For example, the following reference describes a (fictional) journal article written by K. Anderson:
Anderson, K. (2008). The Untold Story of Computer Science. International Journal of Computer Science, 2(1), 23–35.1
By properly referencing the material your work is based upon, you achieve several things. You:
● Show how your work extends the current state-of-the-art knowledge in the area
● Show the originality of your work
● Give credit to other people’s work (and thereby avoid being accused of plagiarism)
● Support and validate arguments made in your report (any claim made in the report must be supported either by your own research or by citing results pub- lished by other people)
● Show that you are familiar with the work done in the area
By simply looking at your reference list, an experienced reader or reviewer will see whether you have used references from well known sources, or sources that are not of such good quality. Furthermore, you can strengthen your arguments in the report if you base them on well known references which have been published in high- quality scientific journals, or in proceedings from renowned conferences.
Another reason why references are needed is to make your work reproducible.
Anyone who reads your report should be able to reproduce your work, and therefore
1 Details concerning the information (e.g., volume number, page number) contained in the refer- ence are given in Chapter 14.6.
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M. Berndtsson et al. (eds.), Planning and Implementing your Computing Project - with Success!
© Springer 2008
all sources you have used must be clearly identified. This is especially important if your work is an extension of an existing solution, method or theory. If the reader cannot find the literature containing the original work, then they cannot verify that your extension is based on a correct interpretation of the original solution, method or theory.
A reference is judged to be appropriate for your work, depending on its content and its type. You can check the relevance of a reference’s content by considering removing the reference from your text. If you cannot remove the reference without losing essential information then the reference should be kept, otherwise it can be removed.
There are different types of documents that you can use as references:
● Scientific research journals typically publish high quality articles. These articles are written by experts in the field for other experts, which may make them diffi- cult to understand for non-experts. In many cases one or more conference and workshop articles precede the journal article. Consequently, the work reported in the journal may be of high quality, but the research findings may have become somewhat outdated. Therefore, it is always good to check whether the article provides information on when it was first submitted.
● Conference and workshop proceedings publish quality papers relatively fast (compared with most journals). If possible, check the acceptance ratio, i.e. the number of accepted papers divided by the number of submitted papers.
Conferences and workshops with a low acceptance ratio, e.g. 15–30%, are likely to have very good papers, whereas the quality of papers at a conference with a high acceptance ratio (say 80–85%) can be questionable. Try to identify which conferences and workshops within your area have good reputations. Your super- visor can probably give you guidance concerning this.
● Theses (M.Sc., Ph.D.) contain valuable information which, to a varying degree, present the state of the art for a subject. As theses are examined and assessed, they are usually of adequate quality. A Ph.D. thesis presents research results that someone has been working on for 3 years or more, and a M.Sc. thesis is the result of half a year of research. Thus, you can expect that the material in a Ph.
D. thesis is of higher quality and more extensive than similar material in a M.Sc.
thesis.
● Textbooks are usually a good source for understanding the fundamentals in a variety of subjects and areas. These books are frequently used in courses. In general, textbooks are reviewed but they do not cover the latest research findings, since they are mainly used for teaching established knowledge. New findings take some years to become established, and are therefore not included in most textbooks until some years have passed. However, there are also some textbooks that cover advanced issues and the latest research findings. These advanced textbooks are typically aimed at researchers and Ph.D. students.
● Magazines can be viewed as a popular version of research journals. Some arti- cles published in magazines may be reviewed, while others may not be. Even if some magazines contain articles on research results, it is usually only in the form
6.1 Appropriate References 39
of summaries and often with simplifications, to make the material more accessible to non-experts. If such an article contains a reference to a an article in a reseach journal, then you should always try to find the original source. When reading magazines that are published by companies that, e.g. sell a particular computer program, you should be aware that articles in these magazines will probably not criticise products or statements of the company.
● Web pages can contain useful information, but in general, they should be avoided since their content is normally not reviewed. Moreover, they can quickly disappear or change. In some cases the research information on a web page will have been published at a conference or in a journal also. In this case, you should obtain the article or conference paper and make your reference to the original source. Do not use the web URL as reference in such cases.
● Newspapers can provide interesting pieces of information, which you can use as examples in your report. However, it is not good to base the report heavily on references to articles that have appeared in newspapers, since you normally do not know whether the article has been reviewed by an expert in the field. In addi- tion, articles in newspapers do not present all the details that you need for your project. For example, you may find an article in a newspaper that describes a robot that is able to play soccer. The article will probably present an overview of what the robot can do, but it will probably not present any details concerning the algorithms for playing soccer or what the software architecture looks like.
These details are probably published in research journals or in the proceedings of research conferences. If you use any newspaper articles, look for names of researchers, or names of institutions. These names can help you locate the cor- responding research publications.
● Other documents such as manuals, modelling documents, and commercial infor- mation should also be treated with care. In general, these documents are not reviewed, and hence there is no guarantee that they are of good quality.
Moreover, documents published by companies may be written in such a way that they advertise the company’s products, rather than presenting neutral facts.
In general, a written document is of better quality than an oral statement. The reason is simple; one can always go back to a written document and check the exact details of it, whereas an oral source may have forgotten some details over time. In addition, the material in a written source will usually have been reviewed before it was printed.
Do not use oral sources as the main argument in your project aim, since this will reduce the trustworthiness of your arguments. Instead, if you need to include some oral sources when you describe the project aim and its arguments, you should do so in combination with literature sources. In the next two paragraphs we outline two situations when it is appropriate to use oral sources in conjunction with a literature source.
Suppose that you use information from a research article as one of the major arguments for your project aim. If you have been in contact with the authors of this research article, and they gave you additional oral information, for example, on how
they reached a certain result, then you can refer to this oral source. It will enhance the reader’s understanding of the research article.
Similarly, oral statements can be used together with a literature source in order to describe real life situations. For example, if you have a research article on data- base security, you can use oral references (or newspaper articles) in order to describe situations which occurred when database security was low.