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Computer science and software engineering

It is essential that you acknowledge what you have read:

to protect yourself against charges of plagiarism
to prove that your work has a substantial, factual basis
to show the research you've done to reach your conclusions
to allow your readers to identify and retrieve the references for their own use

To "cite" is to point to evidence, authority or proof. There are two main styles of citing (although there are many variations):

Author-date style
Numerical style

Author-date style

Numerical style

In the text of the document

Surname of the author (or authors) and the year of publication (with a comma after the author/s) placed in parentheses. Citations should be, whenever possible, placed at the end of a sentence (before the concluding punctuation).

For example:
... as shown in a previous study (Abramson & Watson, 2003)

In the text of the document

Each citation in the text is given a unique number, either in square brackets or superscripted after the full stop. Each is numbered in the order in which it appears in the text.

For example:
... as shown in a previous study [3].

Another way:
... as shown in a previous study.3

List of references

Listed in alphabetical order of the surnames of the authors.

List of references

Not listed alphabetically. The references are listed in numerical order, the number of each listing corresponding to the unique number that each source was assigned in the text.

Software products like EndNote or LaTeX with BibTeX can assist you to create citations and references in the required style.

Examples of text and the corresponding list of references for the two styles

Author-date style

Most of the academic staff in the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering publish in their field of expertise or research. The research is published in journals (Abramson & Watson, 2003) or proceedings of conferences (Jansen, Marriott & Meyer, 2003). These publications can be found by searching databases. Technical reports (Allison, 2004) are normally not listed in databases; the easiest way to find these is to look at the School's research publication list. Theses (Welsh, 2003) can be found by searching the university library catalogue. Academics also write books (Korb & Nicholson, 2004) or contribute a chapter to edited books (Loke & Zaslavsky, 2003).

References:

Abramson, D. A., & Watson, G. (2003). Debugging scientific applications in the .NET framework. Future Generation Computer Systems, 19(5), 665-678.

Allison, L. (2004). Finding approximate palindromes in strings quickly and simply (Tech. Rep. No. 2004/162). Clayton, Victoria, Australia: Monash University, School of Computer Science and Software Engineering.

Jansen, A. R., Marriott, K., & Meyer, B. (2003). CIDER: A component-based toolkit for creating smart diagram environments. In: Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Visual Languages and Computing (VLC 2003), Miami, FL. Sept. 24-26 2003 (pp. 353-359). Skokie, IL: Knowledge Systems Institute.

Korb, K. B. & Nicholson, A. E. (2004). Bayesian artificial intelligence. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC.

Loke, S. & Zaslavsky, A. (2003). Mobile agent supported cooperative work. In Y. Ye & E. Churchill (Eds.), Agent supported cooperative work (pp. 205-229). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Welsh, S. C. (2003). Pseudo-3D animations using 2D image morphing techniques. Unpublished PhD, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia.

Numerical style

Most of the academic staff in the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering publish in their field of expertise or research. The research is published in journals [1] or proceedings of conferences [2]. These publications can be found by searching databases. Technical reports [3] are normally not listed in databases; the easiest way to find these is to look at the School's research publication list. Theses [4] can be found by searching the Monash Library catalogue. Academics also write books [5] or contribute a chapter to edited books [6].

References:

1. Abramson, D. A., & Watson, G. (2003). Debugging scientific applications in the .NET framework. Future Generation Computer Systems, 19(5), 665-678.

2. Jansen, A. R., Marriott, K., & Meyer, B. (2003). CIDER: A component-based toolkit for creating smart diagram environments. In: Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Visual Languages and Computing (VLC 2003), Miami, FL. Sept. 24-26 2003 (pp. 353-359). Skokie, IL: Knowledge Systems Institute.

3. Allison, L. (2004). Finding approximate palindromes in strings quickly and simply (Tech. Rep. No. 2004/162). Clayton, Victoria, Australia: Monash University, School of Computer Science and Software Engineering.

4. Welsh, S. C. (2003). Pseudo-3D animations using 2D image morphing techniques. Unpublished PhD, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia.

5. Korb, K. B. & Nicholson, A. E. (2004). Bayesian artificial intelligence. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC.

6. Loke, S. & Zaslavsky, A. (2003). Mobile agent supported cooperative work. In Y. Ye & E. Churchill (Eds.), Agent supported cooperative work (pp. 205-229). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.