This guide contains quick practical hints for students of the School of Biological Sciences on how to avoid most common mistakes in literature referencing (aka citations) in essays, theses, manuscripts, project reports, etc. Please feel free to email suggestions to [email protected] we go into details of how to avoid most common literature referencing mistakes, let us clarify the reasons for making proper citations. These reasons go beyond trivial plagiarism concerns, accurate bookkeeping of all information sources and university bureaucracy. An additional reason is that an intellectual work, especially the one which will not undergo further proofreading and typesetting by professional editors, is in fact an artwork. Like artists, we have to make it accurate and visually appealing. It should be nice in all respects, including both the content and the formatting. Every literature reference contains two parts:The first part is the so-called in-text citation, which is simply a short expression like "\citep{Lanning_2016}" embedded at the spot where the citation appears in an essay that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section. In this example, "Lanning" is the last name of the author, and "2016" is the year of the publication.The second part is a detailed reference that contains all details about this publication, usually including all author last names with initials, the title of the article,  the name of the academic journal or book, in the case of a journal also the number of the volume and pages (or article number). This information is included at the end of your essay under the caption "References". The list of references at the end of your essay needs to contains detailed information about each cited source in a certain format. There are hundreds of different citation styles. Our university uses a style called "Harvard - University of Essex". One can find a detailed description of this style elsewhere \citep{Macaulaya}. Here I will focus on the practical aspects of literature referencing including the most frequent citation mistakes and the ways to avoid them.There are two possibilities to insert citations. One can do it manually, accurately following the citation style description, but this approach is very time consuming. Another possibility is to use automated reference managers such as EndNote, Papers, Mendeley, Zenodo, Authorea, and a number of others (compared here). In the latter case, it is still the student's responsibility to make sure that the software did not make mistakes and the references are in a proper format. Thus, the most likely scenario is a combination of the use of automated reference manager with manual checking of the referencing and in some complicated cases manually introducing corrections.The most common problem that I am observing when marking student essays is related to the student difficulties to distinguish between different types of sources (books, journal articles, magazine article, web pages, legislation documents, etc). Each of these  different types of sources has its own formatting rules when creating a citation. Therefore, it is important to understand in the very beginning, what type of a reference you are dealing with. Below are some of the most frequent examples from the recent student essays, where I provide both the original wrong formatting and the correct one, as well as the explanation.Journal papers:Wrong: Jones T, Murray R. (2011). Current research in and development of treatments for Parkinson's disease. Available: https://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/news-and-analysis/news/current-research-in-and-development-of-treatments-for-parkinsons-disease/11083642.article?firstPass=false. Last accessed 7/2/19.  Correct: Jones ,T., Murray, R. (2011). Current research in and development of treatments for Parkinson's disease. The Pharmaceutical Journal, 287, 293    Explanation: This is a journal article, not a web page; therefore, it needs the journal name, volume number and pages (in this case just the first page is known). The URL is not needed.  In-text citation: "It was shown that ... (Jones and Murray, 2011)" or "Jones and Murray (2011) show..."Wrong: Oakley, J., 2002. Democracy, embryonic stem cell research, and the Roman Catholic church. Journal of Medical Ethics, 28(4), pp.228–228. Available at: http://jme.bmj.com/content/28/4/228.abstract.Correct: Oakley, J., 2002. Democracy, embryonic stem cell research, and the Roman Catholic church. Journal of Medical Ethics, 28(4), 228–228.Explanation: This is a journal article, not a web page; therefore, URL is not needed.In-text citation: "It was shown that ... (Oakley, 2002)" or "Oakley (2002) argues that ..."Books:Wrong: Holland, S., Lebacqz, K. and Zoloth, L. (2001) The human embryonic stem cell debate: Science, ethics, and public policy. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=R1wV2pNTRfwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=embryonic+stem+cells+government+ethics&ots=7Hj8s_PbIH&sig=xa2UM3Y4j7mOOUOROu3TArR5XTA#v=onepage&q=embryonic%20stem%20cells%20government%20ethics&f=false (Accessed: 2 February 2017).Correct: Holland, S., Lebacqz, K. & Zoloth, L. (eds) (2001) The human embryonic stem cell debate: Science, ethics, and public policy. Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press.Explanation: This is a book, not just a web page; therefore, it requires all proper book credentials and does not require URL.In-text citation: "It has been shown that... (Holland et al., 2001)."Magazine articles:Wrong: Coghlan, A., New Scientist, 2014. Stem cell timeline: The history of a medical sensation. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24970-stem-cell-timeline-the-history-of-a-medical-sensation/. Last accessed 09 December 2016.Correct: Coghlan, A., 2014. Stem cell timeline: The history of a medical sensation. New Scientist. [online] Available at: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24970-stem-cell-timeline-the-history-of-a-medical-sensation/. Last accessed 09 December 2016.Explanation: This is a magazine article, not just a web page; therefore, the name of the magazine is an essential part of the reference.Web pages:Wrong: Explorestemcells.co.uk. (2017). Stem Cell Research Around the World. [online] Available at: http://www.explorestemcells.co.uk/stemcellresearcharoundworld.html [Accessed 3 Feb. 2017].Correct: Murnaghan, I., 2017. Stem Cell Research Around the World [online] Available at: http://www.explorestemcells.co.uk/stemcellresearcharoundworld.html [Accessed 3 February 2017].Explanation: Every text, even a text on a web page, has an author (it can be a collective author such as an organization, a web pseudonym, or "anonymous", but there is always some author). This is an essential part of the reference.Wrong: Council, M.R. (2014) Regenerative medicine & stem cells - our research - medical research council. Available at: http://www.mrc.ac.uk/research/initiatives/regenerative-medicine-stem-cells/ (Accessed: 10 January 2017)Correct: Medical Research Council, 2017. Regenerative medicine & stem cells [online]. Available at: http://www.mrc.ac.uk/research/initiatives/regenerative-medicine-stem-cells/ [Accessed: 10 January 2017]Explanation: In this case a student used some reference management software, but did not specify that the type of the reference is a web page, not a journal article. The software has, therefore, misinterpreted the name of the organization (Medical Research Council) as a person whose last name is Council. This funny situation is actually quite frequent in the essays that I am marking. To avoid such mistakes, you need (a) make sure you specified the proper type of the reference, and (b) check it anyway manually.Legislation documents:Wrong: Congress.gov. (2017). H.R.6 - 114th Congress (2015-2016): 21st Century Cures Act. [online] Available at: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/6 [Accessed 3 Feb. 2017].In-text citation: …(Congress.gov, 2017)