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Hotel Management

Citing & Referencing

Throughout your written work at Shannon College of Hotel Management, you will need to refer to material that has been produced or written by others to support your discussions. This is called citing and referencing and is a key part of academic writing and research. In your writing you must acknowledge any sources that you use within your writing with an in-text citation and include a corresponding entry in the Reference List at the end of your written work.

There are various referencing styles that provide a system for formatting in-text citations and the Reference List. At Shannon College, Cite Them Right's Harvard referencing style is used. 

It is important to cite and reference properly to avoid plagiarism. If you don't reference sources that you have used in your written work, this is plagiarism as you are passing off another author's ideas as your own.  Citing and referencing allow your reader to trace the provenance of your arguments and find and read your source materials if they wish to.  Proper citing and referencing also demonstrate to your lecturer that you understand academic writing conventions.

There are different ways in which plagiarism can occur and it is important to be aware of what these are in order to avoid plagiarism and uphold your academic integrity. Below outlines some ways of conceptualizing the different types of plagiarism:

Plagiarism spectrumFor more information, see Turnitin's Plagiarism Spectrum.

Referencing Guides

Below are referencing guides that provide further details on how to reference sources throughout your written work. Each guide covers the Cite Them Right Harvard referencing style, you can choose to use each of them or you can stick to the one that works best for you.

An ebook of the Cite Them Right referencing guide is available through the library catalogue:

The Cite Them Right guide includes various referencing styles. See the following relevant sections for citing and referencing in your assignments at Shannon College:

  • Section A - What is referencing?
  • Section B - Collecting evidence to use in your work
  • Section C - Reading, listening and taking notes
  • Section D - How to cite sources
  • Section E - Using other people's work in your writing: quoting, paraphrasing and summarising 
  • Section F - How to reference
  • Section G - Harvard referencing style

This quick guide provides referencing examples of some of the more frequent types of sources used. As this list is not exhaustive of all types of sources, if a type of source you are looking for is not included below have a look at either the Interactive Guide or Cite Them Right ebook above.

Citing and referencing has two components: the in-text citation at the point in your work where you have used the source and then the full reference for the source in your Reference List at the end of your paper.

In-text citation

  • Located at the point in your work where you have used the source
  • Include the author's surname and year of publication
  • Include the page number for direct quotes

Reference List

  • Located at the end of your paper on a new page
  • Include further details of the source depending on the type
  • List the references in alphabetical order by the author surname
  • Only include a reference for a once in the Reference List no matter how many times you use it in-text

Paraphrasing Examples

People write online reviews for a variety of reasons, including the desire to share a positive event, and it is not true that it is only those who want to complain who do so (O'Connor, 2020).

OR

O'Connor (2020) argues that there are a variety of reasons why people write online reviews and that reviews are not just inspired by the desire to complain.

Direct Quotation Examples

"Whilst it is easy to imagine the relationship between job satisfaction and labour turnover, the relationship between job satisfaction and commitment is more complex" (Riley, 2019, p.53).

OR

Riley (2019, p. 53) states, "Whilst it is easy to imagine the relationship between job satisfaction and labour turnover, the relationship between job satisfaction and commitment is more complex".

Book

Hayes, J. (2018) The theory and practice of change management. 5th edn. London: Palgrave.

eBook

Bright, S., Cortes, A., Hartmann, E., Parboteeah, K.P., Pierce, J., Reece, M.,  Shah, A., Terjesen, S., Weiss, J., White, M., Gardner, D., Lambert, J., Leduc, L., Leopold, J., Muldoon, J. and O’Rourke, J. (2019) Principles of management. Available at: https://openstax.org/details/books/principles-management (Accessed: 6 July 2023).

Chapter of an edited book

Ben Tahar, Y., Haller, C., Massa, C. and Bédé (2018) 'Designing and creating tourism experiences: adding value for tourists', in M. Sotiriadis (ed.) The Emerald handbook of entrepreneurship in tourism, travel and hospitality. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 313-328.

Journal article

Buhalis, D. and Leung, R. (2018) 'Smart hospitality—Interconnectivity and interoperability towards an ecosystem', International Journal of Hospitality Management, 71, pp. 41-50. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2017.11.011

Magazine article

Kotter, J. (2007) 'Leading change: why transformation efforts fail', Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2007/01/leading-change-why-transformation-efforts-fail (Accessed: 4 July 2023).


Newspaper article

Paul, M. (2022) 'A top tip for hospitality employers: treat your staff as well as you can', The Irish Times, 21 January. Available at: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/a-top-tip-for-hospitality-employers-treat-your-staff-as-well-as-you-can-1.4781605 (Accessed: 5 July 2023).

Webpage

Crowe Ireland (2023) Using share schemes to attract and retain employees. Available at: https://www.crowe.com/ie/insights/using-share-schemes-to-attract-and-retain-employees (Accessed: 4 July 2023).

Reports and documents found on websites

World Tourism Organization (2022) Baseline report on climate action in tourism. Available at:  https://doi.org/10.18111/9789284423965

Online video

RSA Animate (2010) Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us. 1 April. Available at: https://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc (Accessed: 6 July 2023).

Social media posts

Prosser, D. (2021) 'If we are training AI on available digitised material then it will learn from Victorian men - with all of their C19th attitudes!' [Twitter] 10 May. Available at: https://twitter.com/RLUK_David/status/1391686254731960321 (Accessed: 6 July 2023).
 

Author(s) Name

  • In-text - Cite the surname and year of publication only, do not include initials in your in-text citation.
  • Two authors - use the surnames linked by 'and'
  • Three authors - use the surnames with the second and third author surnames linked by 'and'
  • Four or more authors - use the first author's surname and et al. (formatted in italics)
  • Sources with the Same Author & Year - Use letters to distinguish between your in-text citations. For example, your first citation would look like (Newbigging, 2023a) and the second citation would then be (Newbigging, 2023b)
  • Organisation/Company as Author - For material produced by an organisation, company or institutional author, cite the name of the organisation
  • No Author - Where no author is named, but you still regard the source as reputable enough to use, cite the title

Reference List Order

  • List your references alphabetically by author surname. Do not number your references or list them in the order in which you have cited them. 
  • Only include one reference per source so even if you have cited a particular source in two or three parts of your work, it only gets one entry in your reference list.
  • If you have used two sources by the same author that were published in the same year, you will have to use letters to distinguish between your in-text citations and then you use those letters to identify the references in your reference list.

Author's Referring to Other Authors (Secondary Referencing)

When you are reading a source where an author is referring to another author, it is important to consider how to use the information and how to reference it. Consider the following first:

  • Try to locate the original source of information so you can read and reference it directly
  • Avoid using the information if you have not found the original source to read it yourself
  • Try to find another passage of text that does not refer to other authors so that you can credit the main authors of the source you're reading directly.

If the options above are not possible and the information is essential, you can reference as follows:

  • In-text - Jones et al. (cited in Smith, 2023) outlined that...
  • Reference List - Only include a full reference for the source that you accessed directly, in the case above, a full reference for Smith (2023) would be included in the reference list

Download the Shannon Library Harvard Referencing Guide below: