IEEE Referencing

Referencing is the standard practice for acknowledging information sources in academic writing at universities. You must acknowledge any ideas, quotations or images you have used.  

IEEE Referencing Style, created by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, is a widely used referencing style for electrical, electronic and computing publications. In particular it is used in computing courses at Box Hill Institute.

There are two places that you need to write references in your assignments:

• In-text reference in the body of your assignment indicating where you have used information from an external source 
• Reference list at the end of your work providing details about each of these external sources

In-text Citation IEEE is a numeric style, where citations are numbered by the order they appear in the text. The first time a source appears in the work, it is given a number. The source retains this same number throughout the paper. The number appears on the line, in square brackets, inside the punctuation [#]. 

* The citation should appear directly following the reference. Do not wait to the end of long sentence with many ideas.  For example, "Peterson’s theory is widely used to justify exclusion [15]." and "Six animals suffered in Australia [2], but seventy in America [3]."

• There is generally no need to mention authors or dates in in-text citations, simply say, for example: “In [3] it is shown…” or “Recent studies [4,5,8] have indicated...”  It is not necessary to say "In reference [14] ..." rather use "In [14] ..."
• While not necessary, authors or dates can be shown if it is relevant to your text as per the following example: “As shown by Cookson [4] …” or “In contrast to [4, p. 2], it is evident that…". Use et al. when three or more names are given for a reference cited in the text.

• If citing a range of references (e.g. numbers 1-4), include all the numbers, e.g. [1], [2], [3], [4].

Paraphrasing

Putting the information and ideas from another’s work into your own works is called Paraphrasing. It allows you to demonstrate that you really understand the concepts being discussed. Simply changing a few words or rearranging the order the information appears in is not sufficient. 

Tips for successful paraphrasing

1. Carefully read the relevant resources, and note any key points that you wish to use separately
2. Note each source used for later reference
3. Without looking at the original material, write out the idea in your own words
4. Use quotation marks if you have included any direct quotes.

Direct Quotation

If you use the same wording as the source document, this is called a quotation. These must be enclosed within double quotation marks in your work, and the relevant page number/s given. For example: Experts agree that "full 3D stacking can be advantageous for processor applications" [7, p. 14]. 

Generally, it is preferable to try to put the information into your own words, and to reserve direct quotations either for including relevant facts and figures (that are not common knowledge) or for particularly memorable wording. 

• References are ordered as they appear in the in-text references (in order of citation, not in alphabetical order).
• The reference numbers are shown in square brackets on the left of the page, with the remainder of the reference spaced to the right of this.
• If there are more than six names listed, use the primary author’s name followed by et al.
• Use company/organisation name if author is unavailable.
• All references, including those ending with DOIs, will end with a period (full stop). The only exception is those ending with a URL.

Example

[1] J. M. Excell, How to Reference, 2nd ed. Melbourne, Australia: Text Publishing, 2018, pp. 27-33.

[2] L. Bass, P. Clements and R. Kazman, Software Architecture in Practice, 2nd ed. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 2003. pp. 15-64. [Online]. Available: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

[3] R. Chui, “IEEE style,” IEEE Trans. Cloud Comput., vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 6-10, Mar. 2005.

[4] W. P. Nygen, “Fast Running on Oil,” Opt. Lett., vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 215–418, Feb. 1990. Accessed: Dec. 7, 2019. [Online]. Available: http://running.edu/c.php?20.1104

[5] M. Car et al., “Speedy Retrieval,” IEEE THz Sci. Technol., vol. 8, no. 2, p. 20, Nov. 2004. Accessed: Feb. 9, 2020, doi: 10.1107/TTHZ.2016.2544155.