Library

Processing information

SLD provide Academic writing and study advice for UG and PGT students.  These include how to engage with literature structure essays and form arguments.  Classes run throughout the semester, and you can attend as many or as few as you want.

SLD also provide courses and online resources for PhD and MRes Students on research integrity and managing research data.

Managing information (referencing)

Referencing is the acknowledgement of items you have read and used while creating a written piece of work. When writing an essay, report, or dissertation, you must cite the sources you use, paraphrase, or quote from.

 Citing accurate references is important:

• To give credit to concepts and ideas from other authors
• To provide evidence of the extent of your reading
• To use other work to support the arguments you make
• To allow your reader to locate cited references easily
• To help you avoid plagiarism

There are links to reference style guides on the library website. This includes OSCOLA which is a commonly used system of referencing for law.  Their pages have detailed guides on citations for all sorts of legal sources including cases, primary and delegated legislation, books, journals and legal encyclopaedia.

EndNote can be used to manage and cite information. You may also find this guide useful:

• using EndNote for legal citations

Keeping up to date

It is important to keep up to date with published literature and information in your research area, but this can be challenging as the information ecosystem is vast and there is so much information being created, shared, and published. There are tools that you can use to help.

• Twitter and blogs. Even if you don’t tweet, you can use Twitter to follow people that publish or talk about things related to your research or study.  You can subscribe to blogs so that you receive new posts.
• Table of content (TOC) alerts Set up TOC alerts for the journals that publish in areas relevant to your research or that have been recommended to you. See JournalTOCS
• You can set up search alerts in databases so that new content matching your search is emailed to you. This is a common feature in research databases.  In Westlaw you can create case alerts and use their current awareness service to stay up to date. Find out more under Finding secondary sources
• You can also set up citation alerts so that you receive notification when a document or article is cited. Databases like Scopus and Web of Science have this feature. You can also do this from some publisher’s websites.