Q: Could you advise on how to write the reference for a published paper?
In the graduate school class, we got a homework assignment to write an abstract of certain literature. I wrote ‘AA explains it by referring to CC (BB, 1992) of BB.’ In this case, should I include ‘CC (BB, 1992) of BB’ in the Reference section, in addition to the literature itself?
Firstly, we have made some edits to your question for enhanced clarity. Also, it’s not clear if you mean an ‘abstract’ of literature or an ‘extract’ of literature. In scientific or academic publishing, an ‘abstract’ has a very specific meaning. It is a short paragraph appearing at the beginning of the paper (even before the introduction) providing the highlights of the paper. (You may learn more about abstracts here.) An extract is a portion of a document, and can be from anywhere in the document: the beginning, the middle, and the end.
Anyway, coming to your query, very simply, yes, you will need to include the discussed document in the Reference section. However, this has to be done not like ‘CC (BB, 1992) of BB,’ but in a very specific way. The reference has to include details such as the name(s) of the author(s), the title of the publication, the year of publication, and the publisher. There are various international styles for doing this. You may learn about a few styles in these resources:
- Getting the references right: citing books as a source of information
- Should I use the name of the first author or the corresponding author before "et al." in a reference?
- How should I cite a reference that I found in a paper?
Hope that helps. All the best for your assignment! :-)
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