Help! Is My Reference List Actually a Bibliography in Disguise?
Simply googling ‘reference list or bibliography’ brings up an impressive list of respected sources explaining the difference between the two terms. Most clarify that a list showing all the sources used in writing a work is titled References, and a list of all the works the author may have consulted, as well as cited, is the Bibliography.
While this is substantially correct, there are nuances that are useful to know. Whether a list is titled References or Bibliography also depends on the referencing system being used. The main aim of referencing is to guide the reader to the source(s) of information in the text, and several established systems exist, and each has its own variants. However, the main points can be summed up as in the table below.
Main organisation points for the major systems of references in academic works
| Referencing System | In-text | Works referenced | Extra Works (not referenced in text) |
| Author-Title system | Superscript showing a number or symbol cue | In a list of references, showing full bibliographical details in the first instance, and then a short author-title reference in subsequent references to the same work.
A list of all works cited, organised in alphabetical order by the surname of the main author, and titled Bibliography, is placed at the end of the work. |
In a List of Further Readings that follows the Bibliography |
| Author-Date system | Author(s)’ surname and date of publication in brackets | Full bibliographical details in a list of references organised in alphabetical order, by the surname of the main author | In a Bibliography that contains the works cited as well as extra works the author may have consulted but not cited |
| Author-Number system | Number in square brackets on the line or as a superscript, showing the chronological place of the particular reference amongst all the works referenced | List of all the references, organised in the sequence in which they are cited in the work | No editorial comments or recommendations for further reading |
The Author-Title System
The Author-Title system is most handy for humanities because it permits the inclusion of editorial notes in the References. Although using these notes for bringing up extra, and loosely-related, topics of discussion should be avoided, they do provide a place for acknowledgements and short directions to/discussion of other sources that is most effective in this branch of academics.
Using an application like MS Word, it is easy to create the superior number in the text that is the cue for a footnote at the bottom of the page, or an end note at the end of the chapter, or at the end of the book. Cite full bibliographic details the firs time a source is cited, e.g., ‘Vincent A. Smith, The Early History of India: From 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), p. no.,’ and any comments the author may wish to provide such as ‘Smith’s views are opposed in many ways by the nationalist historians’.
It is best to title a list like this Notes and References rather than only References. Collect all the references at the end of the work in an alphabetical list, organised by the surname of the first or the main author, titled Bibliography.
In this system only, the author(s) may provide a list of Further Readings that follows the Bibliography and includes works that have not been cited, but may have been consulted, and are useful for background reading on the subject. A Further Readings list, when included in an authoritative source on a subject, is a beneficial resource for researchers.
The Harvard Style
In the Author-Date system (often called the Harvard style), it is the Bibliography, rather than a list of Further Readings, which carries titles that have not been cited in the text, and there is no list of Further Readings. This is because the in-text references in this system are signalled by the author’s surname and date of publication given in brackets, e.g., ‘This has been well-established by now (Smith, 1924)’. Full bibliographic details are given in a list of References, organised by the main author’s surname, in alphabetical order, at the end of the article or chapter.
The function of the Bibliography in this system is to collect all the references from chapter-end lists, add any extra works that have not been cited in text, which the author wishes to include, and provide them to the reader in one place. This system is favoured by the natural and social sciences.
Any editorial comments in the Author-Date system need a second system of notes with superior cues in the text and footnotes or end notes as in the Author-Title system.
The Vancouver System
When using the Author-Number, or Vancouver, system most common in medical and biomedical publishing, there can be no editorial comments or the listing of non-cited sources. It is meant for references only. In this system, the in-text references are cued by a number in brackets, e.g., ‘This has been well-established by now [1]. The evidence is presented in The Early History of India [2].’
The full bibliographic details of references should be in a list of References ordered by the sequence of their occurrence in the text, e.g.,
- Jones, M. title, place: publisher, date.
- Smith, V.A. title, place: publisher, date.
And a last point is that Bibliographies can also have short annotations, in which case they are called Annotated Bibliography. The purpose is to provide an evaluative analysis of the works cited in text and included in the Bibliography.
In compiling or editing any of the lists of sources, consistency and logical order are the most important aspects. While there are both free and paid tools to help organise the lists, collect all the relevant information about the sources at the time of consulting them to avoid sloppily evidenced writing and unconvinced readers later on.
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