This guide © 2025 by UCL - Library Skills is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
When using other peoples' work to inform your assignment, it's critical that you understand how to acknowledge your sources and to cite and reference correctly. This section will cover:
You might want to consider using reference management software to manage the sources you use. Our guides will help you evaluate the options and what might work best for you.
Our guide to Referencing, citations and avoiding plagiarism will give you all the information you need to get you citing your sources accurately with the citation style of your choice.
When working on assignments, it's important to understand some of the basic principles behind copyright, which restricts what you can do lawfully with someone else's work, including making copies and using extracts of other people's work in your own work, such as through 'fair dealing'. Find out more in our guide to copyright for students.