LibGuides at University of Reading
Jackie Skinner
Guidance on citing references for students at the University of Reading Examples of citations for different source materials
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A secondary reference is used when you are referring to a source which you have not read yourself, but have seen quoted or read about in another source. Where possible, you should always try to read the original of anything you wish to refer to; otherwise you are relying on the author who cited the reference to have interpreted it correctly and not taken it out of context. Use the reference list at the end of the source you are reading to find details of the reference and search for it using the search boxes below.

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Just type in the first author's surname and a few words from the title.

If you can't get hold of the original source you'll need to do a secondary reference and you should make clear that you are not using the original source. Only include the source you have used in your list of references following the guidance for citing that type of publication.

Different Schools/Departments might have different preferred ways of doing this, so do check any advice you are given or ask your course tutor if you are not sure. Otherwise, this is general guidance.

Examples

If the author quotes another source:

France (2003, quoted in Weingart et al., 2018, p. 24) provides evidence that hospitals use internal reporting procedures to identify...

If the author summarises another source

In-text citation: According to France (2003, cited in Weingart et al., 2018, p. 24), hospitals use internal reporting procedures to identify...

In both examples only the full reference for the article by Weingart et al. would be included in the reference list.

Table taken directly from another source

Tables should be sequentially numbered in your work with the title above the table - as in the following example in the Harvard referencing style. When referring to the table in your writing use the table number.

A citation should be included at the end of the table title and a full citation added to your reference list for the source.

Example of referring to a table in a sentence:

The macronutrient content of the diets used in the study is shown in Table 2.

Full details for reference list:

Mitchell, N.S. and Ard, J.D. (2021) 'Weight loss, lifestyle, and dietary factors in cardiovascular diseases in African Americans and Hispanics', in Ferdinand, K.C., Taylor, H.A. and Rodriguez, C.J. (eds) Cardiovascular disease in racial and ethnic minority populations. Cham: Humana Press, pp. 167-182.

Table you have compiled yourself from multiple sources

If you are taking information from multiple sources and compiling your own table you still need to acknowledge those sources.

Once again your table will need to be numbered in sequence with other tables in your work and have a title. For example:

Table 1: Turnover of Tesco PLC 2017-2021

Method 1

You can then add a, b, c etc next to the statistics in the table (or the columns depending on how your data is arranged, see the example linked below) and then add a matching lettered list of citations for the sources at the bottom of the table:

Sources: a Tesco PLC (2017); b Tesco PLC (2018) etc

Then in your reference list the end of your work, you would add the full reference for each source. For example:

Tesco PLC (2017) Annual report and financial statement. Available at: https://www.tescoplc.com/investors/reports-results-and-presentations/reports-archive/ (Accessed: 10 November 2022).

Tesco PLC (2018) Annual report and financial statement. Available at: https://www.tescoplc.com/investors/reports-results-and-presentations/reports-archive/ (Accessed: 10 November 2022).

See the following example where a & b has been added to the columns, as everything in that column has come from the same source: