How to Read a Reference List Like a Pro

This guide will help you to quickly identify the difference between a book, book chapter, journal article, conference paper, standard, patent, technical report, thesis, government publication, or other type of document in a list of references. 

Sample list of references         

[indicates reference type]

1. ASTM. Standard guide for characterisation and testing of alginates as starting materials intended for use in biomedical and tissue-engineered medical products application, 2000; F: 2064–3000. [STANDARD]

2. Au, S.K. On the solution of first excursion problems by simulation with applications to probabilistic seismic performance assessment. PhD Thesis in Civil Engineering, EERL Report No. 2001-02, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; 2001. [THESIS AND TECHNICAL REPORT]

3. Department for Transport, 2001 Department for Transport, 2001. Road Accidents Great Britain. Tech. Rep., DfT, London. [GOVERNMENT PUBLICATION]

4. Fishman, G.S. Monte Carlo concepts, algorithms, and applications, Springer, New York (1996). [BOOK]

5. Gurley, K. and A. Kareem, Analysis, interpretation, modeling and simulation of unsteady wind and pressure data, J Wind Engng Ind Aerodyn (1997), pp. 657–669. [JOURNAL ARTICLE]

6. Hanson, E. A performance analysis of view materialization strategy, In: Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD International Conference of Management of Data, San Francisco, 1987. [CONFERENCE PROCEEDING]

7. IEEE. IEEE standard 1012-1998 for software verification and validation. An American national standard; 1998. [STANDARD]

8. Karamchandani, A. Bjerager P. Cornell C.A. Adaptive importance sampling. In Proceedings of the fifth ICOSSAR, San Francisco; 1989. p. 855–62. [CONFERENCE PROCEEDING]

9. Keigan M., Broughton, J., Tunbridge, R.J., 1999. Linkage of Stats19 and Scottish Hospital In-Patient Data—Analysis for 1980–1995. Tech. Rep. Report Number TRL420, Transport Research Laboratory. [TECHNICAL REPORT]

10. Machado, R.M., Parrillo, D.J., Boehme, R.P., Broekhuis, R.R., 1999. Use of a monolith catalyst for the hydrogenation of dinitrotoluene to toluenediamine. US Patent 6005143. [PATENT]

11. Rubinstein, R.Y. Simulation and the Monte-Carlo method, Wiley, New York, NY (1981). [BOOK]

12. Tinsley, Matthew R.; Fanselow, Michael S. Fear. In: Behavior of the laboratory rat: A handbook with tests. Whishaw, Ian Q.; Kolb, Bryan; London: Oxford University Press, 2005. pp. 410-421. [CHAPTER IN A BOOK]

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What They Look Like
Books are generally easy to spot in a list of references. They tend to be short.  Look at the example above number 4 and 11. Based on the style of the citation used, book references generally always contain the name of the author, title of the book, publisher, and place and date of publication.

How to Find in the Library
Use the JHU Libraries catalog to determine if the library owns that title. Do an alphabetical search by title or author.  If JHU does not own the book you can obtain a copy through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

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What They Look Like
One of the clues that something is a book chapter is there are usually two titles - the title of the chapter and the title of the book itself. Example number 12 above has the the chapter title Fear and the book title Behavior of the laboratory rat: a handbook with tests.  Also many reference citation styles will add the word IN to indicate the first title is a subset of a larger piece of work.

How to Find in the Library
Use the JHU Libraries catalog to determine if the library owns the book title - not the chapter title.  If JHU does not own the book you can obtain a copy of the chapter or the book through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

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What They Look Like
Based on the citation style journal articles can be pretty easy to spot because the volume, issue number, and page numbers can be easily spotted.  Sometimes the style has the journal name in italics as shown in example number 5 above.

How to Find in the Library
Search the JHU Libraries catalog for the JOURNAL NAME, not the title of the article.  Do an alphabetical search on journal name - you can often use the abbreviated version of the title to search.  The catalog will allow you to see if we have the print and/or the electronic version of the journal.

If JHU does not own the journal you can obtain a copy of the article through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

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What They Look Like
Somewhat like book chapters, you can recognize confernce proceedings by the amount of titles in the reference. Also look for the word IN followed by a title. If you're lucky the word conference will be somewhere in the title like it is in example 6. If the conference title is just a jumble of letters like example 11 shows, look for the word proceedings somewhere in the reference. Another clue is usually the name of the city where the conference took place is somewhere in the reference. 

How to Find in the Library
Now that you've identified the citation you want is a conference proceeding you need to see if the library owns that volume. You will need to look for the whole conference volume not just the individual paper. I'm not going to kid you, this is not always easy. Be prepared to try a number of approaches. Start at the JHU Libraries catalog. Use the Advanced Keyword search. Put in as much unique information as you can, limit by year when appropriate. Additional tips for finding conferences. If all else fails, ask a librarian for help.  

If JHU does not own the conference proceeding you can obtain a copy of the paper through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

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What They Look Like
Usually the first thing you'll notice about a standard reference is that there is no personal author. However, usually the name of the organization that is issuing the standard such as ASTM, IEEE, ANSI, ASME, ASCE, etc. takes the place of a personal author. In example 1 and 7 above, these standards are from ASTM and IEEE, respectively.

Often the standard is indicated by the letters of the issuing organization and the standard number for example IEEE 1012-1998. In this example, IEEE is the issuing organization, 1012 is the standard number, and 1998 is the year this standard was issued.  

How to Find in the Library
In much the same way confernce proceedings are not easy to find, standards can be difficult to find too. In the JHU Libraries catalog, the Advanced Keyword search is probably the best place to start.  Additonal tips on finding standards at JHU. If all else fails, ask a librarian for help.

Before buying a standard from the issuing organization give Interlibrary Loan (ILL) a try.

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What They Look Like
Usually the reference will have the word patent followed by a long string of numbers after it. It should also tell you what country issued the patent. Refrence 10 above is a patent issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Other countries also issue patents so make sure you know which country issued the patent in which you are interested.

How to Find in the Library
Based on where the patent was issued - the country of issue - and the age of the patent you can usually find them online. The US Patent and Trademark Office has a database you can search for US patents. Use the patent number in the proper search field. And you should get either the full image of the patent of the full text plus additional drawings and images. Additional tips on finding patents.

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What They Look Like
Usually you can identify technical reports because they'll have some type of numbering system to identify the report for example EERL 2001-02 refernce 2 or TRL420 reference 9. Often times the reference will even say "technical report."

How to Find in the Library
You can try an author or title search in the JHU Libraries catalog. Many of these reports are full text on the web sites of the issuing organization, especially if it's a government organization and teh report is fairly new (witin the past ten years).  Additonal tips on finding technical reports. 

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What They Look Like
Usually, it will say somewhere in the reference that the reference is either a thesis or dissertation.

How to Find in the Library
The Hopkins Libraries collect only thesis and dissertations from our own students. You can find those in the catalog by doing either an Alphabetical author or title search.  If the thesis dissertation is not from JHU, you can use Digital Dissertations and do a search on either author or title. Many of the recently submitted theses are full text and easily downloaded.

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What They Look Like
The biggest clue you'll notice is the name of the issuing organizaiton and country.  In example 3 above this report if from the Great Britian Department of Transportation. The name of the report is Road Accidents Great Britian. 

How to Find in the Library
You can start with the JHU Libraries catalog. Try a search by title. Also try looking up the governement agency on the Web and search for the report using Goolge or other search engine. For additional help at JHU contact one of the GPML librarians.

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