Referencing and using sources - Why and when - When to reference

You need to reference whenever you:

• use a direct quote
• give a summary of someone else's ideas
• paraphrase someone else's ideas
• copy information (such as a picture, a table or some statistics).

You do not need to reference when you:

• are using your own ideas or work that you have not submitted or published before
• are using commonly known facts or ideas, e.g. E=mc² or 'Picasso was a pioneer of cubism'

How to use the templates in QUT cite|write to create in-text citations and references

How to use QUT cite|write to check the references generated by databases and other tools