importance of referencing in academic writing

• To avoid plagiarism. This is something you really want to do – something we cover in our lesson on academic authority (and will also be discussing in an upcoming blog post on plagiarism)
• To give credit to other researchers. And by doing this, you acknowledge their ideas and their hard work (again, something we cover in ouracademic authority lesson as well as the reporting verbs and ‘voice’ lesson – both of which you can find in our Academic Skills lessons); and
• To help your reader find the sources that you used – in case they are interested in further reading, etc.

The enormous importance of things like citations and referencing in academic work is hard to overstate. Long story short – you must include these in your academic writing. There are a number of reasons for including in-text citations and end of text references in your writing:

Citing your sources is important for a variety of reasons, including:
The easiest way to prevent plagiarism is by correctly noting your sources during research and citing your sources in your writing and presentations.

References:

http://guides.erau.edu/citestyle/importance
http://www.kent.ac.uk/ai/students/whatisreferencing.html