1. The Principle of Intellectual Property In the world of higher learning and university-level study, academics and researchers own the ideas they put into the public domain. When you reference in an academic assignment, essay or research article, you are acknowledging the source of the ideas - the author who originally published the material you are using. Your reference attributes the idea to its author (this is why referencing is sometimes talked about as “attribution”). Another way to put this is that referencing helps us to acknowledge the work of others. Any academic writing that is published in an academic journal or book is the result of extensive work - the labour of researching, writing, then having that work subjected to critical scrutiny and often reviewing and rewriting before final publication (see the discussion of ‘Peer-reviewed research’ in the Glossary for more on that). The task of researching, preparing and publishing academic work is significant work that often takes years to achieve. At the university level, referencing is about recognising and acknowledging these ideas. Referencing is the key way to trace the origins of ideas. University study involves not just reading or describing ideas, but also being aware of where the ideas came from, who developed the ideas, why and when. You will find that the ‘when’ is especially important, since ideas, models, theories and research practices always originate from a particular point in time and so are often shaped by the norms prevailing at that time and in that place of their origin. Referencing is important for us to locate or ‘place’ these ideas in their proper social, cultural and sometimes geographical contexts.