One of the most important things you will need to know how to do when starting out at university is understanding academic references. Here’s a simple guide to help you decode book and journal (periodical) references.

How to interpret a reference for a book

Example book reference:

Olusoga, D. (2017) Black and British: a forgotten history. London: Pan Books.

1. Author(s): The first part of the reference is the author’s name. In this case, “Olusoga, D.” indicates the author is David Olusoga. If there are multiple authors, they will be listed in the order they appear on the book itself.
2. Year of Publication: The year the book was published is in brackets. Here, it’s “2017”.
3. Title of the Book: The title of the book is italicized. In this example, it’s “Black and British: a forgotten history”. Only the first word of the title and any proper nouns are capitalized.
4. Place of Publication: This is the city where the publisher is located. In this case, London.
5. Publisher: The name of the publishing company. Here, it’s “Pan Books”.

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