in Europe volume alone is usually given. Again the only safe
rule is to collect the fullest possible details from the outset.
Making a commitment to a particular referencing system
used to be a difficult decision. If you got it ‘wrong’ you could
find that you had a lot of extra work to do every time you
wanted to publish something, shifting the referencing over to
the format required by the particular journal you are targeting.
There was always a pretty dismal chance of picking an optimal
format here, since academic journals have remained quite stub-
bornly differentiated in the way that they handle references,
across countries and across disciplines. Somewhere along the
publishing line you are bound to have to redo your referencing
for one purpose or another.
However, much cheaper and easy-to-use PC software for stor-
ing notes and referencing on computer has now transformed
this problem. As early in your PhD studies as possible you
should consider adopting a well-known citations-handling
package like Endnoteas the basis for all your references.^13 Ideally
your university will provide one of these packages as part of its
central IT facilities, giving you free access when you work on
campus. But most doctoral students also work extensively from
a home PC now, so you will also need a copy of the same soft-
ware for home or personal use, which your university IT serv-
ices should be able to supply at a strongly discounted price.
So long as you can meet the cost, this initial investment will
normally pay off many times over in several ways. The package
will store all your citations in a single database. You enter the
full details only once but the packages can then deliver cita-
tions in many different alternative formats, enough to satisfy
even journals with the most esoteric requirements. You thereby
save enormously on retyping or copying across references
between other documents. With a central database, finding the
references you need for any chapter, conference paper or article
can also be accomplished at the touch of a button. In many
universities you can also now download book or article details
from the main library catalogue or Web-based bibliographic
systems straight into your referencing database, without any
retyping or editing on your part. Apart from their extra cost, the
only drawbacks of the packages are the learning costs of
mastering a new separate package and of making it work with
124 ◆AUTHORING A PHD