67 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality however, and the research in a paper, like the argument, is the author’s own, so you are the only one who can truly judge when a citation of any given source is appropriate. In many cases you are also the only one among your first readers (including proofreaders, student assistants, colleagues and that all-important journal editor) who has access to the complete bibliographical information for your references. It is your responsibility as an academic or scientific author to record your references with absolute integrity and precision, and getting them right is well worth the effort, not only because sound references are a quality of sound scholarship, but also because the consequences can be unpleasant for both the author and the journal if the bibliographical details in a paper, and worse yet the intellectual use of sources, are misrepresented or simply wrong. So you should begin by recording your sources and every aspect of the use you make of them accurately and thoroughly. This is a process best achieved by keeping detailed, accurate and up-to-date records during the design, research and trial stages of your study. Such records will give you the raw material you need to build your reference list and effectively connect your in-text citations to the sources the list includes. Journal guidelines should then be read with extreme care, paying close attention to all examples provided to determine exactly what style of referencing you should use. Any manuals or style guides recommended by the guidelines should also be consulted, especially if you find yourself dealing with an unusual source or one for which you can find in the journal guidelines neither an example nor precise instructions as to how to record it. Finally, you will need to do your best to provide all the information necessary in the correct order, format and position, and check it all with the utmost care (and ideally more than once with more than one set of eyes) for accuracy and consistency of spelling, dates, quotations, capitalisation, punctuation, fonts, abbreviations and so on. PARt II: PRePARIng, PResentIng And PolIsHIng YoUR woRk