IFRA training workshop: "Quoting and Referencing in Academic Writing" by Dr Emilie Guitard and Dr Elodie Apard

This Tuesday 4th of April 2017, our second IFRA fellows research seminar took place at the IFRA Library. It followed a promising first session in March and gathered several Master and PhD students who had attended the previous session in addition to a few newcomers, from different departments of the University of Ibadan.

While the first seminar was dedicated to bibliographical research and the use of personal bibliographical database (like Zotero), this one focused on the craft of quoting and referencing in academic writing.

It began with a talk on plagiarism led by Dr. Emilie Guitard, IFRA Deputy Director. Dr. Guitard discussed the ethical and methodological issues related to the misappropriation of other authors’ works. She warned that plagiarism constitutes a very serious offense in academic circles and expounded the key methods to avoid unintentional and intentional plagiarism and cite properly in an academic production.

This talk was followed by IFRA Director Dr. Elodie Apard’s address on bibliographies. Dr. Apard dealt with the core rules of bibliographical writing. After mentioning the roles and types of bibliography, she presented some key bibliographical formats and distinguished between bibliography and sources.

After the lunch break, IFRA PhD student Sara Panata and Research Associate Ismaël Maazaz continued their exploration of Zotero, a free and user-friendly bibliographical management software (https://www.zotero.org/). They started with a reminder of Zotero’s key functionalities with the precious help of Adedeji Adebayo, Phd student in Peace and Conflict Studies. They showed how to use Zotero to cite works in their writings with different citation styles. Finally, they addressed the making of bibliographies and underlined how Zotero can save substantial amounts of time.

At the end of the session, students voiced their enthusiasm in taking part of our third seminar at the end of April. We are looking forward to it!