Editorial Manual | Footnotes and other references

X.   Reference lists and bibliographies

     A.   Author-date system
     B.   Keyed references
     C.   General bibliographies and lists of sources

Reference lists and bibliographies are placed at the end of the text, normally after any annexes. In a publication containing articles or chapters by different authors, a separate reference list may be inserted after each article or chapter.  

 

A.    Author-date system

          How to cite sources
          Author-date reference lists
          Style of entries in the list
          Order of entries in the list
          Author-date references in explanatory footnotes

The author-date system can be used instead of footnotes in publications and technical reports to cite the sources used in preparing the text.

How to cite sources

A source is cited by giving the last name of the author or editor and the year of publication in the text within parentheses. The full reference is included in an alphabetical list placed at the end of the text (see Author-date system/Author-date reference lists). More than one work can be cited in a single parenthetical reference.

Example:

Text references:

Available studies have shown that about 70 per cent of income inequality among all the people of the world is explained by differences in incomes between countries and 30 per cent by inequality within countries (Bourguignon and Morrisson, 2002; Milanovic, 2005).

Corresponding entries in reference list:

Bourguignon, François, and Christian Morrisson (2002). Inequality among world citizens, 1820–1992. American Economic Review, vol. 92, No. 4 (September).

Milanovic, Branko (2005). Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

When the author’s name is mentioned directly in the text, only the year is given in parentheses.

Example:

Waldon (1998) found that infant mortality is ….

Specific parts of a source. Citation of a specific part of a source (paragraph, table, chapter or page) is included in the text reference.

 

Example:

Text references:

In developing countries, the proportion of older people living alone was much smaller (United Nations, 2005b, table II.3).

It has been estimated that by 2020 the United States could face a shortage of 800,000 nurses and 200,000 doctors (Garrett, 2007, p. 15).

Corresponding entries in reference list:

Garrett, Laurie (2007). The challenge of global health. Foreign Affairs, vol. 86, No. 1 (January/February), pp. 14–38.

United Nations (2005b). Living Arrangements of Older Persons around the World.

Institutional authors. In references to United Nations publications, the United Nations is given as author. When other organizations are given as author, the names can be abbreviated in the parenthetical text reference if they have been defined in the text or a list of abbreviations at the beginning of the text. The names are spelled out in the corresponding entries in the reference list.

 

Example:

Text references:

Since a country’s loss of access to markets for international banks or bond markets spreads to other sources of financing, an across-the-board market closure may follow (United Nations, 2005).

One study found an average cost of lost output of 18.8 percentage points of GDP per crisis during 26 banking and currency crisis episodes in emerging market economies in Latin America and Asia during the 1980s and 1990s (IMF, 1998, table 15).

Corresponding entries in reference list:

International Monetary Fund (1998). World Economic Outlook: Financial Crises – Causes and Indicators. Washington, D.C.

United Nations (2005). World Economic and Social Survey 2005: Financing for Development.

Note: "United Nations publication" is omitted when the United Nations is given as author, as shown in the previous example.

United Nations masthead documents are normally cited in the text by document symbol (see United Nations sources/Masthead documents) and need not be included in the reference list.

Sources of figures and tables. The source of a figure or table can be given in full in a source note directly below the figure or table (see Tables/Notes to tables) and omitted from the reference list or it may be cited in author-date style, as shown in the following example, and included in the reference list. The same style should be followed throughout a publication.

Example:

Author-date source note below table:

Source: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (2005).

Corresponding entry in reference list:

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (2005). Trade and Development Report 2005: New Features of Global Interdependence.

Author-date reference lists

The alphabetical reference list is placed at the end of the publication after any annexes and is normally headed "References". It must include complete reference information for every author-date citation given in the text.

Additional sources consulted by the author may be included in the list if they provide important supplementary information. United Nations masthead documents, which are cited by document symbol in a text note, are not normally included in the list but can be included when necessary.

The entries in the list are not numbered. They are arranged alphabetically by the last name of the author or editor. A work by an institutional author is alphabetized by the first word in the full official name, excluding articles.

Style of entries in the list

The elements included in an author-date reference are the same as those in a footnote reference (see United Nations sources and Outside sources) but the style of the entries in a reference list differs from footnote style in several ways:

  • The name of the author or editor is inverted (last, first and middle names).
  • The year of publication immediately follows the author and is given in parentheses.
  • Titles of articles, internal documents, research reports, unpublished works and material from a website 50 pages or less are not enclosed in quotation marks.
  • Publishing data and symbols are not enclosed in parentheses. A colon separates the place of publication and the publisher.
  • The main elements in the reference (e.g. author/date, title of article, title of book and publishing data) are separated by a period (full stop). The title, volume and issue of a periodical are separated by commas, with the month or season in parentheses when there is an issue number.

In a multi-author work, the names of the second and third authors are not inverted. For works by more than three authors, the name of the first author is followed by "and others".

When an organization is both author and publisher (i.e. no separate publishing office is indicated on the title page), the name is given in the author's place and omitted from the publishing data. The name of the organization is normally spelled out, not abbreviated.

The first line of each reference in the list is typed at the left margin. Subsequent lines are indented at least two spaces and blocked.

Examples:

Book, one author:

Milanovic, Branko (2005). Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Book, two editors; volume number and title:

Moran, Theodore H., and Gerald T. West, eds. (2005). International Political Risk Management, vol. 3, Looking to the Future. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

Book, more than three authors; part of a series:

Stiglitz, Joseph, and others (2006). Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization and Development. Initiative for Policy Dialogue Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

E-book:

Rao, J.N.K. (2005). Small Area Estimation. Wiley Series in Survey Methodology. New York: Wiley & Sons. E-book.

Publication, organization as author and publisher:

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (2000). Final Report of the World Education Forum, Dakar, Senegal, 26–28 April 2000. Paris.

United Nations publication:

United Nations (2007). World Economic and Social Survey 2007: Development in an Ageing World.

Note: "United Nations publication" is omitted when the United Nations is given as author.

United Nations masthead document:

United Nations, Security Council (2008). Final report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 12 December. S/2008/773.

Note: The name of the intergovernmental body to which the document was submitted is given after "United Nations" and before the year. Documents submitted by special rapporteurs are normally listed with the United Nations as author; the name of the special rapporteur appears in the descriptive title of the report, as shown in the following example:

United Nations, Human Rights Council (2008). Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Sudan, Sima Samar. 2 September. A/HRC/9/13.

Publication by a United Nations regional commission, issued as a United Nations publication:

United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (2005). The Millennium Development Goals: A Latin American and Caribbean Perspective. United Nations publication.

Publication by a United Nations specialized agency, issued as a United Nations publication:

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (2005). Trade and Development Report 2005: New Features of Global Interdependence. United Nations publication.

Publication by a United Nations programme, published externally:

United Nations Development Programme (2006). Human Development Report 2006: Beyond Scarcity – Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis. Basingstoke, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan.

Article by individual authors in a United Nations publication:

Bovenkerk, Frank, and Bashir Abou Chakra (2005). Terrorism and organized crime. Forum on Crime and Society, vol. 4, Nos. 1 and 2. United Nations publication.

Government publication with ministry or department as author and publisher:

Namibia, Ministry of Labour (2001). Namibia Labour Force Survey 1997. Windhoek.

Government publication with ministry or department as author and separate publisher:

United Kingdom, Department for Education and Skills (2007). Care Matters: Time for Change. London: Stationery Office.

Government publication by individual author:

Stanecki, Karen A. (2004). The AIDS Pandemic in the 21st Century. United States Census Bureau,   International Population Reports, Series WP02-2. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.

Working paper or research report in a published series:

Straub, Stephane (2008). Infrastructure and growth in developing countries: recent advances and research challenges. Policy Research Working Paper, No. 4460. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

Article or chapter by individual authors in a book:

Calderón, César, and Luis Servén (2003). Latin America’s infrastructure in the era of  macroeconomic crises. In The Limits of Stabilization: Infrastructure, Public Deficits and Growth in Latin America, William Easterly and Luis Servén, eds. Palo Alto, California:  Stanford University Press; Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

Article in a periodical:

Bloom, David E. (2007). Governing global health. Finance and Development, vol. 44, No. 4 (December).

Barr, Nicholas, and Peter Diamond (2006). The economics of pensions. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring), pp. 15–39.

Note: Inclusive page numbers for articles cited as a whole are not required but may be retained if the author has consistently supplied them.

Article in a newspaper:

Rana Husseini (2007). Women leaders attempt to bridge East-West cultural divide. Jordan Times, 9 May.

Article on a website:

European Commission (2017). Education and training in Europe: inequality remains a challenge, 9 November.

Online database:

United Nations (2017). National Accounts Main Aggregates Database. Available at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/Introduction.asp. Accessed on 10 January 2018.

Unpublished paper:

Salagaev, Alexander (2002). Juvenile delinquency. Paper presented at the Expert Group Meeting on Global Priorities for Youth. Helsinki, October.

Public statement:

Gurría, Angel (2007). Water: how to manage a vital resource. Statement to the OECD Forum 2007. Paris, 14 May.

Interview:

Hassan, Osman Ahmed (2003). Interview by Panel of Experts on Somalia. London, 4 January.

Note: Unpublished interviews and personal communications are not included in reference lists unless the information is available to readers. In the preceding example, the information is available for consultation in the files of the United Nations Secretariat.

Order of entries in the list

The entries in the reference list are arranged alphabetically by the last name of the author or editor. A work by an institutional author is alphabetized by the first word in the full official name, excluding articles.

Several works by same author. When the list includes more than one work by the same author, the author’s name is given in full in the first entry. A 10-space line replaces the name in subsequent entries. Works by the same author are arranged by year of publication, the earliest first. Works by the same author published in the same year are arranged alphabetically by title and identified by lowercase letters placed after the year, as shown in the last two entries below.

Examples:

Rodrik, Dani (2005). Growth strategies. In Handbook of Economic Growth, vol. 1 A. Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf, eds. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

__________ (2007). One Economics, Many Recipes: Has Globalization Gone Too Far? Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

United Nations (2005a). Report on the World Social Situation 2005: The Inequality Predicament.

__________ (2005b). World Economic and Social Survey 2005: Financing for Development.

Note: The parenthetical references in the text for the last two entries would be (United Nations, 2005a) and (United Nations, 2005b).

Co-authors. A single-author reference is listed before a multi-author reference beginning with the same first author. When the first author is listed with a series of different co-authors, the first author’s name is repeated each time the co-author changes. The entries in the list are arranged alphabetically by the last name of the first author, then the last names of the co-authors.

When the list includes more than one work by the same co-authors, the references are arranged by year of publication, the earliest first. The names of the co-authors are given in full in the first entry. A 10-space line replaces the names in subsequent entries.

Examples:

Brooks, Julia (2002)….

__________ (2007)….

Brooks, Julia, Richard Duarte and Susan Heller (2004)….

Brooks, Julia, and Marta Sandoval (1998)….

__________ (2001)….

Note: The 10-space line in the last entry replaces “Brooks, Julia, and Marta Sandoval”.

No author. Sources with no author or editor are alphabetized by the first word in the title of the work, excluding articles. Short titles are used in the parenthetical reference in the text.

Example:

Entry in reference list:

Africa achieving healthy and steady growth rate (2007). World Bank News, 14 November. Available at http://go.worldbank.org/6AJB33NOF0.

Text reference: (Africa, 2007)

Author-date references in explanatory footnotes

Explanatory footnotes in publications and reports can include author-date references. Complete references are included in the reference list.

Example:

1 At the same time, there is evidence of a reverse trend as an increasing number of highly educated women are dropping out of the labour force to care for their young children, either for short periods or until their children reach school age (Mosisa and Hipple, 2006).

 

B.   Keyed references

Keyed references can be used instead of footnotes or author-date references to cite the sources used in preparing a publication or technical paper, in particular when the same sources are cited repeatedly. They are not used in masthead documents. When explanatory footnotes are used in a text with keyed references, asterisks and other symbols, not numbers or letters, are used as the footnote indicators.

Citations in the text. Arabic numbers in square brackets (e.g. [1] ) are placed in the text after the item or statement being referenced. They are placed inside any punctuation marks (e.g. comma, colon or period). The numbers in the text refer to the numbered entries in a keyed reference list containing full details of the works cited. The sources are numbered sequentially in the text and a number can be repeated each time the same source is cited.

Keyed reference lists. The keyed reference list is placed at the end of the text after any annexes and is headed “References”. The references in the list are numbered and listed in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text, not alphabetically. The numbers in the list are followed by a period and are not enclosed in brackets. The references should be given in footnote style. For instructions on footnote style, see United Nations sources and Outside sources.

Example:

Text reference:

Canada has also stepped up enforcement efforts, seizing 1.1 million cannabis plants per year between 1998 and 2002, a sixfold increase over 1993 [120].

Corresponding entry in the reference list:

120. Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Drug Situation in Canada: 2004 (Ottawa, Criminal  Intelligence Directorate, 2004).

Citing works not referred to in the text. Works consulted by the author but not referred to in the text may be given in a separate alphabetical reference list placed after the keyed reference list and headed "Additional sources".

 

C.   General bibliographies and lists of sources

          Style of entries
          Order of entries
          Lists of sources divided into sections

When it is not possible or appropriate to use footnotes and text notes or the author-date or keyed reference systems, the sources used in preparing a publication or report can be listed alphabetically in a general bibliography or list of sources. The list is placed at the end of the text after any annexes and can be headed "Bibliography" or "Sources". The heading "Sources" is generally preferred in masthead documents.

The entries in the list are arranged alphabetically by the last name of the author or editor. A work by an institutional author is alphabetized by the first word in the full official name, excluding articles. The entries in the list are not numbered.

Style of entries

The entries in a general bibliography or list of sources are normally styled in the same way as an author-date reference (see Reference lists and bibliographies/Author-date system/Style of entries in the list) except that the year of publication is given with the publishing data, not in parentheses immediately after the name of the author.

The first line of each entry is typed at the left margin and subsequent lines are indented at least two spaces and blocked.

Examples:

Book:

Milanovic, Branko. Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Book, two editors; volume number and title:

Moran, Theodore H., and Gerald T. West, eds. International Political Risk Management, vol. 3, Looking to the Future. Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2005.

Book, more than three authors; part of a series:

Stiglitz, Joseph, and others. Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization and Development. Initiative for Policy Dialogue Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

E-book, part of a series:

Rao, J.N.K. Small Area Estimation. Wiley Series in Survey Methodology. New York: Wiley & Sons, 2005. E-book.

Publication, organization as author and publisher:

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Final Report of the World Education Forum, Dakar, Senegal, 26–28 April 2000. Paris, 2000.

United Nations publication:

United Nations. Report on the World Social Situation 2005: The Inequality Predicament. 2005.

United Nations masthead document:

United Nations, Security Council. Final report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 12 December 2008. S/2008/773.

Note: The name of the intergovernmental body to which the document was submitted is given after "United Nations". Documents submitted by special rapporteurs are normally listed with the United Nations as author; the name of the special rapporteur appears in the descriptive title of the report, as shown in the following example:

United Nations, Human Rights Council. Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Sudan, Sima Samar. 2 September 2008. A/HRC/9/13.

Publication by a United Nations regional commission, issued as a United Nations publication:

United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. The Millennium Development Goals: A Latin American and Caribbean Perspective. United Nations publication, 2005.

Publication by a United Nations specialized agency, issued as a United Nations publication:

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Trade and Development Report 2005: New Features of Global Interdependence. United Nations publication, 2005.

Article by individual authors in a United Nations publication:

Leggett, Ted, and João Salgueiro. The motivations of elephant poachers in the Central African Republic. Forum on Crime and Society, vol. 9, Nos. 1 and 2. United Nations publication, 2018.

Government publication with ministry or department as author and publisher:

Namibia, Ministry of Labour. Namibia Labour Force Survey 1997. Windhoek, 2001.

Working paper or research report in a published series:

Straub, Stephane. Infrastructure and growth in developing countries: recent advances and research challenges. Policy Research Working Paper, No. 4460. Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2008.

Article or chapter by individual authors in a book:

Calderón, César, and Luis Servén. Latin America’s infrastructure in the era of macroeconomic crises. In The Limits of Stabilization: Infrastructure, Public Deficits and Growth in Latin America, William Easterly and Luis Servén, eds. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press; Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2003.

Article in a periodical; volume, number and date:

Murshed, S. Mansoob. Civil war, conflict and underdevelopment: an introduction. Journal of Peace Research, vol. 39, No. 4 (July 2002).

Article in a newspaper:

Rana Husseini. Women leaders attempt to bridge East-West cultural divide. Jordan Times, 9 May 2007.

Article on a website:

European Commission. Education and training in Europe: inequality remains a challenge, 9 November 2017.

Order of entries

The entries in a general bibliography or list of sources are arranged alphabetically by the last name of the author or editor. When the list includes more than one work by the same author, the author’s name is given in full in the first entry. A 10-space line replaces the author’s name in subsequent entries, which are arranged alphabetically by title, not chronologically. Initial articles are included in the title but do not affect the alphabetizing.

Co-authors. A single-author reference is listed before a multi-author reference beginning with the same first author. Multi-author references are arranged alphabetically by the last names of the first author and the co-authors. When there is more than one work by the same co-authors, the entries are arranged alphabetically by title, not chronologically. Initial articles are included in the title but do not affect the alphabetizing.

Lists of sources divided into sections

A list of sources can be divided into sections when it contains different kinds of material that cannot be presented easily in a straight alphabetical list or when it is helpful to distinguish between different kinds of sources. For example, a list that includes a number of United Nations documents, newspaper articles, transcripts of interviews and books published externally can be divided into sections with appropriate headings and explanatory headnotes when necessary. The entries within each section can be listed alphabetically by author or title, chronologically or in another form that is logical and useful to readers.