This guide provides advice on how to cite sources in an academic presentation. Click on the links below to read each part.

The Purpose of Citations in a Presentation

How to Cite in a Presentation

Sample Video Showing Citations in an Academic Presentation

 

The Purpose of Citations in a Presentation

There are different reasons for citing a source and some of the foremost are:

• To acknowledge the source
• To add credibility to your presentation
• To highlight the authoritativeness of a source
• To provide a reference for your audience

 

To acknowledge the source

Effective presenters not only show source information on a slide, they also refer to the source orally. This example of a direct quotation shows a slide with the author’s surname, year of publication and page number.

 

Information shown on the slide

Definition of Chi “the energy flow that connects all things” Rossbach (1983, p. 46)

 

Information cited orally

The two examples below show how a speaker can cite a source differently.

 

Example 1

The speaker includes the author’s name, title of the book, but not the year of publication or page number.

“According to Sarah Rossbach, the author of the book Fengshui: the Chinese art of placement, Chi is defined as…”

 

Example 2

The speaker does not directly cite the source, as the name of the author, year of publication and page number are not included.

“Chi has been defined as the energy flow that connects all things”

 

To add credibility to your presentation

Speakers often cite sources in order to support their arguments and add credibility to their presentation. Effective presenters sometimes establish the credibility of the source while they are citing the source rather than relying on the reference list. You can use the university affiliation to establish credibility.

“Stephen Smith from Cambridge University found that..."

 

To highlight the authoritativeness of the source

Oral citations often contain an evaluative comment on the author or publication to emphasise the importance or reliability, and add to the credibility of the source, e.g. well-known, seminal, original, famous, leading, and renowned.

"John Smith, a leading researcher in this area, found..."

 

To provide a reference for your audience

Oral citations should provide sufficient information to direct listeners to the relevant publication in the full reference list provided at the end of your presentation. Here the speaker includes the author’s surname, title of journal and year of publication.

“Wong’s 2010 study in the Journal of Language describes some of the problems that these hearing difficulties may cause…”

 

How to Cite in a Presentation

There are differences in the way that sources are cited in writing and in a presentation which affect what information is given and how. In a presentation, the speaker needs to consider what information is shown to the audience on a slide and what they say. Below are key considerations.

• Use of spoken language
• Use of author’s names
• Giving citation information in presentations
• Differences between what is shown on a slide and what is said
• Using your voice effectively to cite sources orally
• What sources to cite

 

Use of spoken language

There are often changes in word choice when giving oral citations. Formal academic reporting verbs that appear in written citations are often replaced with words used in spoken language which may be easier for the audience to understand. However, you should not use language that is too informal as an academic presentation should be formal in tone.

 

Notice that the speaker does not refer to the year of publication in the same way.

 

Use of author’s name

Referring to an author by their family name is often adopted in oral citations. However, some speakers provide full names to establish the difference between the publication and the author.

Sarah Rossbach is the name of the writer, while Rossbach (1983) is a reference to a publication.

 

Giving citation information in presentations

When citing sources, you should include key information about the source either orally or on your slides so that your audience can access the source. Here is a list of details that may be included.

• Name of author
• Type of source
• Year of publication
• Title of journal article, journal or book
• University affiliation of the author (if appropriate)

 

Example 1

Here is an oral citation with the key information highlighted.

"Smith in his 2011 article in the Journal of Psychology…”

• Type of source      article
• Year of publication      2011
• Title of journal      Journal of Psychology
• Name of author      Smith

 

Differences between what is shown on a slide and what is said

There are differences in what the audience needs to see and hear. Visual aids are used to support the speaker and help the audience to understand the presentation. Therefore, information such as year of publication and page numbers of quotes may appear on a slide, but may not be said.

The slide below focuses on key words of the citation that can help the audience understand the main point of the citation and includes the authors’ surnames and year of publication.

 

A) Text slide

What is shown:

Traditional view of developments in the Industrial areas of England Financing Financing Innovation Empire Transport Parliament Symons & Tolmie (1978)

What is said:

Below are three oral citations showing how the information shown on the visual aid can be cited orally. Notice how there are different ways to cite the information. The speaker may not include the year of publication or may cite the authors’ full names.

“According to Symons and Tolmie, there are five key areas…”

“Symons and Tolmie, in their 1978 article, Industrial Development Revisited, put forward five…”

“Tony Symons and Jim Tolmie at Oxford University outlined five areas…”

Speakers may refer to a reference shown on a visual aid, but not give information about the source. The two examples below (referring to the slide above) show how a speaker refers to a source without including a direct citation.

"The traditional way in the industrial revolution developed is based around these five features on this slide. Firstly, the development in financing…”

"These authors broke down the development into five key areas. Firstly, financing…”

 

B) B) Graphic slide

When referring to a graph, table or chart shown on a slide, the speaker should focus on highlighting what the information means and not just repeating what can be seen.

Example

The slide shows a chart comparing how many drug users were arrested at different stages of intervention in 2010.

What is shown:

Source: Wallace, B. (2010). Does Early Intervention work? New York Journal of Psychiatry 32 (10) pp.97-120.

What is said:

Below are four examples of how a speaker can refer to the information on the slide.

“As you can see from the bar chart showing Wallace’s findings, timely intervention does reduce the number of drug arrests.”

“Wallace 2010 published in the New York Journal of Psychiatry argues strongly that...”

“These results indicate that early interventions…”

“These numbers come from Ben Wallace at Colombia University and his findings show…”

 

5. Using your voice effectively in oral citations

When citing a source orally, it is not just what you say, but how you say it that is important. You should pause and stress to emphasise important source information, e.g. name, or year of publication.

This video features an experienced speaker and provides an example of using pause and stress to highlight important citation information.

Video
Click on the link to watch a clip of a speaker discussing language learning.

The examples below are taken from the video and show where the speaker pauses (//) and stresses key words (bold).

• “by the famous American Linguist //Noam Chomsky/ over the past fifty years.”
• “I will be referring to his // 2005 publication//The Minimalist Program”
• “In 2011//Joan Bresnan/published an article/called//Lexical Functional Grammar”

 

6. What sources to cite

Remember to only cite credible, well-researched sources. Below are examples of how to cite different sources.

Journal articles and books

“Ken Smith published a study on the impact this type of migration in 2016. He found that…”

“Wong’s 2010 study in the Journal of Language describes some of the problems that these hearing difficulties may cause…”

“Barnes and Crints, leading scholars in the development of this theory, show that …”

“In his 2011 book, Historical Development of Ore Mining in Thailand, Derek Diedricksen a leading researcher into South East Asian industrial development, argues that…”

“Tom Hope in his 2001 book, Variations in Thermals, first introduced the possibility of…”

 

Conference papers

“In last year’s Tokyo Conference on Language Testing, Kevin Yu and Michael Chow from the University of British Colombia presented a paper on...”

“Chen and Xi's talk at the Second London Interdisciplinary Conference in 2013 argued that this only occurs when...”

“Dan Hui's paper at E-Fest East 2017 examined the role of these reactions in three areas.”

 

Reliable websites

Only cite websites that provide reliable, well-researched content that is subject to the same rigourous review process as print versions of books and journals. Examples of such websites include, academic institutions, journals, governments, NGOs, such as the United Nations. Provide the name of the site, year of publication (if possible), the author's name and the credibility of the source.

“On their website, UNESCO emphasise their commitment to sustainable development”.

“The Hong Kong tendering system which is explained on the Hong Kong Government website requires the following specifications for non-ferrous metals.”

“The APA website describes how this citation style was first developed in 1929 by a group of social scientists looking to improve standards of communication.”

 

Sample Video Showing Citations in an Academic Presentation

Here is a video showing how a speaker incorporates citations into a PhD Oral Defence.

a clip of PhD candidate Beth Karlin speaking about home energy management in her oral defence. The script has been annotated to illustrate how sources were used in the presentation.

The clip can be found between 4.21-5.32 minutes on the video.

Here is a transcript of the clip.