How do I reference a book chapter… in the Cranfield Author-date style?
06/07/2015
Many of you might be wondering what the point is to this post. After all, a book’s a book, isn’t it? A chapter is just part of a book, so you just reference the book, don’t you? Simple. Maybe not so simple.
First of all, you need to check the book details to see if the book has authors or editors. If only authors are mentioned, then yes, it’s simple, just reference the book; but if it has editors, things are a little different. Read on…
So how do edited books differ from authored books?
Well, a book with authors was written by those authors. They planned out the content and they wrote the text. An edited book however is different. Within an edited book, each individual chapter has its own author(s) who actually produced the text. The role of the editor(s) is to choose or commission the content and to arrange it into book form.
Have a look at this book below. The people named on the cover are clearly marked as editors, not authors. Then, when you reach the contents page, you can see that each chapter has its own author(s).
When you cite a chapter within an edited book, your reference needs to reflect this. You need to include not only the book details but also the chapter details – so two sets of names will appear.
What should your Author-date reference include?
Your book chapter reference should include:
- Author(s) of the chapter (Surname, Initials)
- (Year of publication)
- ‘Title of chapter – inside single inverted commas’
- ‘in,’ plus editor(s) of book (Surname, Initials) (ed. or eds.)
- Title of book – in italics.
- Place of publication: Publisher,
- Page range.
- (Series, volume number if appropriate).
And how should it look?
So, if we were to reference one of the chapters above in the Author-date style, it would look like this. The text in black is the original book reference, and the surrounding blue text gives the chapter details…
French, R. (2008) ‘Sharing thoughts on leadership and friendship‘, in, James, K. and Collins, J. (eds.) Leadership Perspectives: Knowledge into Action. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 43-57.
If your chapter has no author details, follow the example below using the publisher in place of the author:
ASM International (1998) ‘Corrosion characteristics of carbon and alloy steels’, in, Davis, J. R. (ed.) Metals handbook: desk edition. 2nd edn. Cleveland: ASM International, pp. 301-306.
As always if you have any questions about referencing, please contact us.
Feature image from Pixabay. Available at: https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2016/06/01/06/26/open-book-1428428_960_720.jpg
Categories & Tags:
Leave a comment on this post:
You might also like…
The straw that might break the camel’s back?
The straw that might break the camel’s back? Lots of emphasis is placed on the importance of SMEs to the UK economy. Rightly so, given that they make up, according to UK government figures, 99.2% ...
Re-introducing Boardex for research on company boards and directors
Recently there have been some changes to the BoardEx service so here is a short reminder of what kinds of information the service holds. What is BoardEx? BoardEx provides global board and senior management information ...
Resource trial: SAGE Skills
Library Services staff have set up trial access to SAGE Skills until 2 October. The SAGE Skills suite of products is designed to support students to develop the academic and professional skills necessary to succeed in ...
Welcome to MIRC, the Management Information and Resource Centre
Welcome to all our new students! MIRC is located on the first floor in the School of Management's main Building 111. Please visit us and explore the services that MIRC has to offer. We are ...
Is it time to “call time” on talking sustainability?
Let me paint you a picture. You’re in the pub and you ask people around you what ‘sustainability’ means to them. It depends on the crowd, but you’d probably be met a combination of with ...
Research support webinar: Study skills – saving time with Mendeley
Mendeley is a free reference management software package that enables you to: store and organize your references; create reference lists and in-text citations; read, highlight and annotate PDFs. During this webinar you will be provided ...