Check Your References With Me | A Practical Reference Audit for Your Thesis or Article

Hey, Sandra from GradGuide here. I’m currently working on one of my own academic articles, and my reference list needed some attention. So rather than creating a perfect demonstration document, I recorded myself doing what I would normally do: working through the reference list and checking which sources are actually cited in the article. I used a very simple system: Green = I could confirm the source is used in the text. Yellow = the source is sitting in my reference list, but I could not find it in the current version of the article. The yellow references are not necessarily wrong, and I am not deleting them yet. They represent another piece of work. My next step will be to go back to those articles and ask: Why did I collect this source in the first place? Does it add something that my argument still needs? If it does, I need to read it again and incorporate it meaningfully into the article. If it does not, it should come out of the reference list. I think this is an important distinction. Reference checking is not only about formatting. Your reference list should reflect the literature you have actually drawn on to build the work. This is also not a polished “here is the perfect way to do it” demonstration. It is me working through my own article and making decisions as I go — which is exactly how research tends to happen. I experimented with Canva’s AI voiceover for this video, so while the research process and work you see on screen are mine, the voice you hear is not actually mine. 🙂 In the next video, I’ll work through the yellow references, open the original articles and decide which ones need to be incorporated and which ones no longer belong in the paper. If you want to work alongside me, open your own document and reference list and start with one question: Is every source in my reference list actually being used in my text? GradGuide provides practical research support for Master’s and PhD researchers while keeping the researcher in control of the work. Explore GradGuide: https://www.gradguide.co.za/ Create a free GradGuide account: https://gradguide-dashboard.web.app/ #AcademicWriting #PostgraduateResearch #ReferenceList #ResearchWriting #PhDResearch #MastersResearch #GradGuide Gymnopedie No 1 by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...