• 3-minute read
• 31st October 2017

Oxford Referencing – Citing Conference Papers

Conference papers can be useful when writing an essay. But to use a conference paper in your work, you need to know how to cite it.

In this post, then, we look at how to cite published and unpublished conference papers using Oxford referencing.

Footnote Citations

As with any source in Oxford referencing, regardless of the version, you will indicate citations with superscript numbers in the main text. For instance:

Usually at the end of a sentence, like this.¹

Source information then goes in a footnote at the bottom of the page. For published conference papers, the format is roughly the same as for a chapter from an edited book. You would therefore provide these details:

^n. Initial(s). Surname, ‘Title of Paper’, Title of Conference Proceedings, Publisher, City of Publication, Year of Publication, page number(s).

If you’re citing an unpublished paper (e.g. from a conference website), the format is a little different. In this case, give the following information:

^n. Initial(s). Surname, ‘Title of Paper’, paper presented to Name of Conference, Location, Date of Conference, page number(s), database or URL, date of access.

Note that the conference name is not italicised (unlike the published proceedings). In practice, the footnotes for a published and unpublished conference paper would therefore look like this:

^1. E. James, ‘Coping with Shame’, Proceedings of the Canadian Shame Conference, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2016, p. 34.

^2. J. Robins, ‘Regret: A Functional Analysis’, paper presented at the 23rd Conference of the Australian Psychological Society, University of Sydney, 24-25 March 2015, pp. 12-13, <https://groups.psychology.org.au/cnn/conference/2015/?ID=7857>, accessed 29 September 2017.

Repeat citations of a paper can then be shortened to prevent repetition.

Bibliography

Any conference papers cited in your work should also be added to the bibliography. The format here is similar to the first footnote. For a published paper, for instance, you’d include:

Surname, Initial(s). ‘Title of Paper’. Title of Conference Proceedings, Publisher, City of Publication, Year of Publication, complete page range.

For an unpublished paper, the standard bibliography format is:

Surname, Initial(s). ‘Title of Paper’, paper presented to Name of Conference, Location, Date of Conference, complete page rage, database or URL, date of access.

We would thus list the papers cited in the footnotes above as follows:

James, E. ‘Coping with Shame’, Proceedings of the Canadian Shame Conference, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2016, pp. 30-41.

Robins, J. ‘Regret: A Functional Analysis’, paper presented at the 23rd Conference of the Australian Psychological Society, University of Sydney, 24-25 March 2015, pp. 10-19, <https://groups.psychology.org.au/cnn/conference/2015/?ID=7857>, accessed 29 September 2017.

A Note on Oxford Referencing

There are many versions of Oxford referencing. All stick to the basic ‘footnotes and bibliography’ format used above, but they differ on the details.

As such, you may want to check your style guide if you’re unsure about citing any source. And if you need any help checking your citations are clear and consistent, don’t forget to have your work proofread.