References and Bibliography: What’s the Distinction?

Greetings again. I hope that all is going well for you.

About a week ago, I received e-mail from a researcher who had taken an AuthorAID workshop from me. The researcher was preparing a presentation on citation and references. He therefore was asking me the difference between references and bibliography.

After sending my reply, I realized that it might also interest some other AuthorAID members. Therefore, here’s a slightly edited version of my reply.

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References are sources that are cited in a piece of writing. A bibliography is a list of sources that were consulted.

For example:

• Imagine that in my paper I mention some findings from your paper. Therefore, within the text of my paper I would need to cite your paper. And I would need to include your paper in my reference list. Thus, your paper would be one of my references.
• Imagine that I've read 6 books for a chapter I'm writing. In my chapter I include material from 4 of the books and thus cite them as references. But the other 2 books served as sources of background. Then I would include all 6 books in the bibliography.

A Google search using the search term "references versus bibliography" yields some discussions of this distinction.

By the way, bibliographies (and to some extent reference lists) serve 2 purposes. One is to show what sources of information the author used. The other is to list information sources that readers might find useful.

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Until the next post—

Barbara