International Development

For quick access to high quality information for your assignments, try the links on these pages.

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New in Sept 2024: Watch this short video about using our new Discovery service effectively.

 

Reading Lists

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Got an assignment? Have you looked at the reading list to see lecturer recommendations?

Key Starters for Essays and Dissertations

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Identify different sources of information and link to ebooks and other top sources

Statistics

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Reliable sources of international statistics

Use Referencing@Portsmouth to find out how to reference all the sources you have used:

Everyone on courses including international development uses APA 7th edition.
Use Search APA 7 inside Referencing@Portsmouth to locate specific referencing advice on chapters, articles, reports, as well as abbreviations, appendices, tables and more.

New to referencing? Watch this short APA basics video.

 

Can I use ChatGPT/AI to generate references? 

Be aware that ChatGPT and similar tools invent academic references (see the more button for why). Using such fabricated information in your work is considered academic misconduct so you should always double check any AI generated references. The University has guidance for students on the use of AI and the Library has produced guidance on citing and referencing generative AI.

more

ChatGPT is a large language model which has been trained on which words should appear and in what order - hence similar authors/titles/journals get linked with each other, producing very plausible sounding references that actually don't exist - the words simply have connections to each other within its training data. When prompted "How does ChatGPT predict which words come next?" ChatGPT stated that it "predicts which words come next based on the patterns it learns from the training data. When given a prompt or context, the model uses its knowledge of language patterns to generate likely sequences of words that would follow the input" ... "it predicts one word at a time, based on the previously generated words" ... " and then calculates the probability distribution of the next word in the sequence based on the patterns it has learned from the training data" (OpenAI, 2023).

Reference

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 23 Version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

All reference generators make errors! 

Ensure you check and edit your references before submitting your work.  Here are some common errors.

There are many different ways to generate APA citations:

  • Quick options:
    • Look for a "Cite" button in EBSCO databases like Discovery, or in Ebook Central, Statista, Google Scholar etc.
  • Advanced options:
    • See our referencing tools page. The humanities and social sciences librarian supports the use of EndNote Online.

We do not advise using the referencing tool in Word.

Your Subject Team

 Anne Worden

Faculty Librarian

email Anne.Worden@port.ac.uk

 Sharon Bittner

Assistant Faculty Librarian

email sharon.bittner@port.ac.uk