Citing an Ebook with the Oxford Referencing Style

Paper is a thing of the past. Well, not really. But it is convenient that you can now fit an entire library on one small device, especially for students. So, in this post, we explain how to cite an ebook using Oxford referencing.

Citing an Ebook in Oxford Referencing

Oxford referencing uses footnote citations. This means that you give source details in a footnote at the bottom of the page. And the first time you cite an ebook in this system, you will need to provide the following information:

n. Author Initial(s). Surname, Book Title, publisher, place of publication, year, page number(s), database or URL, date of access.

For instance, a footnote citation for an ebook would look like this:

1. R. Kelsall, I. Hamley & M. Geoghegan, Nanoscale Science and Technology, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Chichester, 2005, p. 24, Google Books, accessed 16 Feb. 2013.

If you then cite the ebook again, you can use a shortened footnote format.

Ebooks in an Oxford Referencing List

As with any source, when referencing an ebook, you need to include full publication information in a reference list at the end of your document.

For an ebook, the information required in Oxford referencing is:

Surname, Initial(s)., Title of Book, publisher, place of publication, year, database/URL, date of access.

In practice, then, the entry for an ebook would look something like this:

Kelsall, R., I. Hamley, & M. Geoghegan, Nanoscale Science and Technology, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Chichester, 2005, Google Books, accessed 16 Feb. 2013.

As you can see, this is very similar to the first footnote for the source. The only differences in the reference list are that:

We’ve given the first named author’s surname before their initial so that sources can be organised alphabetically by author surname.

There is no page reference since we’re referring to the full book here.

We’ve added a half-inch (1.27cm) hanging indent after the first line.

If you can do all this, your reader should be able to find any ebooks you cite.

Oxford Variations

‘Oxford referencing’ is actually a generic term for footnote referencing. As such, different universities may have different versions of this system. And you should always check your style guide if you have one available.

For help with proofreading and/or formatting your references, meanwhile, simply upload a document to Proofed today and let us know what you need!