Hi folks, I have a question that I never imagined I'd be asking you guys but I would like to see if I can get an expert consensus about something.
One of my PhD students is revising his thesis after his viva. One of the recommendations from the examiners was to provides his references in two lists: a list of references for things he is citing in the thesis and a separate bibliography for stuff he has read that is not directly cited.
I think what may have happened was that he had some stuff in the bibliography that was not actually cited in the text and they picked up on that.
This seems very odd to me. My own practice has always been that there should be a single bibliography and it is not good practice to include anything in there that isn't clearly cited in the text. If you have read something that has influenced your work then it should be possible to cite it in an appropriate way. Without doing that it seems impossible to show your scholarship in action and there's a real danger of people just dumping vaguely relevant references in there to make it look better.
I'd like to take this up with one of the examiners but first I'd appreciate some feedback on what other people think. My main concern is that, once it's published, the thesis should reflect well on the student and the university, and especially I don't want him to go away misunderstanding of the point of a bibliography and passing that on to his students.
Thanks very muchChris
.........................Chris RustDriver, Nether Edge [log in to unmask]
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