1.       It is not an e-book - There's a lot of confusion among students as to what constitutes an ebook (likewise an ejournal, or website/electronic copy of a journal article). Clearly this is a book and should be cited as such. It's always helpful to give guidance on this as part of teaching of good academic practice.

2.       It is incomplete (and presumably some of what is missing adds context etc. and was removed for ‘sales’ rather than ‘academic’ purposes) – therefore how valid a source is it? - It's as valid a source as the photocopied excerpts from books many lecturers will hand out. Agreed that there will be some missing context, and it's useful to flag that up as an academic practice issue when students are evaluating sources, but it's not in itself a reason not to cite.

3.       If she says she has looked at the book, which she was tempted to do, then that must surely be plagiarism as it is intentionally/knowingly deceitful, so should it be referenced as a website? It will be flagged up by Turnitin as a web source - Do you mean that the student used material from the book and failed to cite it? Otherwise I'm not clear about how it's plagiarism.

4.       More and more of this kind of thing is out there and being accessed by students – should we develop a ‘use of...’ and referencing protocols, or do they already exist and I really am behind the times? - There are protocols being developed for things like Kindle books (which cause problems with referencing because they lack page numbers). There are some very good lists of referencing examples out there which are framed for student use (for Harvard, for instance, Staffordshire http://www.staffs.ac.uk/support_depts/infoservices/learning_support/refzone/harvard/index.jsp or Anglia Ruskin http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm). My personal last resort look-up for unusual sources is the forum on the Chicago Manual of Referencing website, which has rescued me in many a citation dilemma.

I find that if students understand the principles, and that referencing is mostly a matter of commonsense, they are less anxious about it and more empowered. I teach that they need to find four pieces of information, whatever the material - author/s, year of publication, title and where it was published (i.e. publisher/place, journal, URL, edited collection etc). Then they need to arrange these consistently according to whatever citation style they've been asked to use.

In my experience, the major issue with referencing is how to engage students with taking it seriously. They think it's petty, or that they already know how to do it, or that because one tutor didn't mark them down for poor referencing they don't need to develop their practices, or that because they know how to reference in one discipline it'll be the same in all others. We need to situate referencing as a central part of academic writing and be explicit about why it is important not just to do it, but to get it right.

Best wishes,

Kim