We’ve already covered books and journals, as well as some of the basics of OSCOLA referencing, so this blog will cover how to reference internet sources such as website and blogs using the OSCOLA system.
Internet sources should not automatically be dismissed; there are many excellent legal blogs and other sources that can strengthen your writing and argument. There is also a lot of useful information on government and organisation websites that may be necessary to use to find a particular policy, for example. Although, don’t forget to reference legislation as legislation rather than a website and likewise for other primary sources.
However, not all internet sources are reliable and you should carefully consider each one. Wikipedia, for example, can be edited by anyone and so is not a trustworthy source. Similarly, other websites may present a biased view of the facts without making it clear that these are not merely opinions.
A further point worth noting is that internet sources can move, change or be completely deleted so it is particularly important to give detailed information about what they are and where they can be found.
The basic format for an internet source reference is:
Author, | ‘Title of article or source’ | (Website name, | Date published) | <web address> | Date accessed
So a complete reference would be as follows:
Neil Rose, ‘How much influence do lawyers have on the legislative process?’ (The Guardian, 14 June 2011) <http://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/jun/14/lawyers-influence-on-legislative-process> accessed 1 January 2018.
Now we will look at each of these elements that make it up in turn.
Author
The author of the work, if a person’s name, should be given in the format ‘First name(s) Last name’ with no comma separating them. Their name should be given as it is in the work, excluding any post-nominals, although a judge’s name may be written exactly as it is. However, in the bibliography the author’s name should instead take the format ‘Last name Initial(s)’ like so:
Rose N, ‘How much influence do lawyers have on the legislative process?’ (The Guardian, 14 June 2011) <http://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/jun/14/lawyers-influence-on-legislative-process> accessed 1 January 2018
Note also that a bibliography entry does not take a full point at the end, whereas a citation in a footnote should.
If there are two authors, write them in the order they are in the work linked by the word ‘and’. If there are three authors, there should be a comma between the first two and the word ‘and’ between the second and third. If there are more than three authors, simply write the first author’s name followed by ‘and others’.
Title of article or source
This should be given exactly as it is in the source, keeping any regional spellings, capitalisation, italicisation, etc.
Website name
Again, this should be given as it is. You do not normally need the full web address; however, for websites such as gov.uk and http://www.parliament.uk where this is how the website name appears in the top left of the webpage, it is appropriate to write them as this.
Gov.uk, ‘Patenting your invention’ (Gov.uk, 3 December 2015) <https://www.gov.uk/patent-your-invention> accessed 1 January 2018.
Date published
You may well be able to find this on the webpage, especially if it is an online article. If you cannot see one, don’t worry, simply put the website name and close the brackets, leaving out the comma.
Web address
Here, you simply need to copy and paste the URL from the address bar and place it inside angled brackets < >.
Date of access
Another simple one! Just write ‘accessed’ then the date you accessed it, in the format DD Month YYYY. Make sure this is accurate, as websites can change, so it is important a reader knows when you were looking at the source.
If There Is No Author Given
If you cannot see the name of the writer of the source, you can often use the website name here, as, at the least, it has likely been commissioned by them. I have done this above with the gov.uk source and this example:
Solicitors Regulation Authority, ‘Take care with vulnerable clients, SRA urges’ (Solicitors Regulation Authority, 20 December 2011) <http://www.sra.org.uk/sra/news/press/care-for-vulnerable-clients.page> accessed 1 January 2018.
Here there is an article on the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) that has no author name. However, it is on their website and may well have been written by an employee, so it is appropriate to cite the SRA itself as the author.
Items Found Online
Not everything found online needs to be referenced as an internet source. Anything with an ISBN should be cited as a book, even if you are reading it online. This can include booklets, guides and some leaflets supplied by various organisations and governments.
Likewise, an e-book should just be referenced as a print book if it is also published as such. This is still true even if it is an old book that has long since gone out of print – it was in print once, and that is what’s important. Therefore, there is no need to reference the electronic format or the URL.
Similarly, journals found online that are also in print form should simply be referenced as the physical version. If they are found via a database such as Westlaw or LexisNexis, you do not need to include details of this in the reference.
However, any books or journals that can only be found online should be cited as electronic sources.
Finally
Internet sources can be very useful, provided you’ve done your research about the reliability of the source and take this into consideration. There’s no reason they won’t strengthen your writing, especially when it’s an informative piece on a government website, for example.
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