bibliography

2022

What is the bibliography?
Elements of the bibliography
Main bibliographic styles
Characteristics of a bibliographic reference
Bibliography examples

We explain what a bibliography is, its elements, characteristics and examples. In addition, the main bibliographic styles.

The bibliography accounts for all the material consulted in an investigation.

What is the bibliography?

In the academic or school environment, the bibliography is the organization, classification and description of the documents and informative sources that nurtured a research that is, of all the material that has been consulted in the preparation of a monograph or a research work of any kind. It is also known as references bibliographic.

At the time of investigate and generate knowledge, it is important to be as responsible and ethical as possible. This means that we must provide all the information necessary, since the bibliography allows the reader:

They can check where the data, ideas or references that we incorporate into our work and that are not of our exclusive imagination.
They can reproduce the trajectory of our investigation and verify the logic behind it.
You can go to the original sources behind our work, in case you are interested in investigating the subject.

This section is usually found at the end of all documents or texts, so that it is reached once the investigation is read, or it is gone directly to it, knowing where it is.

For its formulation, methodological or bibliographic norms are generally followed, which determine what information to reference and in what specific way. A good bibliography assigns an entry to each source consulted, even when they are by the same author or have common features.

Finally, although its name indicates that it refers to books and written documents (the word comes from the Greek biblion, "Book", and graphein, “Writing”), this section should include any type of information source consulted in our work: books, magazines and monographs, but also films, recordings, websites, etc.

Elements of the bibliography

Every bibliography comprises a diverse set of elements, depending on what type of source we are addressing. That is to say, the exact same elements are not required to refer to a book, equipped with an author and editors, as a film, equipped with a director and producers, or a web page that has several possible authors.

However, the logic behind the reference is usually always the same, and always contemplates the following main elements:

Author's name. We must indicate to whom the books or documents consulted belong, that is, to whom they are attributed. In the case of films, we will go to the director and / or producer, or to the corresponding data according to the nature of the source.
Full title. Logically, an author or producer can have many works in his charge, so we must specify which of them we refer to in each case, placing the full title as appropriate.
Year of publication. This is not a minor fact: the same book may have several editions in different years, or an author may have later regretted what was said in a conference. In some cases, such as web pages, we must refer to the date of retrieval of the information, that is, when we entered the web page, since many are not always online.
Responsible for the publication. In this section those responsible for the publication of the source would go, who may or may not be the authors themselves. For example, a book is written by its author, but published by its publishers. A film is directed by its director, but released by its producers.
Place of appearance. This is not always valid, since things online don't really have a place; but physical objects do have a place of production, that is, where they were made or published. This data is usually referred to by the name of the town, the country, or sometimes both.

Main bibliographic styles

As we said before, there are many bibliographic styles, that is, many methods for creating a bibliography. Generally every method It responds to the interests of a sector of knowledge or academic activity, which organizes information based on what is usually of importance for their studies. Thus, the main styles used today are:

APA style. Prepared in 1929 by the American Psychological Association (APA), it is a standard intended for research work in the area of social Sciences Y Sciences of the conduct. Its most current version dates from 2020, and it is one of the most used styles in the world and the most preferred by university institutions.
MLA style.Created by the Modern Languages Association of the United States (MLA) in 1977, it is especially aimed at research in humanistic areas, such as philosophy, literature, Arts and also cultural studies. Its most recent version dates from 2016, the edition in which its MLA Handbook.
Harvard style. This is the name given to the tendency to summarize, in the bibliographic references within the research text, the data of the source (names, year and page number), directly after the cited text, leaving the rest of the data in the bibliography . In that sense, the APA style would be very similar to Harvard. Its name obviously comes from the homonymous American university.
ISO 690 style. In this case, it is a standard from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO, its acronym in English), designed to refer to printed or non-printed materials, such as magazines and monographs or parts of them. In this regard, four ISO standards successive: 1975, 1987, 2010 and 2013.

Characteristics of a bibliographic reference

In general, any bibliographic reference is characterized by being:

Specific and concise. That is to say, it goes to the point and includes only the necessary information, according to its methodological style, without redundancies or ramblings.
Formal, thorough and reliable. That is, without ignoring important data, or falsifying the information, or confusing similar information.
Summarized or whole. Depending on whether it is within the research text (in that case it is summarized) or in the final section of the bibliography (in that case it is complete).

Bibliography examples

As an example, you will find below a couple of bibliography entries in different methodological styles:

APA style:

- Arébalo, M.. The Secret Life of Earthworms. Madrid: Animal editions.

- Goliander, S., Gómes, F. and others. "Probabilistic study on the early mating of the Aedes aegipti as a result of the increase in temperature in the Congo ”. Pan-African Journal of Infectology, vol. 12, pp. 20-45.