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Instructions for Written Work

Making a bibliography: General instructions

All the sources mentioned in in-text references must be included in the bibliography. The sources are mentioned in alphabetical order. Sources of different kinds are not grouped, e.g., into printed sources or unprinted sources, but all the sources are included in uninterrupted alphabetical order.  
 

Sources without an individual author are listed according to a possible corporate author or the title of the source in such a way that the reference in the bibliography is identical with the in-text reference. If the reference is too long to be included on one line, the following line(s) is/are indented. To create a bibliography, use the Bibliog style.

 In general, a bibliographic entry in printed material has the following form:

Writer’s/ author’s surname, Initial(s) of the first name. (Publication date). Name or title: Subtitle. Publisher. 


When creating the bibliography, the following principles are observed:

  • If the publication is authored by several authors, they are listed in the same order as it is done in the publication. 
  • If the publication is authored by two authors, they are combined with the & sign. If there are more than two authors, the last two of them are combined with the & sign, while the other names are separated with a comma. The & sign is preceded by a comma. 
  • The name or title of the source or the title and year of a journal are written in italics. 
  • If the title ends with a question mark or exclamation point, that punctuation mark replaces the period.
  • The edition of a book is only mentioned when it is more recent than the first one.
  • Do not include designations of business structure (oy, ky, Inc., Ldt., LLC) in the publishers name.
  • The same author’s/corporate author’s sources are listed in the bibliography from older to newer.  If the source is undated, it is placed before the dated ones.  If the publications are from the same year, they are listed in alphabetical order by title, and lower-case letters are added to the year to distinguish the publications. If several sources have an exact date referring to the same year, they are listed in chronological order from older to newer and distinguished with small-case letters.   


Armstrong, S. (i.a.).

Armstrong, S. (2015).

Armstrong, S. (2021a).

Armstrong, S. (2021b).

Armstrong, S. (15.1.2022a).

Armstrong, S. (20.1.2022b).

Armstrong, S. (1.3.2022c).

  • If an author / corporate author appears both in a single-author reference and as the first author in a multiple-author reference, the single-author reference is placed before the multiple-author reference, also in case its date of publication is more recent:  

Davison, T. E. (2022). 

Davison, T. E., & Jackson, A., & McCabe, M. P. (2019).

Davison, T. E., & McCabe, M. P. (2021)

 

Next, there are examples of bibliographic references to sources of different kinds. The examples include the principal pattern, followed by examples of applications of that pattern. If the case example does not include some piece of information included in the pattern, such as the edition or translator, it is left out. 
 

Online sources: general instructions

In references to online sources, such as websites and E-books, the same principles are observed as in references to printed sources. These principles are not always easy to observe, because the Web includes a lot of material lacking, e.g., the data on the author and the date of publication. 


Some publishers or online services (such as Kela, Theseus, the Current Care Guidelines) have issued instructions for referencing. However, SeAMK’s APA instructions are observed when implementing references to their sources. 
 
A bibliographic entry varies somewhat according to the type of the source (e.g., a date is sometimes mentioned instead of a year), and the exact references are found in the examples of the present instructions. In general, a bibliographic entry has the following form:

Writer’s/ author’s surname, Initial(s) of the first name. (Publication date or year of publication, or date of update). Name or title: Subtitle. Publisher. DOI/URN/URL


If the source does not mention the author(s), the source is included in the bibliography stating first the corporate author, or the name of the company or organisation (such as Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Ministry of Education and Culture, Statistics Finland, Tekes, Finnish Food Authority, etc.).


The date of publication is stated in the form of an exact date if mentioned in the source. If no exact date is mentioned in the source, give the year of publication. If no date of publication is mentioned, write (n.d.), i.e. “no date”, instead of one. The date of publication is given in parentheses.
 
The source is linked to a permanent web address (such as DOI, URN, Handle, PURL), if mentioned in the source. The DOI identifier  is given in the form https://doi.org/xxxxx . The URN is given in the http://urn.fi/xxxxx . If the source has no permanent address, the URL address (or the normal web address) is used. Web addresses are activated.


Sometimes, a website has been built in such a way that its address does not change even if the viewed page changed. In that case, the exact location of the document is not displayed in the address field. In such a case, it is advisable to give the link path allowing to find the desired page in the reference.  


The name of no database is mentioned and no link to it is given unless it is a permanent address (DOI/URN).
 

Bibliography example

Bibliography example.

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