Oxford Style of Referencing

The Oxford University developed the Oxford referencing style and is known as Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA). OSCOLA is a foot style of referencing system in which the references are used at the bottom of each of the page. In the year 2000, it was Peter Binks, who had first introduced the referencing style after a consultation with the law students and the faculty at the Oxford University. This referencing style is considered different from that of the Harvard or APA styles.

Functions of Footnote and Referencing
Under the Oxford style of referencing the following are the functions that need to be considered:

1. When writing an essay or report the statements and conclusion needs to be validated with appropriate verification.
2.  Avoiding plagiarism at all time and provide authentic sources by giving credit to the authors.
3. Demonstrating the reader that the material used for the research are credible.

 

Guidelines for formatting the paper

• The paper needs to be written in Times New Roman with font size of 12. However, it might be as per the instruction specified. Apart from this, paper should be of standard size i.e. 8.5”*11”.
• The paragraphs in the paper should be written by maintaining a line spacing of 1.5.
• The entire content of the paper should be justified and have page number in the right hand corner of the paper.
• The cover page should entail the topic of the content.

 

Citation and Foot Note
In general, when sources are being provided in a paper, a superscripts in inserted where the information is present. After inserting the superscript, the same number appears at the end of the page where the footnote reference is provided. The following table shows the footnote citation style for Oxford:

 

Reference List
There is always a reference list at the end of the paper apart from the footnotes provided as citations. List is provided in an alphabetical format by keeping the surname of the author followed by the name of the author. Even in case of reference list, there are some consideration that needs to be made and they are as follows:

• The full name of the author is not provided rather the initials are used. The initial and surname are separated with helps of a comma followed by a space.
• In case of the journal articles, the page, volume number, issues numbers are to be mentioned.
• The reference list must be justified and standard 1.5 spacing needs to be maintained.
• Page numbers are not considered in books in case of reference list

The following table shows the reference list for Oxford referencing style: