Dissertation Panic

Hello,

I am basically just asking this as I am in a total panic about my dissertation references. I submitted about a month ago and just now noticed that one of the references I reference in text was missing from the actual reference list. . Please be kind and give me advice on what to do if i should in fact do anything?

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 1

Cranfield University

Official Rep

Original post by katiecc15

Hi there,

First of all, I completely understand your panicked feeling. Having been at uni for about 6 years now, I have seen so many people make small mistakes like this, and it’s really disheartening when you have put so much work into something. However, one reference isn’t the biggest disaster, it quite possibly is <2% of your total reference list. Honestly, as a reader, I am sure I have not noticed much larger errors.

I would recommend contacting your thesis supervisor and asking for their advice. If there is anything that you can do, then they will be able to advise about your options.
It is possible that you may not be able to do anything, but hopefully you used parenthetical citations (stating usually the author’s name and the date of publication in brackets) rather than numbers. While it can make texts sometimes feel disjointed, it means if this kind of thing does happen, you have some level of assurance that they are ‘real’ citations (and have some hope of finding them) as a reader. If this is also the case, it would be very difficult to argue that this is plagiarism.

If for any reason you can’t contact your thesis supervisor (not ideal, but they may be on sick or annual leave) you should have some kind of admin support for students- at Cranfield we call it Student Academic Support (SAS). Alternatively, you could contact your course director.

Best of luck, and hopefully you will get a good grade to reflect your hard work!
Ciara
3rd year Agrifood PhD student
Cranfield Student Ambassador