Rules for bibliographic citations

Definitions
Using works of others
Basic principles of citation
Citation standards
Using electronic sources
Typesetting of citations

Definitions

Bibliographic citation is a summary of details on the work cited, or its part, allowing for its identification and search.
Reference to a bibliographic citation is an in-text reference to a bibliographic citation in a different part of the work.

Using works of others

When using works of other authors, it is necessary to properly differentiate them from your own text. Otherwise you present the text as your own, which is an unacceptable violation, especially when it comes to theses and dissertations. There are two ways to incorporate works of other authors into one´s own:

Quotation - the text used matches the source document word for word. Short quotations are enclosed within double quotation marks, long ones in an indented free-standing paragraph. The quotes are also often typed in italics.
Paraphrasing the original text - the author of the presented work puts the original text into his/her own words, while maintaining the meaning of the original statement. Paraphrases are typed in the same typeface as the rest of the text. In order to distinguish which part of the text is borrowed and which is your own, you must use other means (for example, by a reference to a citation at the end of the sentence or paragraph the author indicates that the sentence or paragraph was cited or paraphrased; when the paraphrase is more extensive, you can specify that at the beginning of a subchapter, for example: "This subchapter has been adopted from [1].").

Quotations are suitable for definitions, parts of laws, regulations or rules, or to discuss the opinions of other authors. Quotations are therefore not that frequent in technical texts. If there are no valid reasons for a quotation, use a paraphrase. Also, think about the scope of the quotation. Too many and too long quotations indicate that the thesis is of poor quality (usually finished in the last minute, and the quotations only serve to reach the minimum length required).

Basic principles of citation

Bibliographic citations are provided to make it clear to the reader what works the author used as a basis for his/her own, to familiarise the reader with a wider context (for example, so that a reader less knowledgeable than the author´s target audience could find more on what the author did not explain in his/her work) and also to comply with the terms of the Copyright Act (see Section 31). When citing, the following rules must be followed:

Cite all the sources you have used! If you fail to cite any of the sources, you are presenting someone else´s work as your own! Make notes of all the sources you have found since the very beginning of your work on the project. It is more difficult to look up all the sources once you are done.
Cite only the works that you actually used! Readers who actually know the works cited (or look them up) will soon realise that even though you use them as reference, you do not really know them.
Only cite primary sources! Only cite the works that you actually worked with physically (or on a screen). Otherwise you risk using a quotation with mistakes.
Cite precisely! You will make it easier for the readers to find the original source and avoid the suspicion that you intend to make the identification of the source difficult or impossible by providing an incomplete citation, so that the readers cannot check the scope of the quoted text.

When writing your text, pay special attention to these citation principles, as their violation means, for apparent reasons, far more serious consequences for the overall assessment than non-compliance with the formal requirements for bibliographic citations.

Citation standards

The standards for creating bibliographic citations and their reference in professional publications are governed by ČSN ISO 690: Information and documents - Rules of bibliographical references and citations of information sources of 2022. The standards are available at the FIT Library. There is a citation generating tool based on these standards, available at http://www.citace.com/ (in Czech, but simple to use - write ISBN, DOI or name and search it) and you can find a brief summary of the standards with citation examples on the same website [PDF in Czech].

Although the standards allow to place citations in professional publications in different ways (at the end of the text, at the end of the individual chapters, directly in the text, in the footnote, partly in the text and partly in the footnote), it is required for theses and dissertations at FIT BUT that the list of works cited is provided at the end of the work.

The reference to the citation is in the form of a serial number, under which the citation is listed in the Works Cited section at the end of the work. The serial number is stated in the text in square brackets.

Example: The SMTP protocol is specified in RFC 5321 [1].

Citations are in alphabetical order. Ordering of names containing letters with diacritics can be changed using the key element, the value of which can be set to a last name without diacritics. If a record does not have the author element, the citation is ordered to the beginning of the list, which is not ideal. In this case, we can change the ordering by setting the key element to a desirable value.

Example:

@Article{Cech:2020:Citace,
    author               = "Čech, Jan",
    key                  = "Cech",
    ...

If you quote the same publication several times in a row, you can use the term "Ibid." instead of repeating the entire reference, supplemented by a page number.

Using electronic sources

Finding high-quality sources to use as a basis for your work is essential. The quality of a classic printed work may be recognised quite easily. When working with electronic sources, examine their credibility and quality thoroughly. Always verify who the author of the material is, and evaluate the depth of the information provided (a number of electronic sources presents merely superficial and incomplete information, and therefore the authors copy eachother's mistakes) critically. Even if you find high-quality electronic sources, do not rely solely on those, and try to find a printed work as well.

Whenever you cite electronic sources, always state when the information was found and used as the entire website may not be available several days later. When using BibTex, this can be achieved by adding the following key: cited = "yyyy-mm-dd". You can use the @website (entire domain) or @webpage (a single page within the domain) record types to cite electronic sources. If you cite a magazine article or a paper from a conference, do not cite them as electronic sources and use @article instead.

Typesetting of citations

The template for BUT FIT theses and dissertations uses the BibTeX system to typeset citations.

Details in bibligraphic citations

The following text is taken from ČSN ISO 690 standard and condensed. Individual parts of a citation are separatedy by the dot symbol ".".
Each item in the cited document should be stated as it appears in the original cited document.
The usual order of items in a bibliographic citation is as follows:

name(s) of the author(s)/creator, if they are available(s)
- Persons or institutions responsible for creation of the contents should be stated as authors.
- First names and other parts of names should follow after the last name, e.g.
```
GORDON, D.
```
If a cited source has multiple authors, list them (using the "and" separator), and if there are more than three authors, we do not list all of them and use "et al." (names followed by "and others") instead.
title
Title is typed in italics. A title too long can be cut short and missing words replaced with ... (three dots).
type of medium
A type of medium is a medium, where the cited material is available (e.g. [DVD]) as well as the form in which it is available (e.g. [Braille]). This information is stated in square brackets. [online] is used for online materials.
edition
Edition should be stated with symbols, e.g. "2nd ed., (re-edition)". If it is an updated version, it should be apparent from the citation, which version was used.
place of publication, publisher, date of publication
If the place of publication is not stated in the cited document, but is known, we state it in square brackets.
A publisher should be a person or organisation that is the most emphasized in the cited document.
Date of publication should always be stated. A year is sufficient for paper publications, however it is necessary to also state a month and a day for electronic sources.
numbering within a unit, page or page range
Citation should idenfity the specific part of a cited document, that is used for citation.
title and volume in series, if they are available
standard identifiers
If a cited document has an international standard number (ISBN, ISSN, ...) or DOI, that serves as the unique identifier, it must be stated.
availability, access or location of information The location of source should always be stated for electronic sources. Stated as: "Available at:" followed by URI or URL.
additional general information

Examples of bibliographic citations

Items are color-coded depending on whether or not they are required or optional:

required element according to the standard
optional element according to the standard
required element for online information sources according to the standard
element that is not specified in the standard, but is available and optional within the template's bibliographic style

Required items are only stated if they exist.

BibTeX

The bibliography file contains records in the following form:

@Article{Doe:2020:Citace,
   author               = "Doe, John",
   title                = "How to cite",
   subtitle             = "Article citation",
   journal              = "Writing theses and dissertations",
   journalsubtitle      = "Formal aspects",
   howpublished         = "online",
   address              = "Brno",
   publisher            = "Brno University of Technology, Faculty of information technology",
   contributory         = "Translated by Jan NOVÁK",
   edition              = "1",
   version              = "version 1.0",
   month                = 2,
   year                 = "2020",
   revised              = "revised 12. 2. 2020",
   volume               = "4",
   number               = "24",
   pages                = "8--21",
   cited                = "2020-02-12",
   doi                  = "10.1000/BC1.0",
   issn                 = "1234-5678",
   note                 = "This is a made up citation",
   url                  = "https://merlin.fit.vutbr.cz"
}

Article in a periodical literature - @Article

Record items

Element	BibTeXu item	Example
Author	author	Doe, John
Article title	title	How to cite
Article subtitle	subtitle	Article citation
Periodical literature title	journal	Writing theses and dissertations
Periodical literature subtitle	journalsubtitle	Formal aspects
Type of medium	howpublished	online
Edition	edition	1
Version	version	version 1.0
Secondary author(s)	contributory	Translated by Jan NOVÁK
Place of publication	address	Brno
Publisher	publisher	Brno University of Technology, Faculty of information technology
Month	month	2
Year	year	2020
Volume	volume	4
Number	number	24
Pages	pages	8--21
Revision	revised	revised 12. 2. 2020
Date of citation	cited	2020-02-12
Series title	series	Guidelines for writing theses and dissertations
Number in series	editionnumber	42
Digital object identifier	doi	10.1000/BC1.0
Standard number	issn	1234-5678
Notes	note	This is a made up citation
Availability	url	https://merlin.fit.vutbr.cz

If doi is present, url is not used.

Bibliographic citation

Doe, J. How to cite: Article citation. Writing theses and dissertations: Formal aspects online. 1st ed., version 1.0. Translated by Jan NOVÁK. Brno: Brno University of Technology, Faculty of information technology. February 2020, vol. 4, no. 24, p. 8–21, revised 12. 2. 2020. Guidelines for writing theses and dissertations, no. 42. ISSN 1234-5678. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1000/BC1.0. [cit. 2020-02-12]. This is a made up citation.

Monographic publication - @Book, @Booklet (book, brochure)

Record items

Element	BibTeX item	Example
Author	author	John {von Doe}
Title	title	How to cite
Subtitle	subtitle	Monographic publication citation
Type of medium	howpublished	online
Edition	edition	1
Secondary author(s)	contributory	Translated by Jan NOVÁK
Place of publication	address	Brno
Publisher	publisher	Brno University of Technology, Faculty of information technology
Month	month	2
Year	year	2020
Revision	revised	revised 12. 2. 2020
Date of citation	cited	2020-02-12
Pages	pages	220
Series title	series	Guidelines for writing theses and dissertations
Number in series	editionnumber	2
Standard number	isbn	01-234-5678-9
Notes	note	This is a made up citation
Availability	url	https://merlin.fit.vutbr.cz

Bibliographic citation

von Doe, J. How to cite: Monographic publication citation online. 1st ed. Translated by Jan NOVÁK. Brno: Brno University of Technology, Faculty of information technology, february 2020, revised 12. 2. 2020. 220 p. Guidelines for writing theses and dissertations, no. 2. ISBN 01-234-5678-9. Available at: https://merlin.fit.vutbr.cz. [cit. 2020-02-12]. This is a made up citation.

Conference proceedings - @Proceedings

Record items

Element	BibTeX item	Example
Author*	author	Čechmánek, Jan
Editor*	editor	Čechmánek, Jan
Title	title	How to cite
Subtitle	subtitle	Conference proceedings citation
Type of medium	howpublished	online
Editon	edition	1
Secondary author(s)	contributory	Translated by Jan NOVÁK
Place of publication	address	Brno
Publisher	publisher	Brno University of Technology, Faculty of information technology
Month	month	2
Year	year	2020
Volume	volume	4
Number	number	24
Pages	pages	8--21
Revision	revised	revised 12. 2. 2020
Date of citation	cited	2020-02-12
Series title	series	Guidelines for writing theses and dissertations
Number in series	editionnumber	2
Digital object identifier	doi	10.1000/BC1.0
Standard number	isbn or issn	01-234-5678-9
Notes	note	This is a made up citation
Availability	url	https://merlin.fit.vutbr.cz

Element	BibTeX item	Example
Author (person or organisation)	author	Nováková, Jana
Site title	title	Web on writing theses and dissertations
Site subtitle	subtitle
Type of medium	howpublished	online
Secondary author(s)	contributory	Edited by Jan NOVÁK
Version	version	version 1.0
Place of publication	address	Brno
Publisher	publisher	Brno University of Technology, Faculty of information technology
Day	day	12
Month	month	2
Year	year	2020
Time of publication	time	14:00
Revision	revised	revised 12. 2. 2020
Date of citation	cited	2020-02-12
Digital object identifier	doi	10.1000/BC1.0
Standard number	issn	1234-5678
Notes	note	This is a made up citation
Availability	url	https://merlin.fit.vutbr.cz

If doi is present, url is not used.

Bibliographic citation

Nováková, J. Web on writing theses and dissertations online. Edited by Jan NOVÁK. version 1.0. Brno: Brno University of Technology, Faculty of information technology, february 2nd 1998 14:10. revised 12. 2. 2020. ISSN 1234-5678. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1000/BC1.0. [cit. 2020-02-12]. This is a made up citation.

Created by: Jaroslav Dytrych, Petr Hanáček, Aneta Helešicová, Bohuslav Křena, Petr Peringer, Petr Přikryl, Zdena Rábová and Petr Veigend