What went wrong? A five school review of master’s theses reference list

Abstract

A good citation and referencing practice starts when a student correctly cites and follows the specified format. While academic integrity is closely associated with plagiarism, there is another peculiar error that academics tend to forego, that is the neglect to verify proper formatting of a reference list based on a particular citation format. The purpose of the study is to trace, review and analyze the reference list of selected master’s thesis submitted in the Nazarbayev University (NU) Repository from the five schools at the NU namely the Graduate School of Education (GSE), Graduate School of Public Policy (GSPP), School of Engineering (SEng), School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS) and School of Science and Technology (SST).