What is the OSCOLA referencing style?
Answer
'OSCOLA' stands for Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities.
It is a referencing style developed by the Faculty of Law in Oxford University in 2000 and is used by law departments in the UK as well as many other countries to facilitate and standardise modern legal citations.
Students who study LLB and LLM at Arden are required to use the OSCOLA style in all their assignments.
Unlike the author-date system in the Arden Harvard and APA styles, the OSCOLA style uses footnotes. This means it involves placing a superscript number at the end of the sentence or phrase to indicate a source with the corresponding footnotes appearing at the bottom of the page.
You can download the OSCOLA Referencing Guide from our Academic Integrity webpage.
Watch this short video to get a better idea of what the OSCOLA referencing style looks like:
If you would like more help understanding OSCOLA, book an academic skills appointment or email our team at AcademicSkills@arden.ac.uk
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