Personal Communication is information that you have received personally, and most importantly, will not be accessible to the readers of your work to access for themselves.
Personal Communication includes:
- Emails and text messages
- Online chats and telephone conversations
- Letters and memos
- Personal interviews
- Live speeches and unrecorded classroom lectures
- Messages from non-archived discussion groups & online bulletin boards
Basic information about referencing unpublished material:
- The two most common types of unpublished references are private communications and papers still in preparation.
- Private Communications include private letters, memos, emails, personal interviews, telephone conversations, and similar resources.
- As the private communication may not provide recoverable data, the private communication may be cited in-text only.
- If citing your private communication in-text only, provide the initials as well as the surname of the communicator, along with as exact date of communication as possible.
- Private Communication with recoverable, accessible data is recommended to be provided in the Reference List.
- Use your judgment in citing other electronic forms, like Twitter or SMS Texts, as Private Communications. Remember that what you cite should have scholarly relevance.
Basic format to reference a private communication
# Author(s) Surname initial/s, private communication, Abbrev. Month. Year.
Referencing elements to cite:
- # Reference number (matching the in-text citation number)
- Author(s) name
- private communication
- Abbreviated month and year or correspondence
In-text example of an email
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An email (Van Staden R., private communication, 2021 Sept. 2 confirming that the results are accurate also reaffirms the view that ...
You do not need to include an entry in the Reference List.
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In-text example of an letter
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In a letter dated October 17, 2023, Jade Walker stated that ...
OR
Jade Walker expressed understanding in her letter (private communication, 2023 Oct17,) ...
You do not need to include an entry in the Reference List.
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In-text example of an Interview
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During an interview conducted on Oct. 11, 2023, Nicholas Gaskell, Lecturer, Wigan & Leigh College, confirmed the increase of …
OR
The Lecturer's statement was acknowledged during an interview (N.Gaskell, Lecturer, Wigan & Leigh College, private communication, Oct.11, 2023).
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You do not need to include an entry in the Reference List. This example is about referencing information from an interview that you have conducted.
Basic format to reference a paper still in preparation
# Author(s) Surname initial/s, Title of paper, unpublished (if applicable), Year Month (if applicable), available: site/path/file (if applicable).
Referencing elements to cite:
- # Reference number (matching the in-text citation number)
- Author(s) name
- Title of paper.
- unpublished (if applicable, for completely unpublished papers. If a paper has been published on, for example, the arXiv.org repository of electronic preprints, then you may omit to provide the word 'unpublished'
- Year and month of correspondence (if applicable)
- available: site/path/file (if applicable)
In-text example of a paper in progress
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In an unpublished paper: "Artificial intelligence for image processing,” the author Hao Shi draws a distinction between ..
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Full Reference for the Reference List
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5 Shi V., Artificial intelligence for image processing, unpublished.
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