PhD - can I pay someone to sort my references/bibliog?

[EishetChayil]

I'm coming to the end of my PhD, at the same time as working and looking after my 10-month-old.

I'm confident I can finish it, but the one thing hanging over my head is the references. They're all there, they're just not all in the right format. The idea of going through them all makes me feel a bit sick.

Has anyone every employed someone to edit just their references & bibliography in a PhD or masters thesis?? I don't need the actual body of the thesis editing.

Presumably they'd have to be familiar with the referencing system of my university. It's one of the common ones, so I don't see that it would be too much trouble.

I don't want to ask anyone in real life in case they think it's cheating. (Is it??)

I think you really need to check with your university; have you had a session with library services to help you with referencing? They may have software to help you with this

I would not risk that without checking with your university.

Dont want to sound nasty but you having a child shouldnt mean you do less work than other PhD candidates.

I’m sure you can get (entirely legitimate) software to do that for you. But definitely check directly with your university.

Yeah, I wouldn't. Can't you use Zotero?

I work at a uni and our library helps with this. I'd contact them to see if they can help before doing anything else.

I wouldn't risk having them mess it up, even if it were allowed.
Pay for someone to look after your LO while you do the refs instead.

My university gives me access to EndNote and I know there are other packages. You put everything in to it - it prompts the things it needs for each ref. Then there is a Word plugin and when you put in a citation, you do it via the plugin and it puts it in the references section as well automatically.

Could you have a session doing something like that?

There are people who can do this for you (I’m one of them, but I have no free time at the moment). BUT, it’s really important that you check the rules of your institution as many of them do not allow this kind of help.

Good luck!

One thing I used is the search function on google scholar- then there's a " quote burton to the bottom of the searches and you can hit that and it gives you reference in all different styles consistently. It's a dull job but completely mind numbing to do. I wouldn't trust that someone doing it for you wasn't plagiarism

I would ask your supervisor. People get support with the admin work of doing PhD research and writing up all the time (I'm an academic who supervises PhD students). But there is probably a fine line between what is acceptable from the perspective of your university and what isn't. Is your research part of a larger research project? Often junior researchers (think Master's level students or research assistants) do this sort of work.

Thanks all! I will check with my university.

Buy EndNote or Reference Manager and do it yourself. Really easy.

I very much doubt having someone reformat your references would constitute plagiarism or be against uni rules. Plagiarism is the use without acknowledgment of someone else’s intellectual content. Formatting is not intellectual content, it’s formatting. Academics employ grad students to work up indexes all the time, and if there’s a phd out there without an acknowledgement to at least one proof reader I’d be surprised. I don’t think this is really any different. Run it past your supervisor, and think through the possibility that whoever you ask to do it might make mistakes, of course, but I expect it would be completely fine.
I’m baffled that you want to, though, tbh. When I did my phd this was the nice relaxing work I did in the evening with a glass of wine when the hard grind of writing and editing got to be too much! But I didn’t have a little one then. Can see how that would make a difference. Anyway, really good luck with it. The final weeks are hard and you’re doing brilliantly to finish whilst caring for a baby.

Word has a reference bit. It opens a box and you put in all the fields author, publication, year etc and it will sort your biography as you add to it.

No idea of that's any help. Good luck.

Zotero has been my life saver. It's so easy, it puts everything in the correct order in the bibliography. I don't even think about the bibliography, it just kind of happens. For sure I'll check through at the end but it's looking ok so far.