General notes

Informal interviews and conversations have low scientific value compared to traditional publication forms (empirical studies, edited volumes), because they are not verifiable. They are therefore not citable as valid evidence and can only serve as an indication.

Always search for the best possible source. Transcribed, analyzed interviews, whether conducted by others or by yourself, are considered of higher scientific value because they are verifiable.

Practical application

When citing conversations, you may assign pseudonyms to the participants to protect their anonymity.

Informal conversations are usually not recorded but are either written down afterwards from memory (memory protocol) or noted in keywords during the conversation (conversation transcript).

Concise statements should preferably be quoted verbatim: Ms. Meier describes the atmosphere as “very tense.”

Citation of conversations

In general, the content should be reproduced as close as possible to the original. Depending on the situation, participants should be informed that the conversation will be cited in an academic work.

In the reference list, conversations can be listed under the separate category Personal Communication.

In the text as a short reference: (Meier 2023, personal communication).

Transcripts can be included in the appendix. For more details and methodological discussion, see: Vogel and Funck 2018

Frequently asked questions

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Citing Internal Sources

Common procedure As a general rule, only publicly accessible sources should be listed in a bibliography. Internal company sources would not usually be included. However, such sources may still be cited. You have several options: You can simply list the sources in the bibliography and add a note in square brackets indicating that the source …

• company
• Interviews
• quotes

Faculties: AC, AMP, AR, BI, BW, D, EFI, IN, MB/VS, SOH, SW, VT, WT

• Citing & Layout

Contributors: Maria Noll, Schreibzentrum, Dzifa Vode

Revising Charts in Excel

Initial situation As a rule, charts created by default in Excel are not immediately usable and require revision. Figure 1 shows an example of an automatically generated Excel chart with three datasets, based on the publicly available “Iris flower data set”. This dataset is often used as an example for discriminant analyses and as a …

• adjustments
• figures
• formatting
• graphics
• revise

Faculties: AC, AMP, AR, BI, EFI, IN, MB/VS, SOH, VT, WT

• Citing & Layout

Contributors: Prof. Dr. Dirk Sachsenheimer, Maria Noll, Schreibzentrum, Dzifa Vode

This article was published in August 2025 and last updated in December 2024.