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Harvard Referencing: Short Guide

Introduction

Referencing is a vital component of academic writing. It demonstrates your ability to select and refer to the

most appropriate external sources which support your work. You need to give proper credit to the authors

of any work from which you use information in order to avoid plagiarism.

In the Harvard style there are two aspects to referencing:

 Citing sources within your text

 Providing a list of all the sources you have cited at the end of your text, known as the reference

list (different from a bibliography, which is a list of set texts you were given but which you may

not have cited)

Citing

Every time you refer to information from an external source in your writing you should provide a citation.

Citations always include:

 The surname of the author(s) or the name of the organisation responsible for the source

 The year it was published; if no year is available, use “n.d.” for “no date”

They may also include a page number or a sequence of pages from within the source. Harvard citations

can be direct or indirect.

A direct citation is where the name of the author(s) is(are) used within a sentence.

Example:

Beranek (2004) defines warmth in music as the fullness of the bass tones (75-350 Hz) in

relation to the mid-frequency tones (350-1400 Hz).

An indirect citation is where the name of the author(s) is(are) not used within a sentence. It is always

placed at the end of a sentence before the final full stop. Indirect citations may contain several sources.

These should be separated by semi-colons and listed in alphabetical order.

Example:

The emergence of social media stems from the introduction of web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005;

Vickery and Wunsch-Vincent, 2007).

Note: Where a source has two authors, the citation should include both author surnames,

separated by the word “and”.

Quoting is where you provide text from an external source word for word. The page number(s) is

compulsory with a quote but optional with other types of citation. It is given after the year, separated by a

colon. Apart from exceptional circumstances, no more than 10% of all your citations should be quotes.

Example:

Although development viability assessments have recently become an important part of

the planning framework, such “calculative practices” (McAllister et al., 2013: 516)…..

Note: This example also demonstrates how to cite three or more authors – just use the surname

of the first author followed by “et al.”.

Summarising is where you take source information and put it in a shorter form in your own words.

For more information on how to summarise, go to http://tinyurl.com/bcu-wri-sum.

© 2015 Birmingham City University, Library and Learning Resources

The Reference List

The reference list should be put in alphabetical order of the last names of the authors or authoring

organisations. The exact style of each reference depends on its type. Here are some common examples.

Referencing a book

Example:

Beranek, L. (2004) Concert Halls and Opera Houses. 2nd edn. New York: Springer.

Referencing a paper journal article

Example:

McAllister, P., Wyatt, P. and Coleman, C. (2013) Fit for policy? Some evidence on the application

of development viability models in the United Kingdom planning system. Town Planning

Review, 84(4), pp. 495-521.

Referencing an online journal article (with no print equivalent)

Example:

Wu, B. and Wang, A.I. (2012) A guideline for game development-based learning: a literature

review. International Journal of Computer Games Technology. Article ID 103710, 20 pages.

Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/103710.

Referencing a website

Example:

O’Reilly, T. (2005) What is Web 2.0? Design patterns and business models for the next

generation of software. Available at:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html [Accessed 26

June 2015].

Referencing a report in pdf format

Example:

Vickery, G and Wunsch-Vincent, S. (2007) Participative Web and User-created Content: Web

2.0, wikis and social networking. [pdf] Paris: OECD. Available at:

http://browse.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/pdfs/free/9307031e.pdf [Accessed 26 June 2015].

More examples and information are available from http://tinyurl.com/bcu-harv. For more help, please

email [email protected] or visit the Centre for Academic Success, Level 3, Millennium Point, tel. 0121

331 7685, or book a tutorial via http://bcu.iinsight.org/.

Authorship (Year) Title. Edition.

(if not first) Place of

publication: Publisher.

Authorship (Year) Article Title.

Journal Title,

Volume(Issue), pp. pages.

Authorship (Year) Article title.

Journal Title,

Volume(Issue) / Number of pages.

Available at: URL

[Accessed date].

Authorship (Year) Title. Available at:

URL [Accessed

date].

Authorship (Year) Title. [pdf] Edition. (if not first)

Place of publication:

Publisher.

Available at: URL [Accessed date].