Harvard referencing: templates and examples for books, journals and web pages

What is a Harvard reference?

A Harvard reference is a citation where the author and year appear in brackets in the running text, with the full source listed alphabetically at the end of the document. It is also called the author–date system, and it dominates the social sciences, business, nursing and education in the UK, Australia and the Nordics.

Harvard differs from footnote systems such as Oxford and Chicago notes, where a superscript number sends the reader to the bottom of the page. For a side-by-side comparison, see our guide to Harvard, APA and Oxford.

How does the in-text citation look?

The in-text citation comes in two forms, and choosing between them is a matter of emphasis, not of rules. In the parenthetical form everything sits in the brackets: Motivation drops when the reward becomes extrinsic (Deci & Ryan, 2000). In the narrative form the author becomes part of the sentence: Deci and Ryan (2000) show that motivation drops when the reward becomes extrinsic.

Use the narrative form when the researcher is the point, and the parenthetical form when the finding is. An essay that only ever uses one of them reads like a list.

When do I need a page number?

Page numbers are mandatory for direct quotations and for pointing at a specific table, figure or definition. The format is (Anderson, 2021, p. 45), or (Anderson, 2021, pp. 45–47) for a range. Summarising a whole study's conclusion needs only author and year, but adding the page still makes your work easier to check – and your marker finds the passage in three seconds rather than thirty.

Templates by source type

The pattern is given first and a filled-in example underneath. Note that only the element replacing the publisher changes between rows.

How do I handle multiple authors?

Two authors are always written out, with an ampersand inside brackets and "and" in narrative form: (Karpicke & Roediger, 2008) versus Karpicke and Roediger (2008). Three or more authors are shortened in the text to the first surname followed by et al. – (Dunlosky et al., 2013) – while the reference list names them all. Two works by the same author in the same year are separated by a letter: (Biggs, 2011a) and (Biggs, 2011b).

What if details are missing?

Missing information is replaced with a fixed abbreviation, never with a guess. With no year, write (no date). With no named author, the title moves into the author position, both in the text and in the list. With no page number in a digital source, cite the section instead: (Biggs, 2011, section 3). Leaving the field blank is always worse than marking it as absent.

How do I cite a source I only read about elsewhere?

Secondary sources are marked "cited in", and it is the source you actually read that belongs in the reference list: (Vygotsky, 1934, cited in Säljö, 2014). The rule underneath the formatting is simple – you may only cite what you have read yourself. Secondary citations are accepted when the original is genuinely unavailable, but a dissertation full of them signals that the literature search was never done properly. Our literature review guide covers how to do it.

How do I order the reference list?

The reference list is ordered alphabetically by the author's surname, with no numbering and no split by source type. Several works by the same author are ordered chronologically, oldest first. The list must contain exactly the sources you cited – not the book you read but never used, and not missing the article you used but forgot to add. It is the single most common comment at a viva or dissertation defence.

What are the most common mistakes?

Four errors account for most of the marks lost. The first is a citation in the text with no matching entry, usually because a source was swapped late. The second is inconsistent formatting, where half the list has a full stop after the year and half does not. The third is a missing page number on a quotation, which at worst reads as plagiarism rather than carelessness – see our guide to plagiarism checkers for where that line sits. The fourth is a web source with no access date, which makes an edited page impossible to verify later.

How do I check the references before submitting?

Work backwards: start in the reference list and find each entry in the text, not the other way round. That direction catches orphaned entries, which are otherwise invisible. Then read the text and mark every bracket – each mark needs a match in the list. Ten minutes in that order catches everything except misspelled names.

If you want to test that you have understood the system rather than just read about it, upload your department's referencing guide to Memmo and let the quiz tool question you on it. Memmo is used by more than 75,000 students across over 5,000 courses.