Harvard referencing for a thesis or dissertation: a practical guide

Harvard is not one style. APA has a published manual, and Chicago has one too. Harvard has none. It is a name for the author-date method of citing, and each university, and sometimes each department, publishes its own version. Two students who both say they use Harvard can follow different rules for the same source.

That is the first thing to know, and it explains most of the confusion. The second thing is that you do not need to choose. Your university has already done so.

What Harvard shares with APA

Both are author-date systems. The in-text citation gives the author and year, and a reference list at the end gives the full details of each source, in alphabetical order. A reader sees Hattie and Timperley (2007) in the text and finds the full entry under H.

The differences are in the details, and the details are what examiners mark.

What differs between Harvard versions

Check each of these in your university's guide. They are the points where versions most often disagree.

• Punctuation in the citation. Some versions write (Hattie and Timperley, 2007) and others (Hattie and Timperley 2007), with no comma.
• "and" or "&". Some versions use the word, others the ampersand.
• et al. thresholds. Some shorten a source with three or more authors from the first citation, and others wait until there are four.
• Page numbers. Whether to write p. or pp., and whether a paraphrase needs a page.
• Titles. Whether article titles go in single quotation marks, and whether book titles are in italics, which most versions require.
• The list's heading. "Reference list" and "Bibliography" can mean different things. A reference list names only the sources you cited, and a bibliography may include sources you read but did not cite.
• Online sources. Whether a DOI is given as a web address, and whether you add the date you accessed a page.

One common format

Many UK universities base their guidance on a widely used guide called Cite Them Right. Your own university may use it or something close. In that version, a journal article reference looks like this:

Hattie, J. and Timperley, H. (2007) 'The power of feedback', Review of Educational Research, 77(1), pp. 81-112. doi:10.3102/003465430298487.

Set it against the APA version of the same source and the differences show: the year follows the author without a full stop, the article title is in quotation marks, the page range carries pp., and "and" replaces the ampersand. Both entries give the reader the same information. The style decides how it is laid out.

How to settle on your version

1. Find your university's guide. Search your library's website for "referencing guide" or "Harvard." Some universities link a PDF, and some run an online tool.
2. Check your department. If your handbook names a style or guide, follow that over anything else.
3. Match your reference manager. Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote offer Harvard variants named after the guides they follow. Pick the one that matches your university, and do not use a generic "Harvard" option.
4. Test five sources. Enter a book, a journal article, a chapter in an edited book, a web page, and a report by hand. Compare them with the examples in your guide before you let the manager format the whole list.
5. Keep a one-page style sheet. Write the choices that your guide makes: the et al. rule, the page format, the comma. It saves you checking the guide each time.

The checks before you submit

Run these at the end, and run them in both directions.

• Every in-text citation has an entry in the reference list.
• Every entry in the list is cited in the text.
• Authors' names, years, and spellings match in both places.
• Punctuation and italics follow your version, with no mixed styles.
• DOIs and web addresses still work.

Our article on citation mistakes lists the errors that reviewers mark most, and our guide to the bibliography and reference list compares the major styles. If you write in APA for part of your work, our APA research paper guide covers that system.

A second reader helps most with consistency, because you stop seeing your own inconsistencies after the third draft. Our editing and formatting service checks citations and the reference list against your university's required style.