Harvard explained

Overview

Australian Harvard is an author-date style of referencing.

In-text citations:

• Provide the author and year of publication in the body of your writing.
• In addition, provide a page number for quotes.
• Page numbers can also be provided for paraphrases.

Reference list:

• Create a list of all sources used in your in-text citations.
• Order them alphabetically according the first-listed author's name of each source.

In-text citations

For in-text citations in Harvard, provide:

• the family name of the author(s) or the name of the organisation/department(s)
• the year of publication
• page numbers when quoting directly from a source (essential)
• page numbers when paraphrasing a source (recommended)
• a colon between the year and the page number (or other locator)
• a corresponding entry in the reference list.

When using in-text citations, you can emphasise the author:

Or the information:

If the citation is from more than one page, include the page range in the in-text citation:

Important: it is essential when citing sources to engage with your sources critically. Avoid writing paragraphs that lack your own commentary and analysis of sources.

There are three main ways to include sources in your work: summarising, paraphrasing or directly quoting.

1. Summarising your source

A summary of a work or section of a work, or a general reference to someone's theory or idea, always requires a citation.

Include the author(s) and the date:

2. Paraphrasing your source

A paraphrase accurately conveys the meaning of a brief and specific section of text from a source – and in roughly the same number of words.

• Include the author(s) and the date.
• We also recommend including a page number (or other locator if there are no page numbers, e.g. paragraph number).

3. Quoting your source

A direct quote is the exact reproduction of someone’s words.

Only quote a source when it is essential that the reader sees the original wording – for example, it may be a memorable quote, a definition, regulation, legislation, a literary work or a controversial statement.

For further information on Direct quotes see the next topic.

Direct quotes

Only directly quote a source when it is essential that the reader sees the original wording. For example, it may be a memorable quote, a definition, regulation, legislation, a literary work or a controversial statement.

Note: While it is more common to provide direct quotes in disciplines such as History, Literature and in disciplines where policy documents or regulations need to be cited, it is less common in the sciences.

Short quotes

For direct quotes of approximately less than 30 words:

• include the author, the date, and the page number (or for web sources you may use another locator e.g. paragraph number or section title)
• enclose the quote in single quotation marks
• if the citation is at the end of a sentence, place the full stop after the citation.

Long quotes

For longer quotes of more than approximately 30 words, format as a block quote:

• indent the quote from main text
• use a smaller font size
• use 1.5 or double spacing
• do not use quotation marks
• place the in-text citation after the full stop in the original text.

Quote marks within quotes

When quoting directly from a source that already includes quote marks, use double quotation marks inside single quotation marks.

Adding or removing text from direct quotes

You may add or remove text from a direct quote for clarification or to improve the flow of your sentence – as long as it does not change the intended meaning of the original text.

Use ellipses (…) to show where you have removed words.

Use text in square brackets to show where you have added words.

Reference list

All in-text citations must have a corresponding entry in the reference list. This provides your reader with details on how to locate your sources. In each entry, you provide the:

• author
• year of publication (some sources also require the day and month)
• title of the work (note: some web sources require either the title hyperlinked to the URL, or the URL provided at the end of reference list entry)
• publication details (note: this varies for different source types)
• date you accessed the source (for some online sources).

Note: some titles of works published online are hyperlinked to the URL. For further details, see the Harvard topics: URLs and DOIs and Web and video: Overview.

The entries in a reference list are alphabetically ordered:

• by the family name of author or authoring organisation
• by title where there is no author (disregarding 'A', 'An' or 'The').

Multiple entries by the same author

• Provide a long dash in place of the author for subsequent entries.
• Order entries by date.

Multiple entries by the same author in the same year

• Provide a long dash in place of the author's name for subsequent entries.
• Add lower case letters following the year, i.e. 2001a, 2001b, 2001c.
• Order entries alphabetically by the title of the work.

Group authors

Where you have used a shortened form for a group author (organisation, agency or government department) in an in-text citation, provide the reference list entry under the shortened form of the name, followed by the full name in brackets:

For further examples, see the Harvard topic Group authors and the section Government, NGO and legal.

Note: some specialised sources – for example, artworks or legal sources – may require their own list. These lists often have a title such as ‘List of artworks’ or ‘Legislation cited’. Check with your unit teaching staff if you are required to provide a list in addition to the main reference list.

Here is a sample reference list, with the title ‘References’ centred and in bold:

Number of authors

In-text citations

For sources with a single author, provide the family name, or organisation/agency name, and the date.

For sources with two authors, provide the family names of the authors in the order they appear in the publication.  Use the word ‘and’ – not the ‘&’ symbol.

For sources with three or more authors, use only the family name of the first-listed author in publication, followed by ‘et al.’ (meaning 'and others').

Reference list

Provide the names of all the authors in the order that they appear in the publication.

Group author

In-text citations

An author may be an organisation, a government agency/department or a corporate body.

• Only use a shortened form of an organisation/department/agency if it is in common use.
• Spell out the full name of an organisation/department/agency the first time you use it, then use the shortened form from that point on.

Reference list

If you use a shortened form in your text, provide the reference list entry under the shortened form of the name, followed by the full name in brackets.

For further examples of Government sources, see the Harvard section: Government, NGO and legal.

No author

Note that sometimes where it appears there is no author, the author is in fact an organisation or government department.

For sources that do not name a specific author or have an authoring organisation, you can begin the citation with:

• the name of the publication (e.g. the name of the news site or blog)
• the title of the work (e.g. the title of the book), or descriptive title (e.g. an artwork with no title).

In-text citations

Reference list

No date

When you cannot find a date for a source, use:

• n.d. (meaning 'no date') instead of a date
• c. (short for ‘circa’) if the date can be reliably estimated.

In-text citations

Reference list

Titles

Capitalisation

• For most titles, capitalise the first letter of the first word and the first letter of proper nouns.
• However, for journal titles, and some government sources and legislation, retain the capitalisation used in the original title.

Quote marks

• For titles of chapters, articles and blog posts, enclose the title in single quote marks.

Italics

• Format titles of books, web pages, journals and newspapers in italics .

Hyperlinked titles

• For some web sources, you may provide the URL as a hyperlinked title (or provide the URL in full at the end of the reference).
• Note: there are a number of sources that do not require a URL, for example a journal article with a DOI.

For further details on how to format titles, look at the examples provided for specific source types.

No page numbers

Some sources, such as websites and some e-reader editions of e-books, do not have page numbers.

In-text citations

For sources with no page numbers, you may include another locator in your in-text citation, such as a:

• paragraph number (para.)
• section heading
• chapter heading.

Reference list

Multiple citations

In-text citations

Citing multiple sources at the same point:

When citing more than one source at the same point in your writing:

• order the sources by date, from the earliest date to most the recent
• separate each source with a semicolon
• if sources have the same date of publication, order them alphabetically by author name.

Citing the same source multiple times in one paragraph:

Ensure that it is clear which part of your text is linked to each citation.

Important: In addition to citing your sources it is essential to comment on and analyse your sources.

Same author

In-text citations

When citing more than one work by the same author at the same point in your writing:

• provide the author and dates
• order citations by date, from the earliest to the most recent
• separate the dates with commas.

When citing more than one work by the same author in the same year:

• use the lower case letters (a, b, c etc.) after the date to distinguish between sources
• the lower case letters are assigned to the dates according to the alphabetical order of the titles (see reference list below).

Reference list

Multiple entries by the same author

• Provide a long dash in place of the author for subsequent entries.
• Order entries by date.

Multiple entries by the same author in the same year:

• Provide a long dash in place of the author's name for subsequent entries.
• Add lower case letters following the year, i.e. 2001a, 2001b, 2001c.

Order entries alphabetically by the title of the work.

Source within a source

In-text citations

When citing a source that you have not read directly but which has been quoted within a source that you have read, provide:

• the name of both authors in text
• a citation for the source you have read.

In this example, you have read Cotterall and Cohen, who are citing Donato – but you have not read Donato directly. Nevertheless, you would like to cite Donato.

In each case, the in-text citation only refers to the text that you have read.

Reference list

Provide only the details of the source you have read.

URLs and DIOs

DOIs

A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a unique identifier that is available for most academic journal articles and some e-books.

• A DOI is a more stable identifier than a URL, so where a DOI exists, cite this rather than a URL.
• There is no need to provide the date you accessed a source with a DOI.
• Do not place a full stop at the end of a DOI.

You can usually find the DOI on the first page of an article in the header or footer. They also appear in library records.

DOIs typically appear in one of these two formats and you may use either format (usually whichever one appears in your source):

Here are two reference list examples of journal articles with DOIs.

URLs

In reference list entries, URLs are provided for some online sources, such as web pages, web documents, blog posts and online videos – and for online articles that do not have a DOI.

• Provide the full URL of the source. You can do this in two ways: hyperlink the title of web page to the URL, or provide the full URL at the end of the reference list entry.
• For students using Endnote, you will place the URL at end of the reference list.
• For web sources that requires a log in, do not hyperlink the title. Provide the home page URL at the end of the reference list entry.
• Note: in most cases, there is no need to provide a URL for an e-book nor for an article published in an academic journal. A DOI is usually provided instead.
• Note: URLs may be provided for some online video sources, but not for films nor TV episodes.

Web document:

Blog post:

Online article with no DOI:

Translation

In-text citations

Cite the original author, not the translator.

Reference list

Include the name and role of the translator in brackets after the title of the work.