How to Reference

Use Harvard style for in-text citations and bibliographies

This section will inform you about Harvard style referencing, give you simple rules to follow, examples of common sources that you might need to reference, and provide examples of how to reference.

Harvard style refers to one of the most widely used methods of referencing in academic work. There are two components to referencing correctly with Harvard style: in-text citations and the reference list. Due to the widespread use of Harvard style, VNS encourages students to become familiar with and use this style of referencing. However, if you are familiar with another style, such as APA, you may use this instead as long as you are accurate and consistent.

In-text citations are used to directly indicate when a source has been used for a particular idea, opinion, fact or piece of information. These need to follow a consistent style; examples of Harvard style in-text citations are given below. First, though, familiarise yourself with the following rules for in-text citations:

• Use the author’s surname with no initials and the year of publication. Initials are only used when there are two or more authors with the same last name, e.g. “Jones A (2013) was of the opinion that…which conflicted with the opinion of Jones B (2010).”
• When using websites, the URL is not included in the in-text citation.
• When the author’s name forms part of the sentence, only the year and page number (if required) is included in the brackets. E.g. ‘O’Connor (2002) concluded that…’
• In-text citations inside brackets should be included before the concluding punctuation, for example:
  correct: “…this was proven by Jefferson. (1985)”

  wrong: “…this was proven by Jefferson (1985).”

The reference list is located at the end of your academic work and is dedicated to listing all of the sources cited within your work. Only sources that are cited within your work should be in the reference list. If you include sources that gave you background knowledge, or helped you to formulate your opinion or ideas, then it should be called the ‘Bibliography.’

There are a few rules to which the reference list must adhere, as follows:

• Each reference list entry should be placed on a new, separate line.
• Entries should not be numbered or have bullet points, they should be indented.
• Entries by the same single or multiple authors are arranged by year of publication, with the earliest placed first.
• The reference list must be in alphabetical order by surname of first author.