Harvard Referencing Generator

Enter your source details and get a correctly formatted Harvard reference, plus the matching author–date in-text citation, in seconds. This generator follows the widely-taught Cite Them Right variant of Harvard — the author–date style used across most UK universities — so you can copy each entry straight into the reference list of an essay, lab report, literature review or dissertation.

Used in: Business, the social sciences, the sciences and nursing across UK universities. Harvard is the most commonly required referencing style in British higher education, though exact punctuation varies slightly between institutions — this tool follows the Cite Them Right standard.

HarvardAuthor–date

Enter your source

Auto-cite from a DOI, ISBN or PubMed ID

Or fill the form yourself below. A bare web address can’t be looked up in the browser — paste its DOI instead.

Source type

A peer-reviewed article in an academic journal.

Author

Digital Object Identifier, if the source has one.

Year published

Add an author or a title and your formatted Harvard citation appears here instantly.

In your text

Author–date in round brackets: (Surname, Year), e.g. (Tulving and Thomson, 1973). Add a page for a direct quotation: (Tulving, 1973, p. 14).

In your reference list

Alphabetical by first author’s surname with a hanging indent. Names are inverted with initials (no space between them); article and chapter titles take sentence case in single quotation marks; journal names and book titles are italicised.

Harvard tips
  • Use “and” between author surnames both in text and in the reference list.
  • Name up to three authors in full in text; for four or more, give the first author followed by “et al.”.
  • Article and chapter titles take sentence case in single quotation marks; journal names take title case in italics.
  • Cite Them Right uses “edn” for editions (3rd edn.) and “pp.” for page ranges.
  • Finish a web source with “Available at: URL (Accessed: day month year).”

Your reference list is empty. Build a citation above and choose “Add to list” to collect your sources here, correctly ordered and ready to copy or export.

Harvard at a glance

The author–date workhorse of UK universities

Harvard pairs the author's surname with the year in the body of your text, then lists every source alphabetically at the end. It is the most widely required referencing approach in British higher education — and this generator builds it to the Cite Them Right standard.

Author–date
Citation system
Cite Them Right
Variant used here
“and”
Joins authors (not “&”)
4+
Authors → “et al.” in text
Read this first

Harvard is a family, not one fixed style

There is no single Harvard authority. “Harvard” names a whole family of author–date conventions, and individual departments tune the punctuation and styling to taste. What stays constant is the system itself; what varies is the surface detail. The generator follows Cite Them Right — but always sanity-check the output against your own course or library guide.

Constant across every variant

The system never changes

  • Author–date in the text: surname plus year, e.g. (Kuhn, 1996).
  • One alphabetical reference list at the end, ordered by author surname.
  • Every named author appears in full in the reference list — no truncation.
  • A direct quotation always carries a page number after the year.
  • Online sources are pinned with the date you accessed them.
Varies between institutions

The surface detail drifts

  • Author joiner: “and” vs “&” between names (Cite Them Right uses “and”).
  • Title quoting: Article titles in single quotes, double quotes, or none at all.
  • What is italic: Some guides italicise book titles only; others add journal names.
  • Edition wording: “edn”, “ed.” or “edition” spelled out in full.
  • Access wording: “Accessed:”, “Viewed:” or a bare retrieved-on date.
Default here
Cite Them Right

The de-facto UK standard — what this tool builds.

Variant
In-house guides

Department or library variants with tweaked punctuation.

Variant
Discipline tweaks

Subject conventions layered on top of the base style.

Check your department's guide
This generator uses the Cite Them Right variant of Harvard, the most widely-taught author–date standard across UK universities. Distinctively, it joins authors with “and” rather than “&”, abbreviates editions as “edn” (reserving “ed.”/“eds” for editors), wraps article and chapter titles in single quotation marks, appends DOIs in the bare “doi: 10.xxxx” form, and ends online sources with “Available at: URL (Accessed: day month year).” Harvard is a family of conventions rather than a single authority, so individual departments may adjust the punctuation slightly — always check your course or library guide.
Anatomy

Inside one Harvard reference (journal article)

Every Harvard reference is built from the same ordered parts, each with its own punctuation rule. Read the worked entry below from top to bottom — the spacing and stops are doing real work.

Journal article
Tulving, E. and Thomson, D.M. (1973) 'Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory', Psychological Review, 80(5), pp. 352–373. doi: 10.1037/h0020071
  1. 1
    Author(s)Tulving, E. and Thomson, D.M.

    Surnames first, then initials with periods but no space between them. Join all authors with “and”.

  2. 2
    Year(1973)

    Publication year in round brackets straight after the author, with no full stop.

  3. 3
    Article title'Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory',

    Sentence case in single quotation marks; only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised.

  4. 4
    Journal namePsychological Review,

    Title case and italicised — the name of the journal that contains the article.

  5. 5
    Volume(Issue)80(5),

    Volume number with the issue in round brackets immediately after, no space.

  6. 6
    Page rangepp. 352–373.

    Full page range marked with “pp.” and an en dash, closed by a full stop.

  7. 7
    DOIdoi: 10.1037/h0020071

    The bare DOI prefixed with “doi:”, added at the very end with no full stop.

In-text citations

The author–date rules that trip people up

The reference list is the easy half. The author–date citations inside your sentences are where marks quietly leak away — too many names, an ampersand where Harvard wants a word, or a missing year-letter on two same-year sources. Here is exactly how Harvard handles each edge case.

Three or fewer vs four or more

Name up to three authors in full and join the last two with the word and. With four or more, give only the first author followed by et al. — every time.

(Tulving and Thomson, 1973)(Adams, Briggs and Cole, 2021)(Adams et al., 2021)

The reference list still names every author in full, however many there are.

Same author, same year

When one author publishes two works in the same year, add a lower-case letter to each year so the citation points at exactly one reference. Order the letters alphabetically by title in the reference list.

(Smith, 2021a)(Smith, 2021b)

The same letter is repeated in the reference list: Smith, J. (2021a) …

No named author

Move the title into the author position and alphabetise by that title. In text, use a short form of the title in the author slot. Reserve Anon. for when your department specifically asks for it.

(Climate report, 2023)(NHS, 2022)

An organisation often counts as the author — use it before falling back to the title.

Secondary referencing

When you cite a source you only read about in another work, name both and link them with cited in. Only the source you actually read goes in the reference list.

(Vygotsky, 1934, cited in Wertsch, 1985)

Wertsch (1985) is the entry that appears in your reference list, not Vygotsky.

Page numbers for quotations
Quote word for word and you must add the page after the year: (Kuhn, 1996, p. 23) for one page, (Kuhn, 1996, pp. 23–25) for a range. The reference-list entry does not change when you quote directly.
Cheat sheet

One template per source type

Match your source to a row, follow the template, and compare against the worked example. These cover the source types you will reach for most across essays, lab reports, literature reviews and dissertations.

Source typeTemplateWorked example
Journal articleAuthor(s) (Year) 'Article title', Journal Name, volume(issue), pp. pages. doi: xxxxTulving, E. and Thomson, D.M. (1973) 'Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory', Psychological Review, 80(5), pp. 352–373. doi: 10.1037/h0020071
BookAuthor(s) (Year) Title of the book. Edition. Place: Publisher.Kuhn, T.S. (1996) The structure of scientific revolutions. 3rd edn. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Book chapterAuthor(s) (Year) 'Chapter title', in Editor(s) (ed.) Book title. Place: Publisher, pp. pages.McGann, J.J. (1997) 'The rationale of hypertext', in Greetham, D.C. (ed.) Electronic text: Investigations in method and theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 19–46.
WebsiteAuthor/Org (Year) Title of page. Available at: URL (Accessed: day month year).Cherry, K. (2022) How human memory works. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000 (Accessed: 15 January 2024).
Newspaper articleAuthor (Year) 'Article title', Newspaper Name, day month. Available at: URL.Carrington, D. (2021) 'World leaders strike landmark climate deal at COP26', The Guardian, 13 November. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/13/cop26-climate-deal.
Online videoUploader (Year) Title of video. Available at: URL.Veritasium (2020) The science of thermodynamics. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb-zVtJf9Hk.
Conference paperAuthor(s) (Year) 'Paper title', Proceedings/Conference Name. Place, pp. pages.Vaswani, A. and Shazeer, N. (2017) 'Attention is all you need', Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. Long Beach, CA, pp. 5998–6008.
Thesis / dissertationAuthor (Year) Title of thesis. Thesis type. Institution. Available at: URL.Doe, J.A. (2019) Essays on monetary policy and inflation expectations. Doctoral dissertation. University of Oxford. Available at: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:example.
ReportAuthor/Org (Year) Title of report (No. xx). Place. Available at: URL.World Health Organization (2023) World health statistics 2023: Monitoring health for the SDGs (No. 24). Geneva, Switzerland. Available at: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240074323.
Fix these first

Common Harvard mistakes, side by side

These are the slips that cost the easiest marks. Each pair shows the wrong form, the corrected form, and the rule behind the fix — most come straight from the Cite Them Right conventions that separate Harvard from APA and MLA.

Avoid
Smith, John (2021) The book title.
Use
Smith, J. (2021) The book title.

Harvard inverts names and uses initials, never the full given name.

Avoid
Tulving, E. & Thomson, D.M. (1973)
Use
Tulving, E. and Thomson, D.M. (1973)

Cite Them Right joins authors with the word “and”, not an ampersand, in both the reference list and in-text citations.

Avoid
Tulving, E. and Thomson, D.M. (1973) “Encoding specificity…”
Use
Tulving, E. and Thomson, D.M. (1973) 'Encoding specificity…'

Article and chapter titles sit inside single quotation marks, not double; the journal name (not the title) is italicised.

Avoid
Kuhn, T.S. (1996) The structure of scientific revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Use
Kuhn, T.S. (1996) The structure of scientific revolutions. 3rd edn. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Harvard abbreviates “edition” as “edn”; it reserves “ed.”/“eds” for editors.

Avoid
Cherry, K. (2022). How human memory works. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000.
Use
Cherry, K. (2022) How human memory works. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000 (Accessed: 15 January 2024).

There is no full stop after the bracketed year, and an online source must end with the access date.

Avoid
Tulving, E. and Thomson, D.M. (1973) … pp. 352-73.
Use
Tulving, E. and Thomson, D.M. (1973) … pp. 352–373.

Give the full page range with an en dash, not a shortened hyphenated range.

Putting it together

A sample Harvard reference list

One alphabetical list, ordered by author surname, with a hanging indent so each entry's first line stands proud. Mixed source types live together here — books, journal articles, news and web pages — with no separate sections.

Reference list
  • Carrington, D. (2021) 'World leaders strike landmark climate deal at COP26', The Guardian, 13 November. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/13/cop26-climate-deal.
  • Cherry, K. (2022) How human memory works. Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000 (Accessed: 15 January 2024).
  • Kuhn, T.S. (1996) The structure of scientific revolutions. 3rd edn. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
  • Tulving, E. and Thomson, D.M. (1973) 'Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory', Psychological Review, 80(5), pp. 352–373. doi: 10.1037/h0020071

In a finished document each entry uses a hanging indent: the first line is flush left and the runover lines are indented, so the alphabetised surnames are easy to scan.

Harvard Referencing Generator — questions

Which version of Harvard does this generator use?+

It follows Cite Them Right, the most widely-taught Harvard variant in UK universities. Harvard is not a single authority — it is a set of author–date conventions, and individual departments sometimes tweak the punctuation. Always check your course or library guide and adjust the output if your institution asks for a slightly different layout.

How do I cite a source with no author in Harvard?+

Move the title into the author position and order the reference alphabetically by that title. In text, use a short form of the title in the author slot, for example (Climate report, 2023). If there is no obvious organisation or person responsible, use the title; only use “Anon.” if your department specifically requires it.

When do I use “et al.” in Harvard?+

For a work with four or more authors, give only the first author followed by “et al.” in every in-text citation, for example (Adams et al., 2021). For one to three authors, name them all in text and join the last two with “and”. The reference list, however, names every author in full regardless of how many there are.

Why does Harvard use “edn” instead of “ed.” for editions?+

Cite Them Right Harvard abbreviates “edition” as “edn” to distinguish it from “ed.”/“eds”, which it reserves for “editor”/“editors”. So a second edition is written “2nd edn.”, while an edited book is “Smith, J. (ed.)”. This generator applies the correct abbreviation to each field for you.

How should I present a DOI or URL in Harvard?+

For a journal article with a DOI, add it at the end of the reference in the form “doi: 10.xxxx”. For a website, end the reference with “Available at: URL (Accessed: day month year).” so the reader knows the exact page and the date you consulted it. Always include the access date for online sources that could change.

Should Harvard titles be in sentence case or title case?+

Titles of articles, chapters, books, webpages and reports take sentence case — capitalise only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns. The names of journals and newspapers take title case and are italicised, and article and chapter titles sit inside single quotation marks. This tool applies the correct case and styling to each field automatically.

How do I add a page number for a direct quotation?+

Put the page in the in-text citation after the year: (Kuhn, 1996, p. 23). Use “p.” for a single page and “pp.” for a range, for example (Kuhn, 1996, pp. 23–25). The reference-list entry itself does not change when you quote directly.

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