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Harvard referencing — also known as the author-date system and parenthetical system — is a format for writing and organizing citations of source materials.

The Harvard referencing system consists of citations (in the text) and references (alphabetized in a References section). An example of a citation, providing the author's name, publication year, and page range, is at the end of this sentence (Deane 2001, 449–51). A corresponding example of a reference is

Deane, Sandra. 2001. Principles of trauma management. In Textbook of surgery, ed. J. Tjandra, G. Clunie, and R. Thomas, 434–65. Victoria, Australia: Blackwell Publishing.

Origins and variations

Harvard referencing was first used in 1881 in a paper by Edward Laurens Mark, professor of anatomy and director of the zoological laboratory at Harvard University, who derived it from the laboratory library's cataloguing system.

Traditionally, Harvard referencing has been used mostly in the sciences (University of Chicago Press 2006). In the fine arts, history, and literature, the footnote-style documentary-note or humanities system has traditionally been preferred. The Vancouver system, a variation of Harvard referencing, has been used primarily for medical works. In recent decades, "most scholarly and professional organizations" have turned to Harvard referencing.

This article follows the University of Chicago Manual of Style.

How works are cited

The structure of a citation under the Harvard referencing system is the author's surname, year of publication, and page number or range, in parentheses, as illustrated in the Deane example near the top of this article.

• The page number or page range is omitted if the entire work is cited. The author's surname is omitted if it appears in the text. Thus we may say: Author (2001) revolutionized the field of trauma surgery.

• Two or three authors are cited using "and" or "&": (Author, Smith, and Jones 1991) or (Author, Smith & Jones 1991). Four or more authors are cited using et al (Author et al 1992).

• An unknown date is cited as no date (Deane n.d.). A reference to a reprint is cited with the original publication date in square brackets (Marx 1967, 90).

• If an author published two books in 2005, the year of the first (in the alphabetic order of the references) is cited and referenced as 2005a, the second as 2005b.

• A citation is placed wherever appropriate in or after the sentence. If it is at the end of a sentence, it is placed before the period, but a citation for an entire block quote immediately follows the period at the end of the block.

• Complete citations are provided in alphabetical order in a section following the text, usually designated as "Works cited" or "References." The difference between "works cited" and a bibliography is that a bibliography section may include works not cited.

• All citations are in the same font as the main text.

Examples

Examples of book references are:

• Smith, J. (2005a). Harvard Referencing, Wherever, Florida:Wikimedia Foundation. ISBN 1-899235-74-4.
• Smith, J. (2005b). More Harvard Referencing, Wherever, Florida:Wikimedia Foundation. ISBN 1-899235-74-4.

An example of a journal reference is:

• Smith, John Maynard. (1998). The origin of altruism. Nature 393: 639–40.

A newspaper article is usually cited in running text and omitted from the References section. An example of a formal newspaper reference is:

• Bowcott, O. "Protests halt online auction to shoot stag", The Guardian, October 18, 2005.

If the publication is offline:

• Bowcott, O. 2005. Protests halt online auction to shoot stag. The Guardian, October 18, 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/animalrights/story/0,11917,1594716,00.html.

Harvard referencing and content notes

Harvard referencing is compatible with footnotes used for content notes. Harvard referencing is an alternative to footnotes used for reference notes (that is, the documentary-note system). Footnotes, if used for content notes, often contain Harvard referencing citations, just as the main text does.

See also

• Misplaced Pages:Harvard referencing

Notes

Warning: the items in this section follow neither the Harvard referencing system nor any other accepted guidelines for citing references. Do not consider these items to be examples of any footnote or reference system.

1. "Bibliographic Format for References", based on the Chicago Manual of Style, University of Georgia, retrieved October 18, 2005.
2. "Basic structure and format of citation styles", The Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing, retrieved August 4, 2006.
3. Mark, Edward Laurens. 1881. Maturation, fecundation, and segmentation of Limax campestris. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology vol. 6, part 2, no. 12: 173–625.
4. Chernin, Eli. "The "Harvard System: a mystery dispelled," British Medical Journal vol 297 October 22, 1988, 1062-1063.
5. A citation guide sponsored by an MIT-Microsoft joint venture states that "most scholarly and professional organizations have abandoned because redundant and cumbersome.... In the 1980s the Modern Language Association, the largest American organization of scholars in English and foreign literatures, changed its recommended form of citation from a note style to its own version of the parenthetical style" (Mayfield, section 10.3).

Further reading

• MIT. 2006. "Citing sources and listing references", in The Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing.

• Bibliography
• Research
• Style guides