How to Use the Harvard Style of Referencing

Norman Creaney

Referencing - how, what, why?

In scientific and technical report writing you will often want to refer to other work that is somehow related to your own. Failure to properly acknowledge your sources may leave you open to accusations of plagiarism. There are a number of ways of referencing other peoples work, but they all share some features. A citation is inserted at the appropriate point in your text to indicate the existence of related work. A full reference is given separately for each citation, to enable the reader to trace the corresponding work.

Harvard - how, what, why?

The Harvard Referencing System is an agreed standard. It ensures that references are clear and unambiguous.
Main Text

Google's search engine uses the concept of PageRank (Brin, S., Page, L. 1998) to assign a value to each individual web page. This enables it to identify the most important pages that match a user's query.
... ... Reference List Brin, S. & Page, L., 1998. The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine. In: Seventh International conference on World-Wide Web (WWW 1998), April 14-18, 1998, Brisbane, Australia. ... ...

There are other standards but Harvard is widely used.

How to Reference a Book

Author's surname followed by a comma. Author's initials in capitals, with full-stop after each - and a final comma. Year of publication followed by full-stop. Full title of book in italics with capitalization of first word and proper nouns only - followed by full-stop unless there is a sub-title - follow by full-stop. Edition number followed by the abbreviation "ed." - followed by full-stop. Place of publication: Town or city, follow by colon. Publisher - company name followed by full-stop.

Russell, D.E. & Norvig, P., 2009. Artificial Intelligence: a modern approach, 3rd ed., Prentice-Hall.

How to Reference a Journal Article

Author's surname followed by a comma. Author's initials in capitals, with full-stop after each - and a final comma. Year of publication followed by full-stop. Full title of the article - not in italics - with capitalization of first word and proper nouns only - followed by full-stop unless there is a sub-title. Full title of journal, in italics, with capitalization of key words - followed by comma. Volume number Issue/Part number in brackets, followed by comma. Page range preceded by "pp."

Knuth, D.E. & Moore, R.W., 1975. An Analysis of Alpha-Beta Pruning, Artificial Intelligence 6(4), pp. 293-326.

How to Reference a Conference Paper

Author's surname followed by a comma. Author's initials in capitals, with full-stop after each - and a final comma. Year of publication followed by full-stop. Full title of conference paper - not in italics - with capitalization of first word and proper nouns only - followed by full-stop. Full title of conference, in italics - followed by comma. Location followed by a comma. Date followed by a comma. Publisher (company name) followed by colon. Place of publication (town or city name) follow by full-stop.

Brin, S. & Page, L., 1998. The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine. In: Seventh International conference on WorldWide Web (WWW 1998), April 14-18, 1998, Brisbane, Australia.

How to Reference a Website

Authorship or Source - followed by comma Year - followed by full-stop. Title of web document or web page - in italics - followed by "[Online]" Date of most recent update - within round brackets. Available at - followed by the URL (underlined) Date of most recent access - in square brackets - followed by full-stop

Creaney, N., 2008. Legal Issues for IT Professionals [Online] (Updated 26 September 2008) Available at: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/1hzaxtdr9c09g/7# [Accessed 30 January 2009].

How to Reference an Unpublished Work

If a work has been accepted for publication but not yet published, then the reference is structured as follows: Creaney, N., (inpress) Dummies Guide to Professional Ethics. O'Really

If a work is circulated informally but not published, then the reference is structured as follows:
Creaney, N., 2009. Lecture Notes on Professional Ehics. [Leaflet] University of Ulster.

References with Incomplete Information

199the decade is the 1990s but the year is not known 199? the decade is thought to be the 1990s 1993 the year is thought to be 1993 Anon the author is not known s.l. the place of publication is not known s.n. the name of the publisher is not known

 Whether you are quoting, paraphrasing or extending someone elses work, it is essential that you acknowledge your sources.

The Harvard Referencing System is a collection of rules and conventions that help you to do this clearly, consistently and unambiguously.
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Citations are in parentheses in the main text and include author name and publication year.
References are listed at the end of the report and are sorted by author name, then publication date.

For more information ...

Related Materials
How to Write a Great Report http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/1hzaxtdr9c09g/15# How to Use the Harvard Style of Referencing http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/1hzaxtdr9c09g/14#