In Harvard style, the bibliography or reference list provides full references for the sources you used in your writing.
A reference list consists of entries corresponding to your in-text citations.
A bibliography sometimes also lists sources that you consulted for background research, but did not cite in your text.
The two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. If in doubt about which to include, check with your instructor or department.
The information you include in a reference varies depending on the type of source, but it usually includes the author, date, and title of the work, followed by details of where it was published.
Sources are alphabetised by author last name. The heading ‘Reference list’ or ‘Bibliography’ appears at the top.
Each new source appears on a new line, and when an entry for a single source extends onto a second line, a hanging indent is used:
Harvard bibliography example
Harvard reference examples
Reference list or bibliography entries always start with the author’s last name and initial, the publication date and the title of the source. The other information required varies depending on the source type. Formats and examples for the most common source types are given below.
Author surname, initial. (Year) Book title. City: Publisher.
Example
Coetzee, J. M. (2000) Disgrace. London: Vintage.
Notes
The city mentioned is the location of the publisher’s headquarters.
Format
Author surname, initial. (Year) ‘Chapter title’, in Editor name (ed(s).) Book title. City: Publisher, pp. page range.
Example
Greenblatt, S. (2010) ‘The traces of Shakespeare’s life’, in De Grazia, M. and Wells, S. (eds.) The new Cambridge companion to Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–14.
Notes
The first name listed is the author of the individual chapter you’re referencing.
The editor of the book appears later in the reference, followed by ‘ed.’ (or ‘eds.’ if there are two or more).
The page range at the end shows the chapter’s location in the book.
Format
Author surname, initial. (Year) Book title. Translated from the [language] by ranslator name. City: Publisher.
Example
Saramago, J. (1997) Blindness. Translated from the Portuguese by G. Gontiero. London: Vintage.
Notes
The translator’s name, unlike other names, is not inverted: the initial comes first.
Format
Author surname, initial. (Year) Book title. Edition. City: Publisher.
Example
Danielson, D. (ed.) (1999) The Cambridge companion to Milton. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Notes
The edition appears only when it’s a second or later edition.
‘Edition’ is always abbreviated to ‘edn’.
Note that this example is an edited collection of essays from different authors, and thus the editor is listed as the main author.
Adamson, P. (2019) ‘American history at the foreign office: Exporting the silent epic Western’, Film History, 31(2), pp. 32–59. doi:10.2979/filmhistory.31.2.02.
Notes
When an article you accessed online has no print equivalent, include the DOI if available.
The DOI is preceded by ‘doi:’ – no capitalisation, no space.
Format
Author surname, initial. (Year) ‘Article title’, Journal Name, Volume(Issue), pagerange. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Example
Theroux, A. (1990) ‘Henry James’s Boston’, The Iowa Review, 20(2), pp. 158–165. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20153016 (Accessed: 13 February
2020).
Notes
When an article you accessed online has no print equivalent and no DOI, include a URL and an access date.
Use the stable URL provided by the database if there is one.
Author surname, initial. (Year) Page title. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Example
Google (2019) Google terms of service. Available at: https://policies.google.com/terms?hl=en-US (Accessed: 29 April 2020).
Notes
Reference list entries for pages without a clearly identified author can begin with the name of the relevant site or organisation instead.
For web sources with no DOI, include an access date.
Format
Author surname, initial. (Year) ‘Article title’, Blog name, Date. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Example
Rakich, N. (2020) ‘How does Biden stack up to past Democratic nominees?’, FiveThirtyEight, 28 April. Available at: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-does-biden-stack-up-to-past-democratic-nominees/ (Accessed: 29 April 2020).
Notes
Here you include the year at the start as usual, but also the exact day of publication later in the reference.
Format
Author surname, initial. [username] (Year) Title or text [Website name] Date. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Example
Dorsey, J. [@jack] (2018) We’re committing Twitter to help increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation … [Twitter] 1 March. Available at: https://twitter.com/jack/status/969234275420655616 (Accessed: 29 April 2020).
Notes
Include the author’s username on the site in square brackets, if available.
If the post has a title, use it (in italics).
If the post is untitled, use the text of the post instead. Do not use italics. If the text is long, you can save space by replacing some of it with an ellipsis, as above.
Author surname, initial. (Year) Title [Medium]. Institution, City or Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Example
Bosch, H. (1482) The last judgement [Triptych]. Groeningemuseum, Bruges.
Notes
Cite images according to how you viewed them. For an image from a book, you’d just cite the book. An image viewed online is cited similarly to other web sources.
Include information about the medium of the image in square brackets; for example, ‘Photograph’ or ‘Oil on canvas’.
Format
Author surname, initial. (Year) Title. Date. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Example
Vox (2020) The big lesson from South Korea’s coronavirus response. 10 April. Available at: https://youtu.be/BE-cA4UK07c (Accessed: 29 April 2020).
Notes
This format works for YouTube and similar video sites like Dailymotion, Vimeo and Instagram.
Unless the uploader is an individual whose real name you know, use the username in the author position.
Author surname, initial. (Year) ‘Article title’, Newspaper Name, date, p. page number. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Example
Butler, S. (2020) ‘Women’s fashion manufacturer to make reusable gowns for NHS’, The Guardian, 28 April. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/28/womens-fashion-manufacturer-to-make-reusable-gowns-for-nhs (Accessed: 29 April 2020).
Notes
Include the page number where the article begins if you read the article in print. If you read it online, include the URL and access date instead.
Format
Author surname, initial. (Year) ‘Article title’, Magazine Name, Volume(Issue) or (Month) or (Season), pp. page range. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Example
Newman, J. (2020) ‘For autistic youths entering adulthood, a new world of challenges awaits’, National Geographic, (May), pp. 20–24.
Notes
For issue information, follow the format used by the magazine; magazines may be issued per month, per season, or in numbered volumes and issues.
Only include the URL and access date for online-exclusive articles. Omit this information if the article is available in print, even if you read it online.
If you read an article online, you can omit the page range.
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When a source has up to three authors, list all of them in the order their names appear on the source. If there are four or more, give only the first name followed by ‘et al.’:
Number of authors
Reference example
1 author
Davis, V. (2019) …
2 authors
Davis, V. and Barrett, M. (2019) …
3 authors
Davis, V., Barrett, M. and McLachlan, F. (2019) …
4+ authors
Davis, V. et al. (2019) …
Referencing sources with missing information
Sometimes a source won’t list all the information you need for your reference. Here’s what to do when you don’t know the publication date or author of a source.
No date
Some online sources, as well as historical documents, may lack a clear publication date. In these cases, you can replace the date in the reference list entry with the words ‘no date’. With online sources, you still include an access date at the end:
Scribbr (no date) How to structure a dissertation. Available at: https://www.scribbr.co.uk/category/thesis-dissertation/ (Accessed: 14 February 2020).
No author
When a source doesn’t list an author, you can often list a corporate source as an author instead, as with ‘Scribbr’ in the above example. When that’s not possible, begin the entry with the title instead of the author:
‘Divest’ (2020) Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/divest (Accessed: 29 April 2020).
Frequently asked questions about Harvard bibliographies
In Harvard style referencing, to distinguish between two sources by the same author that were published in the same year, you add a different letter after the year for each source:
Hi Jack, how do you reference an ebook that doesn’t have any page numbers? I’m writing an essay and I’ve used an ebook that doesn’t make the page numbers clear
Hi Nazmin, you can find more information about citing e-books here. The advice is to use whatever kind of location markers the e-book does give you, if any. If none are displayed, just leave this part out of your in-text citation.
Hi, two questions;
First, how do you layout the reference page at the end of your work, do you separate the book references from website references, give them headings or just do them all alphabetically by author etc?, and should you always end a reference with the date you accessed it, if sourced online, e.g. a source reference from a book i accessed online, or , a source that is a peer reviewed journal/article?
In other words, if the source is not capable of change, must i still reference when i accessed it? Thanks
There’s no need to separate different types of sources in your reference list, unless you’ve been told to by your instructor. The standard format is just to list them in alphabetical order based on authors’ surnames.
Harvard recommends including an access date for all online sources except those with a DOI. So any reference where you include a URL should also include an access date, but if you include a DOI instead, no access date is needed.
You can find information about this here, under 'Translator'. Always cite whatever edition you consulted. When it's a translation, mention the original language and the name(s) of the translator(s) in your reference.
I have a question regarding the multiple author rules below.
Referencing sources with multiple authors
When a source has up to three authors, list all of them in the order their names appear on the source. If there are four or more, give only the first name followed by ‘et al.’:
Number of authors Reference example
1 author Davis, V. (2019) …
2 authors Davis, V. and Barrett, M. (2019) …
3 authors Davis, V., Barrett, M. and McLachlan, F. (2019) …
4+ authors Davis, V. et al. (2019) …
When citing a work with 3 authors for the first time in the text, all authors are listed. But when cited after that, the format is Davis et al. My question is, when the references all come from the same year and have the same lead author, no-one will know whether the reference cited is the 3 author work or the 4+ author work. Nor, if there are multiple 4+ author works by the same lead author from the same year, will the reader know to which multiple author work you are referring. I would think that once you have 3+ authors from the same year and with the same lead author, the year should be written as 2019a, 2019b etc. in the reference list and thus when cited.
Harvard is a style with a lot of different variants. The version of Harvard we follow here (based on the 11th edition Cite Them Right by Richard Pears and Graham Shields) doesn't recommend shortening subsequent citations of a three-author source.
If the version of Harvard you're following does recommend this, you could potentially run into the issue described. Your suggestion of appending letters to the years to distinguish them is certainly one solution. Another would be to just ignore the rule about shortening subsequent citations when it would lead to this confusion (so always writing all three authors' names when not doing so could lead to confusion with another source). As this confusion doesn't arise in the version of Harvard we follow, I can't provide a specific rule, but either of those solutions seems acceptable in principle.
10 comments
Nazmin
14 December 2021 at 09:07Hi Jack, how do you reference an ebook that doesn’t have any page numbers? I’m writing an essay and I’ve used an ebook that doesn’t make the page numbers clear
Jack Caulfield (Scribbr Team)
20 December 2021 at 13:57Hi Nazmin, you can find more information about citing e-books here. The advice is to use whatever kind of location markers the e-book does give you, if any. If none are displayed, just leave this part out of your in-text citation.
Craig Robert Burns
17 November 2021 at 21:01Hi, two questions;
First, how do you layout the reference page at the end of your work, do you separate the book references from website references, give them headings or just do them all alphabetically by author etc?, and should you always end a reference with the date you accessed it, if sourced online, e.g. a source reference from a book i accessed online, or , a source that is a peer reviewed journal/article?
In other words, if the source is not capable of change, must i still reference when i accessed it? Thanks
Jack Caulfield (Scribbr Team)
22 November 2021 at 12:06Hi Craig,
There’s no need to separate different types of sources in your reference list, unless you’ve been told to by your instructor. The standard format is just to list them in alphabetical order based on authors’ surnames.
Harvard recommends including an access date for all online sources except those with a DOI. So any reference where you include a URL should also include an access date, but if you include a DOI instead, no access date is needed.
Steffi Stephenson
27 March 2021 at 13:32My question is how to refernce a book which was translated and has a new edition?
Also which edition so I use for the reference?
Jack Caulfield (Scribbr Team)
29 March 2021 at 19:26Hi Steffi,
You can find information about this here, under 'Translator'. Always cite whatever edition you consulted. When it's a translation, mention the original language and the name(s) of the translator(s) in your reference.
Hope that helps!
Molaodi
2 March 2021 at 14:50How to cite a book with an editor and co-authors?
Jack Caulfield (Scribbr Team)
8 March 2021 at 17:31Hi Molaodi,
See here for information on how to cite a source with multiple authors, and here for how to cite a book with an editor in addition to author(s).
Kathy
14 February 2021 at 11:57Dear Jack
I have a question regarding the multiple author rules below.
Referencing sources with multiple authors
When a source has up to three authors, list all of them in the order their names appear on the source. If there are four or more, give only the first name followed by ‘et al.’:
Number of authors Reference example
1 author Davis, V. (2019) …
2 authors Davis, V. and Barrett, M. (2019) …
3 authors Davis, V., Barrett, M. and McLachlan, F. (2019) …
4+ authors Davis, V. et al. (2019) …
When citing a work with 3 authors for the first time in the text, all authors are listed. But when cited after that, the format is Davis et al. My question is, when the references all come from the same year and have the same lead author, no-one will know whether the reference cited is the 3 author work or the 4+ author work. Nor, if there are multiple 4+ author works by the same lead author from the same year, will the reader know to which multiple author work you are referring. I would think that once you have 3+ authors from the same year and with the same lead author, the year should be written as 2019a, 2019b etc. in the reference list and thus when cited.
Please let me know if I am correct or not.
Many thanks
Kathy
Jack Caulfield (Scribbr Team)
17 February 2021 at 17:37Hi Kathy,
Harvard is a style with a lot of different variants. The version of Harvard we follow here (based on the 11th edition Cite Them Right by Richard Pears and Graham Shields) doesn't recommend shortening subsequent citations of a three-author source.
If the version of Harvard you're following does recommend this, you could potentially run into the issue described. Your suggestion of appending letters to the years to distinguish them is certainly one solution. Another would be to just ignore the rule about shortening subsequent citations when it would lead to this confusion (so always writing all three authors' names when not doing so could lead to confusion with another source). As this confusion doesn't arise in the version of Harvard we follow, I can't provide a specific rule, but either of those solutions seems acceptable in principle.