The Harvard Referencing Style
The Harvard referencing style is the most frequently used style at Staffordshire and is also known as the Author-Date style. It emphasizes the name of the creator of a piece of information and the date of publication, with the list of references in alphabetical order at the end of your piece of work. The guidelines of the Harvard referencing style have been developed to bring consistency to the practice of citing references within the University so that there is a document to which all students and staff can refer. The Harvard referencing style emphasizes the name of the author and the publication year in the text with full bibliographic details in a reference list.
There are several ways to acknowledge the sources like backing up an assertion, quoting, summarizing what has been written, and critiquing.
The Harvard referencing style suggests that you should use capitals for authors’ names within your bibliography but, if you decide to use upper and lower case within the authors’ names instead, you will not be marked down for this as long as you are consistent in the style you use. Likewise, the Harvard referencing style does not stipulate specific styles of punctuation – rather it suggests a style to which you can adhere but if you prefer not to use the recommended punctuation as shown in this guide.
Understanding the Direct Citation under the Harvard referencing style
A direct citation is where the name of the author(s) composer(s) or creator(s) is used within a sentence with the year following in brackets where the name(s) occurs naturally in the text.
The Harvard referencing style provides the following guidelines:
· When referring to an author's work in your text, as per the Harvard referencing style their name is followed by the year of publication of their work.
· Where you are mentioning a particular part of the work and quoting directly word for word, a page reference should be included.
· When summarizing or paraphrasing a page number is not required under the Harvard referencing style.
· When there are two authors for a work, both surnames should be given before the date separated by ‘and’.
· Where reference is made to the ideas of several authors in a sentence and they are referred to directly, they are both cited under the Harvard referencing style.
· If there are more than two authors, the Harvard referencing style states that the surname of the first is followed by “et al.” You will need to cite all the authors in your reference list prepared as per the Harvard referencing style.
· If you are referring to the general theme of the resource, page numbers are unnecessary. Do NOT put the author's first name or initial.
· Do NOT put a website address in the text. Use the author or the title of the web page while using the Harvard referencing style.
· If two or more information resources have the same author and year, they are distinguished by lower-case letters (a, b, c, etc.), following the year within the brackets.
· If more than one publication from an author illustrates the same point and the works are published in different years, then as per the Harvard referencing style, references should be cited in chronological order (i.e., earliest first separated by a semi-colon).
Understanding the Indirect Citation under the Harvard referencing style
An indirect citation is where the name of the creator does not occur naturally in the text. If you refer to a work or piece of research without mentioning the author in the text, then both the author's name and publication year are placed at the relevant point in the sentence or the end of the sentence in brackets as per the Harvard referencing style.
The Harvard referencing style provides the following guidelines:
· When there are two authors for a work, they should be cited in the text separated by ‘and’.
· Where more than two authors have the same viewpoint, list them at the relevant point in the sentence or at the end of the sentence, putting the author's surname, followed by the date of publication and separated by a semi-colon and within brackets. Where several publications from several authors are referred to, then according to the Harvard referencing style, the references should be cited in alphabetical order.
· With three or more authors, use ‘et al.’ in the text.
· As per the Harvard referencing style, if more than one publication from an author illustrates the same point and the works are published in different years, then the references should be cited in chronological order (i.e., earliest first separated by a semi-colon).
· If you are quoting several works published by the same author in the same year, as per the Harvard referencing style, they should be differentiated by adding a lower-case letter directly, with no space, after the year for each item.
· If several works published in the same year are referred to on a single occasion, or an author has made the same point in several publications in the same year, they can all be referred to by using lower case letters separated by a semi-colon as per the Harvard referencing style.
Understanding Quoting under the Harvard referencing style
Quoting is where you provide text from an external source word for word. The page number(s) is compulsory with a quote from a textbook but usually optional with other citation types. It is given after the year, separated by a colon. You should use quotes sparingly, e.g., normally only 10% of your citations should be quoted.
As per the Harvard referencing style, quotations of less than 50 words or less than two sentences should be placed in double quotation marks within your text. Longer quotations are over about 50 words or two sentences, are indented both left and right but without the quotation marks, and are introduced by a colon. The author, date, and page number(s) are included in an appropriate location.
Understanding Confidentiality under the Harvard referencing style
If internal documents from Trusts, Clinical Commissioning Groups, Local Authorities, or Special Health Authorities are being cited, for example, policies, procedures, or care plans, it is essential that the name is never divulged as these documents are not available to the general public.
To maintain confidentiality under the Harvard referencing style you are advised to follow this example:
This action was taken by the NHS Trust’s (Name withheld, 2005) disciplinary policy.
Understanding secondary referencing under the Harvard referencing style
You may come across a summary of another author's work in the source you are reading which you would like to refer to in your document. This is called secondary referencing.
An example of direct reference in the text under the Harvard referencing style is:
Ennis (1996, cited in Robinson, 2011) identifies three key critical thinking dispositions.
In this example, Ennis is the work that you wish to refer to, but have not read directly for yourself. Robinson is the secondary source, where you found the summary of Ennis's work. It is important to realize that Robinson may have taken Ennis's ideas forward, and altered their original meaning. The reference list at the end of your document should only contain works that you have read. Only Robinson (2011) would appear in the reference list.
Reference List Prepared as per the Harvard referencing style
A complete list of all the citations used in your text will need to be provided at the end of your assignment. This is called your reference list or bibliography and needs to be presented in alphabetical author/originator orders. These are the full details of the writing by author(s) or organizations to which you have referred, or from which you have quoted in your work. They are collected together in a list at the end of the complete text.
The Harvard referencing style explains the preparation of the reference list as per the following guidelines:
· The mechanics of style: When writing for publication you must follow the style rules established by the publisher to avoid inconsistencies in journal articles or conference papers. As per the Harvard referencing style, you need to use a consistent system of punctuation and typography throughout the reference list. Each element of a reference should be clearly separated from subsequent elements by punctuation or change of typeface.
· Punctuations: The Harvard referencing style has no one true style of punctuation so the generally accepted rule (BS ISO 690:2010) is to be consistent with your style of punctuation throughout the whole of your assignment.
· Italics & underlining: As per the Harvard referencing style, only the title of the source of information is italicized or underlined, but you should choose only one method throughout your assignment and stick to it. Do not use both italics and underlining.
· Capitals: The Harvard referencing style is not prescriptive about the capitalization of authors’ names in your reference list. If you do wish to use capitals, then the family/surname of authors are only capitalized in this reference list and not in the body of your work. If you prefer not to use capitals in this list, that is fine, but you must be consistent in the style you decide to use.
· Numbers: Guidelines as per the Harvard referencing style are:
o Use numerals to express numbers.
o Use full numbers in page ranges (321-327 not 321-7).
o Use ordinal numbers in abbreviated form in superscripts such as nd or th in book editions. Do not include these after the day of the month for dates.
· Abbreviations: According to the Harvard referencing style, for reference list following abbreviations must be used:
o Use p. for page and pp. for pages with a space and then the numbers.
o Use c. for chapters of Acts as in Section 5.7.8. Use ca. for circa in publication dates.
o Use edn. as an abbreviation for edition.
o Use ed. or eds. as an abbreviation for editor or editors.
The reference list prepared as per the Harvard referencing style must be arranged on a letter-by-letter basis. Indent your reference list after the first line so that the author or creator is clear.