Referencing in Academic Writing

Referencing in Academic Writing - Harvard Style

What is referencing?

Referencing is the system used to acknowledge another person when you are talking about their ideas or quoting their words directly in your work. Referencing is extremely important in academic work, as if you do not reference correctly, you could be accused of plagiarism.

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is using another person's ideas or words, without acknowledgement, as if they were your own.

In academic writing it is very important to provide evidence for any statements or claims you make. Your evidence will be drawn from the research and writings of academics in your subject area, and you will need to provide references for the evidence you put forward, to show that you have acknowledged the author and it comes from an authoritative source. There are two referencing systems commonly used in British Universities - Harvard and British Standard - and it is a good idea to check which one your department uses. This leaflet shows you how to use the Harvard System.

How do I reference?

You need to include references in the text of your essay or report and then you need a reference list at the end of the essay which includes the full details for the book, article etc.

A reference in the text looks like this:

Marsen (2003) argues that.........

A reference list looks like this:

Marsen, S. (2003) Professional writing. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan

Squires, G. (2002) Managing your learning. London: Routledge.

How do I reference in the text using Harvard?

With Harvard, all you need in the text is the author's surname and the date (year) of the publication. (NB: If you are using a direct quote you will also need the page number)

If the author's name forms part of your sentence, you only need to list the date after the name in brackets:

According to Smith (2002)..........

If the author's name is not a natural part of the sentence, you put the name and the date in parentheses.

A longitudinal study (Smith, 2002) undertaken in this area shows that.....

If your argument is supported by more than one author, you can reference them both:

In recent studies (Smith, 2002; Green, 2001)...........

If you are citing work carried out by the same author, but in different years, you can distinguish between the years by using (a,b,c etc.)

Smith (2002a) showed that....

If there are two or three authors, all the names should be listed:

Smith, Brown and Green (2001) argue that...

If there are more than three authors, you should use the surname of the first author listed and et al:

Smith et al. (2002) concluded that....

If you are talking generally about information from a particular book, you can put the reference at the end of the paragraph:

(Smith and Brown, 2002)

If you are referring to one author's work, which has been quoted in another, you must cite both sources in the text:

A study by Smith in 1991 (cited in Green, 2000) found that.....

In this case you only need to list the Green reference in your reference list.

If there is no author listed, the item should be referred to by title:

The results of a recent survey (Student's Eating Habits, 2004, p. 5) indicate that...

If there is no date:

An early report (Green, no date) reported that...

Listing references at the end of your essay or report

A reference list contains the full details of the sources you have referred to in your

...