Harvard referencing · Cite Them Right

Harvard referencing generator

A free Harvard referencing generator. Type in a book, journal article, web page or video and get the reference list entry and the in-text citation in Cite Them Right format.

  • Free, no account needed
  • Auto-fill from a DOI or ISBN
  • Copies with italics
Authors (in the order the source lists them; leave empty if there is none)

Harvard expects sentence case here. We never change your capitalisation on our own. The convert buttons cannot recognise names, so re-capitalise proper nouns afterwards.

The site the page belongs to, for example Mayo Clinic.

Date published or updated (leave empty if none is shown)
Date you accessed it

Reference list entry

Fill in the details above and your citation appears here as you type.

In-text citation

Fill in the details above and your citation appears here as you type.

Harvard has no single official manual. This follows the widely used Cite Them Right version: sentence-case titles, an access date for web sources, and “et al.” from four authors. Its 13th edition (2025) leaves out the place of publication, so leave that field empty if your guide does. Some universities want every author listed in the reference list. Check your university’s own Harvard guide, since details vary.

Reference list (0)

Sources you add appear here in Harvard format, in alphabetical order. The list is kept in this browser only.

Check every citation against your source and your instructor’s guidelines before you submit.

The rules

How Harvard referencing works

Harvard is a family of author-date styles, not one rulebook. This page and the generator follow Cite Them Right, the version most UK universities teach. Your own university’s guide has the final say.

Citations in your text

  • Give the surname and year in round brackets, with a comma between them: (Bell, 2014).
  • If the author is part of your sentence, only the year goes in brackets: Bell (2014) gives the same advice.
  • Add the page when you quote or point to a specific passage: (Bell, 2014, p. 5). Use pp. for a range.
  • Two authors are joined with “and”: (Barke and Mowl, 2016). Three are all named: (Wong, Smith and Adebole, 2015). From four authors, give the first and et al. in italics: (Toker et al., 2020).
  • With no person named, the organisation is the author: (The British Psychological Society, 2018). With no year, write “no date”: (Robinson, no date).
  • Harvard has no footnotes. Every citation sits in the text and leads to the reference list.

Reference list entries

  • Start with the surname and initials, then the year in round brackets. No full stop comes between the year and the title.
  • Book and web page titles are in italics and sentence case: Doing your research project.
  • An article title goes in ‘single quotation marks’. The journal name follows in italics with its main words capitalised, then volume(issue) and pages: Journal of Tourism History, 2(3), pp. 187–212.
  • For anything read online, add “Available at:” and the URL, then “(Accessed: 21 November 2021)” with the day you read it. A DOI needs no access date.
  • Give the edition only when it is not the first, as “2nd edn.” The current edition of Cite Them Right leaves out the place of publication; guides written for earlier editions still show “Place: Publisher”.
  • For a video, the uploader is the author. After the title, give the day and month it was posted.

Setting out the reference list

  • Put one list at the end of your work, headed “Reference list” or “References”.
  • Order it alphabetically by the first author’s surname. Do not number the entries or sort them by type of source.
  • Two works by one author in the same year are told apart with letters: 2014a, 2014b. Use the same letters in your citations.
  • A reference list holds only the sources you cited. A bibliography also holds background reading. Check which one your assignment asks for.
  • Line spacing and indents are set by your department, so follow its template.

Where universities differ

  • Punctuation after the year. Cite Them Right has none; UCL’s Harvard guide, for instance, puts a full stop after the bracket.
  • How many authors to list. Cite Them Right allows et al. in the reference list from four authors; some universities want every author named there.
  • Whether a book entry needs the place of publication.
  • How online sources are labelled: “Available at:” or “Available from:”, “(Accessed: …)” or “[Accessed …]”, and whether a video gets a tag such as [Online video].
  • How a DOI is written: as a https://doi.org/ link or as “doi:” followed by the number.
  • If your handbook differs on any of these, copy the reference from the generator and adjust that detail. Then keep it the same throughout.

The generator writes et al. in the reference list for four or more authors, prints the place of publication only if you fill that field in, and writes “no date” when the year is empty.

Examples

Harvard referencing examples

Five sources in Cite Them Right Harvard, each one exactly as the generator on this page prints it. They are the samples used in UK university library guides.

  • Book

    One author, no place of publication

    Reference
    Bell, J. (2014) Doing your research project. Open University Press.
    In-text, page 5
    (Bell, 2014, p. 5)

  • Journal article

    Two authors, with a DOI

    Reference
    Barke, M. and Mowl, G. (2016) ‘Málaga – a failed resort of the early twentieth century?’, Journal of Tourism History, 2(3), pp. 187–212. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1755182X.2010.523145.
    In-text
    (Barke and Mowl, 2016)

  • Web page with an author

    Needs the date you accessed it

    Reference
    Robinson, J. (2007) Social variation across the UK. Available at: https://www.bl.uk/british-accents-and-dialects/articles/social-variation-across-the-uk (Accessed: 21 November 2021).
    In-text
    (Robinson, 2007)

  • Web page by an organisation

    The organisation takes the author position

    Reference
    The British Psychological Society (2018) Code of ethics and conduct. Available at: https://www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/bps-code-ethics-and-conduct (Accessed: 22 March 2019).
    In-text
    (The British Psychological Society, 2018)

  • YouTube video

    Channel as author, with the day and month posted

    Reference
    University of Worcester Library Services (2020) How to put your reference list in alphabetical order. 31 March. Available at: https://youtu.be/qj3Zl4vPvGs?si=Z7kXKECj8V3qt9qx (Accessed: 29 January 2025).
    In-text
    (University of Worcester Library Services, 2020)

The book, article and web pages are the samples in the Open University’s quick guide to Cite Them Right Harvard. The video is the sample in a University of Worcester library answer. The generator’s output is the same as theirs.

Before you submit

Common Harvard citation mistakes

Mistakes to check for

  • Following a generic Harvard guide when your department has its own. Check the handbook first.
  • Leaving the comma out of the citation: (Bell 2014) should be (Bell, 2014).
  • Giving a web page with no “(Accessed: date)”.
  • Capitalising every word of a book title. Cite Them Right uses sentence case.
  • Putting an article title in double quotation marks or in italics.
  • Writing et al. for three authors. It starts at four.
  • Numbering the reference list, or listing sources in the order you cited them.
  • Pasting a full web address into the in-text citation in place of the author and year.

When to use Harvard style

Harvard referencing is widely used at universities in the UK, Ireland, Australia and South Africa, in most subjects that do not ask for footnotes or a numbered style. It is close to APA but is not the same, so do not swap one for the other.

  • Business and management
  • Social sciences and education
  • Nursing and health courses
  • Humanities modules that cite in the text
How it works

Create Harvard citations in three steps

The generator on this page starts in Harvard (Cite Them Right). It is free and has no login.

  1. Say what the source is

    Web page, book, journal article or online video. Harvard is already selected as the referencing style.

  2. Give the details

    Search by ISBN for a book or by DOI for an article, or fill in the boxes yourself. For a web page or video, add the URL and the date you accessed it. Type titles in sentence case.

  3. Copy the reference and citation

    Copy the reference with its italics and the in-text citation, with a page number if you are quoting. Add each source to your list and it is kept in alphabetical order.

What it does not do: it cannot build a reference from a web address alone, it does not change the capital letters in your titles unless you press the convert button, and it follows Cite Them Right rather than any one university’s variant. Read each reference against your source and your handbook.

FAQ

Harvard citation questions

It is an author-date way of acknowledging sources. You cite the author’s surname and the year in the text, for example (Bell, 2014), and give the full details in an alphabetical reference list at the end. There is no single official Harvard manual, which is why universities publish their own versions.

Build your Harvard reference list

Cite Them Right Harvard references and in-text citations. Free, no login.