REFERENCING – Using the UWL Version of the

HARVARD SYSTEM

Introduction

Why do you need to reference?

You have a responsibility in your academic work to correctly reference the sources of
information you use in essays, assignments and dissertations:
To avoid plagiarism by acknowledging that the information, opinion or idea came from
someone else.
To help tutors follow-up your sources to check you have understood them.

There are two parts to referencing

Referencing in the Harvard style has two parts. You need to include both in your work:
In–text. references which are located immediately at the point in your work where you
cite the information (Section 1 below)
A list of all the sources used at the end of your work: The Reference List. (Section 2)

Section 1: Citing sources in the text

How?
You need to reference a source of information at the point that you use it, even if you do not
quote directly. The information can be an idea or opinion you have read as well as a fact.

You’ll need to indicate the authors of your information source and the year it was published.

Use the format:

Authors (publication year)

One author:
Smith (2009)

Two authors:
Smith and Jones (n.d.)

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More than two authors:
Smith et al (2008)

‘Et al’ means ‘and the others’. You’ll need to make a note of all of the authors for the full reference in
your reference list. If there are a large number, check with your tutor for advice on whether you must
include them all.

What if?....

There are no apparent authors

Use ‘Anon’. However if the document or webpage is produced by a recognised organization e.g.
Department of Health or the British Psychological Association use that as the ‘author’.

Anon (2005); Department of Health (2002)

There’s no ‘date’?
If there is no date use (n.d.)

I need to reference two works by the same author in the same year
Use a, b, c, etc.: Smith 2008a; Smith 2008b

Should I use the full Organization name or the Acronym?

Use the full name with the acronym in brackets; use the acronym only if you reference the
document an additional time in the text.

Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) (2009)……….. RCP (2009)……

In the reference list:

use both full title and acronym:
Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) (2009) Good psychiatric practice……

Fitting the reference into your work

You have two choices……

Either add to the end of the sentence:

In Higher Education, Information Literacy is now often included in the group of competencies
together variously defined as graduateness (Peters 2011).
Note that the brackets surround both author and year and there is no comma or other punctuation.
The final full-stop is after the brackets.

……or make the author part of the sentence (if you’re discussing her/his work)
For Barnard (2005), Information Literacy is the foundation for critical thinking.

If there are two or more sources separate by a semi-colon and put in chronological order:
……… (Gates 2008; Smith and Jones 2009; Mafuba 2013)
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Quotations

When quoting directly from a source use quotation marks and include the page number of
the document it’s taken from.

Short quotations (up to 2 lines) can be included in the body of the text:

Weir (1995, p.10) states that “defining roles and their remits is not simple”.
Note the comma after the year and the single ‘p’ to represent ‘page’.

Quotations of 2 or more lines should be separated from the body of your text and
indented in a separate paragraph. When you indent a quotation, there is no need to include
quotation marks:

In discussing staff development, Thomas and Ingham (1995, p.33) state that:

Development is infectious, and staff who previously have recoiled from

undertaking a degree or conversion course have been encouraged
by the success of others.

Secondary referencing
What if the author quotes another author whose work I need to cite?

In the book Seeds of Concern by D. Murray (2003), Murray refers to a work by T. White (2001).

You must make it clear in your text that you have not read the original source (White) but are
referring to it from a source you have read (Murray).

White (2001, cited by Murray 2003) believes genetic abnormalities in crops are…

In the list of references at the end of your work you should only include a reference to the
source you read:

Murray, D. (2003) Seeds of concern: the genetic manipulation of plants. Sydney: UNSW
Press.

This kind of reference should only be used infrequently as you should always endeavour
to access the original source your self

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Section 2: The Reference List
The Reference List is a list of information sources that have been referred to in your work.
Use this term rather than Bibliography which is a list of additional non-referred-to reading.

At the end of your work list the full references of all your sources. The list must

Include all your references

Be in alphabetical order
Be one list only; don’t separate out the references into types of references.
Have each reference following the correct format. This depends on what kind of
source it is. References for journal articles, books, websites etc. all have slightly different
formats.

To create a reference in the UWL Harvard style you must

Have all of the information needed to make up the reference
Choose the correct format template to fit it into and follow it exactly.

Which template?

Choose the correct template from those listed below and follow it exactly.

For any Template, make sure you

Have all the information
Have all the information in the right order
Include the correct punctuation, brackets and use of italics. If it indicates a comma
goes here, don’t miss it out or put a semi-colon instead!.

(publication
Book year) Edition.

Abraham, S. (2008) Eating disorders. 6th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author Title of the book in italics Publisher.
Place of publication:
This information should be on the front and the back of the ‘title page’ just inside the cover of the book.
Don’t include an edition statement if this is the first edition. Note commas, brackets, full-stops, the colon
and italics.

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Chapter from an edited book
Some books are a collection of individually authored chapters. The book itself will have one or more editors. You
must reference the chapter. In text: the chapter’s author: Ake (2002)
Always
Author of Include In: Editors (don’t
chapter Title of chapter miss out (eds.))

Ake, D. (2002) Learning jazz, teaching jazz. In: Cooke, M. and Horn, D. (eds.)
The Cambridge companion to jazz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
p.255-269.
First + last page no’s title of book in italics
of chapter

Include ‘and’ between 2 authors or editors; or between the last two if there are three or more.

An e-book (a book readable online)

Huber, D.M. (2005) Modern recording techniques. 6th ed. Dawsonera [Online].
Available at: http://dawsonera.com [Accessed: 30 July 2011].
Database where
book was accessed
Very Important!
[Online]. Available at: and [Accessed: ] must always be included in the reference and in all on-line
references.

Kindle E-book
Richards, A. (2009) A nurse's survival guide to drugs in practice. [Kindle version]. Available at:
http://www.amazon.co.uk [Accessed: 13 February 2013].

An article from a printed journal

A journal article reference has some slightly different information to include, such as the name of the
journal in which the article was published; the volume and issue (journals have weekly, monthly or
quarterly issues which are grouped in Volumes) and the article’s page numbers (first and last). Note
carefully the punctuation and italics.

Ball, L. (2012) Midwifery education: making sense of the current challenges.

British Journal of Midwifery, 20(7), p.516-520.
Title of the article
Volume
(Issue) First and (NOT in italics)
Name of the last page
Journal in italics

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An article from an online journal

If you have read or download an article from a journal published on-line, then your reference requires
some additional information:

McDonald, S., Allan, H. and Brown, A. (2012) Perceptions of changing practice in the
examination of the newborn, from holistic to opportunistic. British Journal of Midwifery, 20(11),
p.786 –791. Intermid [Online]. Available at: www.intermid.co.uk [Accessed: 23 November 2012].

Name of the Web address Date you

website / database of the journal accessed the
where the article article
was accessed

Very Important!
[Online]. Available at: and [Accessed: ] must always be included in the reference and in all on-line
references.
.

Web page or document

This can be an
organisation if there is Title of the
no author, e.g. BBC. page or doc.

Thompson, B. (2008) Can the tech community go green? [Online]. Available at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7240440.stm [Accessed: 24 July 2008].

Note very carefully the punctuation.

Reference the specific page: give the page or document’s exact title and its specific web-address.

Very Important!
[Online]. Available at: and [Accessed: ] must always be included in the reference and in all on-line
references.

Newspaper article

Benoit, B. (2007) G8 faces impasse on global warming. Financial Times, 29 May

2007, p.9.
If the article is on-line:
Benoit, B. (2007) G8 faces impasse on global warming. Financial Times, 29 May 2007 [Online].
Available at: www.ft.com [Accessed: 12 March 2013].

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Report / guideline

European Commission (2004) First report on the implementation of the internal

marketing strategy 2003-2006. Luxembourg: Office for Publications of the
European Communities.
This follows the Book reference template.
Clinical Guidelines: Include [Clinical Guideline] after the title.

Systematic review of research

Title of the review

Neilson, J.P. (2007) Symphysis-fundal height measurement in pregnancy.

[Systematic Review] Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. [Online].
Available at: http://ovidsp.uk.ovid.com [Accessed: 30 July 2008] .
Name of the database

Very Important!
[Online]. Available at: and [Accessed: ] must always be included in the reference and in all on-line
references.

Law report

R. v. Edwards (John) (1991) 93 Cr. App. R.48

Name 1 v Name 2 (year) vol. no. abbreviated form of law report page no

Use of round or square brackets for year depends on whether year significant or not in finding case
(square brackets if year IS significant).

Statute

Great Britain. Data Protection Act 1998. Chapter 29. London: HMSO.
Chapter no. will be on the title page
Always include

In text: The statute (Great Britain. Data Protection Act 1998) laid down…..

Thesis

Garcia-Sierra, A. (2000) An Investigation into electronic commerce potential of

small to medium-sized enterprises. Unpublished PhD thesis, Cardiff University.

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Paper from a collection of Conference Proceedings

Proctor, P. (1998) The tutorial: combining asynchronous and synchronous learning. In:
Banks, S., Graebner, C. and McConnell, D. (eds.) Networked Lifelong Learning:
innovative approaches to education and training through the Internet: Proceedings of the
1998 International Conference held at Sheffield University. Sheffield: University of
Sheffield.

Classroom Presentation

Forster, M. (2013) Finding the research evidence in Midwifery. [Classroom

PowerPoint Presentation].

From UWL Online (Blackboard)

Watkinson, J. (2001) An Introduction to digital audio. [Online]. Available at:

http://online.uwl.ac.uk [Accessed: 26 August 2012]
Treat the item as any other on-line source using the web-address of UWL Online.

Audio-visual sources

Vertigo (2003) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock [DVD]. U.K. Universal.

Oasis (1995) What’s the story Morning Glory [CD] London: Creation. RKIDCD007.
In text:
Hitchcock’s portrayal of phobia in his 1958 film Vertigo (Vertigo 2003).…
The band’s finest album, What’s the story Morning Glory (Oasis 1995)….

ESADM & LCM students may need to use BUFVC guidelines for referencing moving image & sound>
These can be found at: bufvc.ac.uk/avcitation/guidelines

Photograph
Title Always include this

Parkinson, N. (1930) Portrait of an unemployed man and woman [Photograph].

National Media Museum [Online]. Available at:
http://nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/Collections/Collection_Detail [Accessed: 11
August 2008].

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E-Mail

Jones, P. (jones@jones.com) (2005) Mobile phone developments. [Email].

Message to R G. Schmit (r.g.schmit@syy.ac.uk). [Sent: 7 June 2005, 08:13.]
In text: Jones (2005)

Social Media
Twitter, Facebook and other Social Media can be referenced in a standard way
Author (year of publication) Full tweet/comment. [Name of social medium]. date written
[Online]. Available at: URL [Accessed: date].

@Science (2011) Scientists discover that brains of tiny spiders are so big they overflow into
their legs. [Twitter]. 16 November [Online]. Available at:
http://twitter.com/#!/WorldView12/status/148359207257767936 [Accessed: 16 December
2011].

In text: Author (year of publication)

Ignore ‘@’ when deciding where to place the reference in the alphabetic reference list. The example
above will go under ‘S’.

Blogs

Tran, M. (2008) Georgia: how much is the west to blame? Mark Tran’s
Newsblog.10 August 2008 [Online]. Available at:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/2008/08/ html [Accessed: 11 August 2008].

Unpublished, Yet to be Published or Internally Published Sources

Jones, K. (n.d.) Personal diary. [Unpublished].

Pattison, J. (in press) A new book that I have written. London: Vanity Press.

Local NHS Trust (2012) Diabetes and steroid prophylaxis against RDS. [Internal
Guideline].

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Example of a Reference List
th
Abraham, S. (2008) Eating disorders. 6 ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ake, D. (2002) Learning jazz, teaching jazz. In: Cooke, M. and Horn, D. (eds.) The Cambridge
companion to jazz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.255-269.

Ball, L. (2012) Midwifery education: making sense of the current challenges. British Journal of
Midwifery, 20(7), p.516-520.

Great Britain. Data Protection Act 1998. Chapter 29. London: HMSO

McDonald, S., Allan, H. and Brown, A. (2012) Perceptions of changing practice in the examination of
the newborn, from holistic to opportunistic. British Journal of Midwifery, 20(11), p.786 –791. Intermid
[Online]. Available at: www.intermid.co.uk [Accessed: 23 November 2012].

Thompson, B. (2008) Can the tech community go green? [Online]. Available at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7240440.stm [Accessed: 24 July 2008].

Remember that the list must be in alphabetical order.

Don’t separate out the different kinds of reference

---------------------------
RefWorks

All of the above formatting is vital in order to comply with UWL referencing standards. It takes
considerable time to both compile reference lists and format them properly. This is something
that you will be doing much of at university, and so it makes sense to familiarize yourself with
the incredible labour-saving device that is a reference manager. This is a piece of software that
automatically formats, organizes and stores all your references; investing a little time in
mastering such a tool will save you many hours over the duration of your course. A reference
manager can harvest bibliographic information with one click, and interfaces with your word
processor to allow direct input into your text.

Your reference manager also serves as an amazing searchable database that builds up across
all your modules and allows you to go back to old sources with ease.

Refworks is the web-based reference manager available to students and staff at University of
West London.

The website address is www.refworks.com, where you initially will have to set up an account.
You must do this from within the University.

More Information at:uwl.ac.uk/library/eresources/refworks.html

Further help

If you have further questions about referencing, please consult your Academic Support
Librarian.

Some Schools may use other referencing styles. Check with your tutor.
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