Harvard Referencing Guide

Citing and Referencing in the Harvard Style
For all academic assignments it is vital that you acknowledge the sources of information you have used for your research. This will help you protect yourself against charges of plagiarism and also demonstrate that you understand the importance of professional academic work. You must acknowledge your sources whenever you paraphrase or summarise another person's ideas or points, or when you quote another person's work, or use tables, graphs, images, etc. which you have found from another source, be it from a printed document or from the web. This guide explains how this is done in the Harvard Style, sometimes called the author-date system. There are two steps to acknowledging your sources: cite your references in the text, to show where you have drawn upon other people's work, and then list them at the end of your work under the heading 'References'. Sometimes this is called a bibliography. Some Schools may adopt slight variations on the methods suggested below; please check your Handbook.

Citing your sources in the text
When you refer to another’s words or ideas in your work, you must cite your source. At an appropriate point in your text, provide the author’s surname and the year of publication in round brackets. If you include the author’s name in your sentence, only provide the year of publication in brackets: It has been argued (Harris 2001) that the main considerations are… It has been argued by Harris (2001) that the main considerations are…  For edited books that contain collections of chapters written by different authors, cite the author of the chapter and not the editor of the overall book. If you are citing different publications written by the same author in the same year, label the first one cited with the letter ‘a’ after the year and the second ‘b’ etc. e.g. (Smith 2004a), (Smith 2004b). You will need to do the same in your list of references. Where two authors have produced the work, include both...