Harvard citation generator

Cite websites, books, articles, ...

harvard citation generator

Cite websites, books, articles, ...

What is an Harvard citation generator and how can it help you?

Getting citations and reference lists correctly done can be very confusing and time-consuming.

The good news is that our Harvard citation generator can do it automatically for you and it is FREE to use! 🎉

Not convinced yet? Here are 5 reasons why you are going to love the BibGuru Harvard citation maker:

🚀 Fast

😌 Completely ad-free

👌 Simple and intuitive interface

🎓 Harvard, APA, MLA, Chicago and thousands of other citation styles

🥇 Most accurate citation data

With BibGuru we have made a citation tool that truly helps students to focus on the content of their work instead of worrying about how to get their reference list correctly done.

Those days of wasting time entering data manually or losing grades on incorrect bibliographies are finally gone!

If you need to know more about Harvard citations check out our How do I cite in Harvard style? section or our detailed Harvard citation guides.

Why, when, and what do I have to cite?

Why
The broad scientific knowledge we have today is the accomplishment of many researchers over time. To put your own contribution in context, it is important to cite the work of the researchers who influenced you.

Cited sources can provide key background information, support or dispute your thesis, or offer important definitions and data. Citing also shows that you have personally read the work.


When
In addition to crediting the ideas of others that you used to build your own argument, you need to provide documentation for all facts and figures that are not common knowledge.

Common knowledge is knowledge that is known by everyone, or nearly everyone, and can basically concern any subject. An example for common knowledge would be "There are seven days in a week".


What
The number of sources you cite in your work depends on the intent of the paper. In most cases, you will need to cite one or two of the most representative sources for each key point.

However, if you are working on a review article, the aim is to present to the readers everything that has been written on a topic, so you will need to include a more exhaustive list of citations.

What is the Harvard citation style?

Harvard book image

The Harvard style is attributed to Edward Laurens Mark, who was an American zoologist and Harvard professor. In 1881, he wrote a paper on the embryogenesis of the garden slug and included an author-date citation, which was the first known instance of such a reference. Although it originated in biology, it is now more common in humanities, history and social science.

The Harvard style is one of the most widely used citation styles in the world. This is most likely due to its simplicity and ease of use. There is no official manual, but many institutions offer their own Harvard citation style guides, which of course leads to slight nuances when it comes to punctuation and formatting rules.

The Harvard citation style uses the author-date system for in-text citations, which means the author's last name and the year of publication in round brackets are placed within the text. If there is no discernible author, the title and date are used.

The reference list is outlining all the sources directly cited in your work. It should be ordered alphabetically by the last name of the first author of each work. References with no author are ordered alphabetically by the first significant word of the title. Only the initials of the authors' given name are used, with no full stop and space between the initials.

How do I cite in Harvard?

When you cite you are referring to someone else's work or ideas in your text. In-text citations give brief details of the work that you are quoting from, or which you are referring to, in your text. These citations will then link to the full reference in the reference list at the end of your work. Footnotes or Endnotes are not used in the Harvard or other author-date citation styles.

When citing in-text, provide the author's last name and date of publication in brackets right after the taken information or at the end of the sentence. If you have already mentioned the author's name in the text, you only need to place the date of publication in brackets directly after where the author's last name is mentioned. If you are only quoting a particular section of the source, instead of the whole book, you should also include a page number or range after the publication date. If the book has more than four authors, you do not need to write out all of their last names. Use the first author’s last name followed by the abbreviation ‘et al.’, which means 'and others'.

The reference list at the end of your work should start on a new page and be arranged in alphabetical order. Italicize the titles of books, reports, etc. Beware that for journal articles, the name of the journal should be italicized instead of the title of the article you are citing. Make sure to capitalize the first letter of the publication title, the first letters of all main words in the title of a journal, and all first letters of a place named and publisher.

Example

In-text:

There are five strategies to implement Diversity Management in companies (Cox, 2001).

Reference list:

Cox, T. (2001). Creating the multicultural organization. 1st ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, p.50.

The general citation order for a book in Harvard for your reference list is:

  1. Author/editor
  2. Year of publication (in round brackets)
  3. Title (in italics)
  4. Place of publication: Publisher
  5. Series and volume number (where relevant)
Book with two authors

In-text:

Auerbach and Kotlikoff (1998) explain that a higher level of labor productivity means more output per person.

Reference list:

Auerbach, A. and Kotlikoff, L. (1998). Macroeconomics: an integrated approach. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.[u.a.]: MIT Press.

The general citation order for a journal article in Harvard is:

  1. Author (last name followed by initials)
  2. Year of publication (in round brackets)
  3. Title of article (in single quotation marks)
  4. Title of journal (in italics - capitalize first letter of each word in title, except for linking words)
  5. Issue information (volume (unbracketed), and, where applicable, part number, month or season)
  6. Page reference (if available)
  7. Available at: URL (Accessed: date) OR doi
Journal article

In-text:

In their review of the literature (Norrie et al., 2012)..

Reference list:

Norrie, C. et al. (2012) 'Doing it differently?' A review of literature on teaching reflective practice across health and social care professions', Reflective Practice, 13(4), pp. 565-578

While there is a multitude of details and specific rules on how to cite various publications or works in Harvard (magazines, online books, the internet, social media, legal sources, movies, etc.), you do not need to worry about getting your citations wrong with BibGuru.

Use our Harvard citation generator above to create the fastest and most accurate Harvard citations possible.

If you want to know more about Harvard citations check out our Harvard citation guides to get detailed information on the various publication types.

FAQ

🙋‍♂️ Is the Harvard citation style the same as APA?

The APA style is a variant of the Harvard style. Both styles use author-date citations in brackets right after the taken information or at the end of the sentence, and full citations in the reference list. There are a few differences between APA and Harvard, you can learn more about them here.

🌸 Is the Harvard referencing style double-spaced?

Your Harvard paper should be double-spaced with smooth left margins. The Harvard Reference list is double-spaced too.

📎 Do you indent the Reference list in Harvard style?

The Reference list is alphabetized by the author's last name and is double-spaced with a hanging indent, meaning that all but the first line have an indent. The margin can vary depending on your institution, but in general is 0.5.

🔢 How do you write numbers in Harvard style?

In general, numbers below 101 should be spelled out. The same goes for large round numbers like "one thousand" or "twenty thousand", although 250,000 would be too long to spell out. The same goes for very large large numbers like 4.3 billion, which should be expressed in figures. What is most important though is consistency. However you choose to express numbers, be consistent with it throughout your paper. You can read more about this here.

📙 Do you use footnotes for Harvard referencing?

The Harvard citation style uses the author-date system for in-text citations, which means the author's last name and the year of publication in round brackets are placed within the text, not in footnotes. Only use footnotes within a Harvard formatted paper for explanatory notes that would not detract from the text, if necessary.

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