How to Do Harvard Style Referencing

When writing a PhD research proposal, thesis or essay, you need to reference your work
to ensure that you avoid accusations of plagiarism. You, therefore, need to write an
extensive list of materials you referred to in your essay. This is called a reference or a
bibliography and it serves as an acknowledgment and accreditation for sources that have
helped you come up with an original research study. However, since you just cant write a
reference haphazardly, you have to follow a chronological structure widely accepted in the
academic field and specified by your discipline. This is called a referencing style. There
are many referencing styles used of which the Author-title and Author-date are the most
popular in dissertations. Harvard referencing style is a popular style and if chosen should
be used accurately as well as consistently throughout your dissertation. There are two
types of referencing in your dissertation :

In-text citations where you cite your sources in the main body of your thesis.

End-text-citations or Reference list which involves dedicating a section at the end

of your dissertation to list all your sources.

General Rules of the Harvard Referencing Style

1. In-text citations are within the text and not given as footnotes. These citations list
the authors name, year of publication and pages used, all enclosed in brackets.

2. The thesis or dissertation should have a bibliography at the end that lists all works
referred to in your thesis. This list of references is organized alphabetically by
author. It is also organized chronologically in cases where there are two or more
works written by the same author.

3. For each source, the reference starts by the authors surname, and then their first
name using initials. The year of publication in brackets follows.

4. When referencing book sources written by more than three authors, the name of
the first is given followed by et al. After the title information ends with a period,
the city of publication followed by publisher and number of pages are given.

5. Book titles are in italics while all article titles follow a regular style of writing and
are placed in quotation marks. Where the article is published in a book or journal,
the titles of these sources are written in italics. However, if the article is from a
digital source, both the web address, as well as the date when the article is
accessed (in square brackets), must be given.

6. Whenever a web page is used as a source, the title should be in italics and if
affiliated with an institution, the name of the institution linked should be given.
Furthermore, the web address as well as date of access should also be given.

7. Finally, a hanging indent is used for the entire list of sources.