Harvard Citation Generator

This Harvard referencing generator builds references in the Cite Them Right form of Harvard, the version used by most UK and Australian universities. Paste a DOI, ISBN, URL or title and the generator formats the record it retrieves. The important thing to know about Harvard before you start is that it is not a single published standard, so your department handbook overrides any generator, including this one.

Output style: Harvard

Harvard citation examples

Real Harvard referencing style references, formatted the way UK and Australian universities coursework expects them.

Journal article

Smith, J.A. and Jones, B.C. (2024) ‘Working memory under time pressure’, Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 36(2), pp. 118-134.

Book

Alvarez, M. (2023) Learning in noisy classrooms. 2nd edn. Boston: Rowan Press.

Chapter in an edited book

Okafor, N. (2022) ‘Attention and fatigue’, in Berg, L. (ed.) Handbook of applied cognition. Meridian, pp. 55-78.

Harvard in-text citations

Harvard is an author-date system. The in-text citation carries the author surname and the year, with a page number after p. or pp. when you quote directly. The list at the end is headed References and is alphabetised by author surname.

(Smith and Jones, 2024, p. 42)

How to cite a website in Harvard

Citing a website in Harvard needs the author or organisation, the year in brackets, the page title in italics, and then Available at: followed by the URL and an access date in brackets. The Available at and Accessed wording is part of the style, not decoration, and markers do look for it.

World Health Organization (2024) Air quality and health. Available at: https://www.who.int/example (Accessed: 19 August 2026).

Paste a link and cite a website automatically

Harvard patterns by source type

The pattern each source type follows, as a quick reference. Fields in the generator are filled from the database record, but these are what the finished entries should look like.

Journal article

Last, F. (Year) ‘Title of article’, Journal Name, 36(2), pp. 118-134.

Book

Last, F. (Year) Title of book. 2nd edn. City: Publisher.

Chapter

Last, F. (Year) ‘Chapter title’, in Editor, E. (ed.) Book title. City: Publisher, pp. 55-78.

Web page

Organisation (Year) Page title. Available at: URL (Accessed: DD Month YYYY).

Thesis

Last, F. (Year) Title. PhD thesis. University.

Report

Organisation (Year) Title of report. City: Publisher.

Where Harvard is required

Harvard is the most widely taught referencing style in UK and Australian higher education and is common in business, social sciences, nursing and education. The crucial thing to understand is that it is not a single published standard. There is no Harvard manual in the way there is an APA manual, so each university maintains its own guide. Cite Them Right is the most widely adopted version in the UK and is what this page produces, but your department's handbook overrides any generator, including this one.

Formatting a Harvard reference list

The list conventions are broadly stable across Harvard variants even where the punctuation of individual entries differs.

The heading is References, or sometimes Reference List depending on the handbook.
Entries are alphabetised by the first author's surname.
Works by the same author are ordered oldest to newest.
Same author and same year take letter suffixes, 2024a and 2024b, matched to the in-text citations.
Web references need both Available at: and an Accessed date in brackets.

Harvard compared with APA

Both are author-date systems and look similar at a glance, which is exactly why they get mixed up. They are not interchangeable.

Governing body	None: varies by university	American Psychological Association
In-text example	(Smith and Jones, 2024, p. 42)	(Smith & Jones, 2024, p. 42)
Article title marks	Single quotation marks	No quotation marks
Edition abbreviation	edn.	ed.
Web access date	Required	Only for pages that change

Common Harvard mistakes

Harvard is not one standard. Cite Them Right is the most widely taught version in the UK, but your university may differ on punctuation and italics. The handbook wins.
Article titles sit in single quotation marks, not double.
Edition is abbreviated edn., not ed. In Harvard, ed. means editor.
Use and rather than an ampersand between author names in the reference list.
Web references need both Available at: and an Accessed date in brackets.

Harvard citation generator FAQ

Which version of Harvard does this generator use?

Cite Them Right, which is the version most UK universities teach. If your handbook specifies a different Harvard variant, check punctuation and italics against it, because the differences between variants are small but visible.

Why is my university's Harvard different from this one?

Because Harvard has no single governing body. Unlike APA or MLA, there is no published manual that every institution follows, so each university maintains its own guide. This is the most common source of confusion with Harvard.

Is Harvard the same as APA?

They are both author-date systems and look similar at a glance, but they differ in punctuation, capitalisation and how web sources are presented. They are not interchangeable.

Do I need an access date for every web source?

Cite Them Right asks for one on web pages, which is stricter than APA. Include it unless your handbook says otherwise.

How do I cite a lecture or lecture slides in Harvard?

Give the lecturer, the year, the lecture title in italics, the module code and title, the institution, and the date delivered. If the slides are on a virtual learning environment, add Available at: with the URL and an access date. Check your handbook, because institutions differ on whether unpublished teaching material may be cited at all.

What do I do when two sources have the same author and year?

Add letter suffixes in order of appearance in your reference list: 2024a, 2024b. Use the same letters in the in-text citations so the reader can tell which of the two you mean. This is one of the few points on which nearly all Harvard variants agree.

Other citation styles

URL to citation PDF to citation BibTeX / RIS to citation DOI to citation ISBN to citation