Cite Them Right, 12th edition

Harvard Referencing Generator

Author-date referencing in the Cite Them Right version of Harvard used by most UK and Australian universities, with “Available at” and access dates done correctly.

Autofill from URL, DOI or ISBNIn-text citationsExport to Word, BibTeX, RIS

Harvard · Reference

Your Harvard citation appears here as you type. Start with a URL, DOI or ISBN above, or fill in the title.

Saved sources: 0 in “My paper”

Harvard style, the short version

Harvard has no single official manual. The most widely adopted version is Cite Them Right (Pears and Shields, 12th edition), which this tool follows. Check your university’s guide for small local differences.

Author (Year) Title

Surname and initials without spaces, then the year in round brackets with no full stop: Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2022) Cite them right.

Four or more authors

Give the first author followed by et al. in both the reference list and the in-text citation. Up to three authors are all listed, joined with “and”.

Italicise the main work

Italicise book, report and web page titles and journal names. Article and chapter titles go in single quotation marks.

Online sources

End with Available at: URL (Accessed: 12 May 2025). For a DOI, give the DOI link; you don’t need an access date.

No date

Write (no date) in place of the year, in both the reference and the in-text citation.

In-text citations

(Pears and Shields, 2022, p. 15) or narrative Pears and Shields (2022). Four or more authors: (Evans et al., 2019). Page numbers are needed for direct quotes.

Harvard examples

websiteHow to cite a website →

World Health Organization (2024) Physical activity. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/physical-activity (Accessed: 20 September 2026).

bookHow to cite a book →

Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

journal articleHow to cite a journal article →

Twenge, J.M. and Campbell, W.K. (2018) ‘Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study’, Preventive Medicine Reports, 12, pp. 271–283. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2018.10.003.

YouTube videoHow to cite a YouTube video →

TED-Ed (2017) How to spot a misleading graph. 6 July. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E91bGT9BjYk (Accessed: 20 September 2026).

Examples are generated by the same code as the tool above, so what you see is what you get.

Questions students ask

Is Harvard the same as APA?

Both are author-date styles, but the punctuation differs. Harvard (Cite Them Right) has no full stop after the year, uses “and” instead of “&”, writes “Available at:” before URLs and adds an access date. APA does none of those.

Which Harvard style does my university use?

Many UK and Australian universities use Cite Them Right; others publish their own Harvard guide. The differences are small, such as whether the year sits in brackets or whether titles are underlined. Match your module handbook.

What goes in a Harvard reference for a website?

Author or organisation (Year) Title of page. Available at: URL (Accessed: day month year). If the site shows no year, write (no date).

Reference list or bibliography?

A reference list includes only sources cited in your work. A bibliography also lists background reading. Most assignments ask for a reference list.

Other citation styles

7th editionAPAPsychology, education, social sciencesOpen generator →9th editionMLALiterature, languages, humanitiesOpen generator →17th edition, notes & bibliographyChicagoHistory, arts, some humanitiesOpen generator →9th edition, notes & bibliographyTurabianStudent papers using ChicagoOpen generator →IEEE Reference GuideIEEEEngineering, computer science, ITOpen generator →