Harvard referencing, also known as the author-date system, ^* ). It is one of three citation styles recommended by Wikipedia. The other two are Embedded Citations and Footnotes. See Citing sources for more details.

The advantage of Harvard referencing over the other two systems is that a reader familiar with a field can often immediately recognize a citation and thus read a document more quickly without continuously visiting the reference section. Similarly, if the same reference is cited more than once, a Harvard reference is far more mnemonic than a simple integer, so even the casual reader can be helped by this system. The disadvantages of the system are that it takes more space (which is why the journal Nature for example doesn't use it) and that the rules can be complicated or unclear for non-academic references, particularly those where the author is unknown. The system may also be unfamiliar and distracting to a general readership, who are unfamiliar with journal articles.

Under the Harvard referencing system, a book is cited in the text in parentheses, or round brackets, after the sentence or paragraph for which the book was used as a source, using the surname of the author and the year of publication only, with the parentheses closing before the period, as in (Author 2005). If the same author has published two books in 2005, and both are being referenced in the text, this is written as (Author 2005a) and (Author 2005b).

Newspaper articles may be cited by the byline, as in (Traynor 2005), though this is less commonly done, with most editors preferring to give the name of the newspaper and the date of publication after the sentence (The Guardian, December 17, 2005), or linking to the article using an embedded link, like this. ^*

References section

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Complete citations must also be provided, in alphabetical order, in a References section following the text.

For a book: in the case of (Author 2005), this might be:

• Author, A. (2005a). Harvard Referencing, New York: Random House. ISBN 11112222X.
• Author, A. (2005b). More Harvard Referencing, New York: Random House. ISBN 11112223X.

For an article: in the case of (Traynor 2005) or (The Guardian, December 17, 2005), this might be:

• Traynor, I. "Judge tells Ankara to decide on fate of leading author", The Guardian, December 17, 2005

Whether or not to use only the initial, as in Traynor, I. or the full name., as in Traynor, Ian, is a matter of personal preference.

As with all citation advice in Wikipedia, the most important thing is to provide some information about where you found your material, even if you don't know how to format the citation.

Example using Harvard references and numbered footnotes

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This section serves as both an example and an explanation of how to use Harvard references combined with numbered footnotes tags. It is an imaginary extract from an article on Foo. The "Notes" and "References" sections are of "

=" level in this example; in a real article they would be of "

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" level. A similar, but more experimental example can be found at Footnotes/Mixed citations and footnotes.

Foo was invented by Nescio Nomen in the 17th century. Adams, Adam. The Nomen Dynasty in Eastern Europe, Academia Press, 1903, p. 227. A century later, it was refined by Negidius Numerius (Blue 2003). It was Negidius Numerius who established that N. Nomen was the original inventor of Foo (Blue 2003, p. 17-18).

Notes

References

• Adams, Adam. The Nomen Dynasty in Eastern Europe, Academia Press, 1903. ISBN 0000000001
• Blue, Baby. Negidius Numerius' reinvention of Foo, Wikidemia Press, 2003. ISBN 000000000000

See also

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• No original research
• Verifiability
• Cite sources
• Reliable sources
• Footnotes
• Footnotes/Mixed citations and footnotes
• Footnote3
• Harvard referencing

References

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• "Harvard Referencing 2005", Curtin University of Technology library and information service, retrieved December 17, 2005.
• "Bibliographic Format for References", based on the Chicago Manual of Style, University of Georgia, retrieved December 18, 2005

Further reading

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• "Writing with Sources: A Guide for Harvard Students" by Gordon Harvey, retrieved October 18, 2005

Wikipedia:Bronvermelding in Harvardstijl