Harvard Reference List: Format, Examples and Variant Differences

A Harvard reference list is the alphabetical list, at the end of a piece of work, of every source you cited in the text. Each entry follows a fixed order of elements (author, year, title, then publication details), and the entries are sorted by the surname of the first author. This guide gives the entry template for each common source type, fictitious examples you can copy the pattern from, a thesis entry, and the points where Harvard variants disagree, so you can match the one your institution or journal uses.

Harvard is a family of author-date styles rather than a single published manual. The patterns below follow the Cite Them Right variant as set out in the Open University library’s quick guide and the Newcastle University Cite Them Right Harvard style sheet (August 2025), and note where University College London’s own variant differs.

The format

Order the list alphabetically by the surname of the first author, and keep each work’s authors in the order the source gives them. The list holds only works you cited. A bibliography, by contrast, also includes works you read for background without citing them.

The templates, with each element named:

• Book: Surname, Initial. (Year) Title. Edition (only if later than the first). Publisher.
• Journal article: Surname, Initial. (Year) ‘Title of article’, Title of Journal, volume(issue), page range. Available at: DOI or URL (Accessed: date). The DOI or URL and access date apply to online articles.
• Chapter in an edited book: Surname, Initial. (Year) ‘Title of chapter’, in Initial. Surname (ed.) Title of book. Publisher, page range.
• Web page: Surname, Initial. (Year published or last updated) Title of web page. Available at: URL (Accessed: date). Where an organisation is the author, it takes the place of the surname. With no author, start with the title: Title of web page (Year) Available at: URL (Accessed: date).
• Online report: Organisation (Year) Title of report, Issue number. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).
• Thesis: Surname, Initial. (Year of submission) Title of thesis. Degree statement. Degree-awarding body. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

The year goes in round brackets with no full stop after it. Article and chapter titles take single quotation marks; book, journal and web page titles are italic. Where a DOI is available, prefer it to a URL.

Examples

The authors, titles and publishers below are fictitious examples written to show the pattern. They are not real publications.

A short reference list, in alphabetical order:

• Example Agency (2024) Example report on research reporting, Issue number 2. Available at: https://example.org/report.pdf (Accessed: 3 March 2026).
• Harris, J. (2020) Studying citation habits. Example Press.
• Smith, J. and Lee, K. (2021) ‘Citation habits in fiction’, Journal of Example Studies, 12(3), pp. 45-60. Available at: https://doi.org/10.0000/example (Accessed: 2 March 2026).
• Thompson, R. (2019) ‘On reference lists’, in A. Jones (ed.) Writing guides. Example Press, pp. 10-24.
• Wong, P. (2024) Example page title. Available at: https://example.org/page (Accessed: 1 March 2026).

The list is sorted on the first author’s surname: Example Agency, Harris, Smith, Thompson, Wong. The organisation is sorted as its name stands.

A thesis entry

Newcastle University’s style sheet gives a PhD thesis this order: author, year of submission, title, degree statement, awarding body, then the repository address and access date. A fictitious example:

• Okafor, N. (2015) Example thesis title on citation practice. PhD thesis. Example University. Available at: https://example.org/thesis (Accessed: 3 March 2026).

Note that the year is the year of submission, and that the degree statement (“PhD thesis”) is a separate element before the institution.

Several authors

How many authors to print in the list is where variants differ most. Newcastle’s style sheet lists all authors and uses et al. only when there are more than ten. The Open University says to list all authors or to give the first author followed by et al., and to do the same throughout. UCL’s variant gives all authors up to seven and the first eight followed by et al. for eight or more. If your institution has a house rule, it overrides all three.

In-text citation version

Every in-text citation must match the first elements of a list entry: the author’s surname (or organisation) and the year. Using the fictitious entries above:

• One author: (Harris, 2020)
• Two authors: (Smith and Lee, 2021)
• Four or more authors: (Wong et al., 2024) for a work by Wong and three or more co-authors, while the reference list entry follows your variant’s rule above
• With a page number: (Harris, 2020, p. 5)

Two works by the same author in the same year are marked 2020a and 2020b in the text, with the same letters in the list, where those entries are ordered by title. The full rules for in-text forms are in our guide to Harvard in-text citation.

Common errors

• Listing sources you never cited. A reference list holds cited works only. Background reading belongs in a bibliography, if your institution asks for one.
• Sorting by first name or by the order of appearance. Harvard lists are alphabetical by the first author’s surname; numbered order belongs to numeric styles such as IEEE.
• Mismatched text and list. The author and year in the text must match the entry exactly, including the letter suffix for same-year works.
• Reordering authors. Keep authors in the order the source prints them.
• Mixing variants. Using one variant’s author-count rule for some entries and another’s for the rest. Pick one variant per document and apply it consistently.
• Quotation marks and italics swapped. Article and chapter titles take single quotation marks; the larger container (book, journal, web page) is italic.
• Treating the access date as optional for online sources. The Newcastle University style sheet ends online entries with ‘Available at: DOI or URL (Accessed: date)’, so a DOI is paired with an access date too.

Style-guide edition

There is no single authoritative Harvard manual, so there is no edition number to cite; name the variant instead. The patterns here follow the Cite Them Right variant as presented by the Open University library and the Newcastle University style sheet dated August 2025. UCL publishes its own Harvard variant, with different punctuation after the year and a different author-count rule in the list. Details such as hanging indents, font and line spacing are set by your institution or publisher, so follow the instructions for your thesis or journal.

Manuscripts and theses

For a thesis, your department’s regulations or handbook name the Harvard variant and any layout rules, and a journal’s author guidelines do the same for a manuscript. If the journal asks for a different author-date or numbered style, it overrides what is here. For the wider choice of styles, see our overview of citation styles and referencing formats.

FAQ

What is a Harvard reference list?

It is the alphabetical list of all the works cited in your text, placed at the end of the document, with each entry giving author, year, title and publication details in a fixed order.

What does a Harvard reference list example look like?

See the fictitious list under Examples above: entries sorted by first author’s surname, year in round brackets, article titles in single quotation marks and book titles in italics.

What is the difference between a reference list and a bibliography?

A reference list contains only the works cited in the text. A bibliography also includes works read for background that are not cited.

How do I cite a web page with no author?

Start the entry with the title of the web page, then the year, then Available at: URL and the access date. Where an organisation is responsible for the page, use the organisation as the author.

How do I cite a website in Harvard?

The web page template is above; our guide on how to cite a website in Harvard covers it in full.

Sources

• Open University Library, Quick guide to Harvard referencing (Cite Them Right), accessed 2026-10-29.
• Newcastle University, Cite Them Right Harvard style sheet (August 2025), accessed 2026-10-29.
• UCL Library Services, Harvard referencing guide: authors, accessed 2026-10-29.