Citing references

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This generic guide to citing references includes details of using the Chicago, Harvard, MHRA, OSCOLA and Vancouver styles. Available in print and as an interactive website.

Citation examples

This page lists the details you will need to include when writing citations for various types of source material. The examples given are in the 'Cite Them Right' version of the Harvard style.

For each example:

Your School/Department might use a different style, or a different version of Harvard. Always check your course handbook for the exact formatting preferred in your School. If there isn't a preferred format, choose one and use it throughout. Even if your course prefers Harvard, this is a style rather than a set of rules, so details of punctuation and text formatting may differ.
Find out which style your Department uses by following the link below:

Find out which style your Department uses. Please consult your course handbook for definitive guidance on which style to use.

Overview of different referencing styles in use at the University.

Note that, whatever the type of source, the title of the containing volume (i.e. the book, journal, collection etc) should always be marked out, usually by being put in italics but sometimes underlined. Whichever you use, be consistent and use the same formatting throughout your citations.

If the source you want to cite is not listed here consult the following book:

Call Number: 029.6-PEA ISBN: 9781350933446 Publication Date: 2022

This generic guide to citing references includes details of using the Chicago, Harvard, MHRA, OSCOLA and Vancouver styles. Available in print and as an interactive website.

Alternatively ask your Academic Liaison Librarian or a Study Adviser for guidance:

The top five: 1. Book

Elements to include:

  1. Authors or Editors
  2. Year of publication (in round brackets)
  3. Title (in italics)
  4. Edition (if applicable)
  5. Place published
  6. Publisher
  7. Series and volume number (if applicable)

Examples:

Reference list: Ashbourn, J. (2014) Biometrics in the new world: the cloud, mobile technology and pervasive identity. 2nd edn. London: Springer .

In-text citation: (Ashbourn, 2014)

Reference list: Nasta, S. and Stein, M.U. (eds) (2020) The Cambridge history of Black and Asian British writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

In-text citation: (Nasta and Stein, 2020)

Where an e-book looks like a printed book (usually PDFs) with publication information and page numbers - cite it in the same way as a printed book (above). Where specific pagination details are not available use the information you have e.g. %, loc, chapter/page/paragraph. Also add the DOI or web address to the full reference.

Reference list: Prior, H. (2020) Away with the penguins. Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Away-Penguins-Hazel-Prior-ebook (Accessed: 20 September 2021).

In-text citation: (Prior, 2020, 74%)

Reference list: Faulkner, W. (2000) Light in August. Available at: https://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=UniReading&isbn=9781446485521 (Accessed: 10 September 2021).

In-text citation: (Faulkner, 2000, ch. 7, p. 105)

The top 5: 2. Journal article

The information you include in the reference will depend on whether the journal is published in print (but uploaded for electronic access), only published online, or is a version found in an institutional repository. You can usually tell the difference by looking for page numbers. If each article in the journal begins at page 1, or has no page number at all, it is likely to be an online-only journal.

Elements to include:

  1. Authors
  2. Year of publication (in round brackets)
  3. Article title (in single quotation marks)
  4. Journal title (in italics, capitalise the first letter of each word except linking words)
  5. Volume number
  6. Issue number (if present, in round brackets)
  7. Page numbers or article reference number (Include the page numbers of the whole article when writing your full citation, not just the pages you have referred to)
  8. DOI or web link for online-only articles

See the examples in the other tabs in this box.

Examples for articles in print copies of journal articles or a print journal accessed online (e.g. on JSTOR)

Traditionally all articles were published in print format in issues which then formed part of a volume and this way of citing them (giving volume, issue and page numbers) has been retained even though most are now available online. There is no need to include the DOI or web address for articles with volume numbers and page numbers or an article reference number even if you accessed them online.

A single author:

Reference list: Gulddal, J. (2020) 'That deep underground savage instinct: narratives of sacrifice and retribution in Agatha Christie's Appointment with Death', Textual Practice, 34(11), pp. 1803-1821.

In-text citation: (Gulddal, 2020)

Two authors - include them both separated by 'and' or &:

Reference list: Thomas, D. and Tian, L. (2021) 'Hits from the Bong: the impact of recreational marijuana dispensaries on property values', Regional Science and Urban Economics, 87, article number 103655.

In-text citation: (Thomas and Tian, 2021)

Three authors - include them all, separate the first two with a comma and use 'and' or & before the third author:

Reference list: Adeyeye, S.A.O., Ashaolu, T.J. and Idowu-Adebayo, F. (2022) 'Mycotoxins: food safety, consumer health and Africa's food security', Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds, 42(8), pp. 5779–5795.

In-text citation: (Adeyeye, Ashaolu and Idowu-Adebayo, 2022)

Four or more authors - include them all in the full reference, but for the in-text citation just state the first author, followed by et al.

Reference list: Moise, L., Gutiérrez, A.H., Khan, S., Tan, S., Ardito, M., Martin, W.D. & De Groot, A.S. (2020) 'New immunoinformatics tools for swine: designing epitope-driven vaccines, predicting vaccine efficacy, and making vaccines on demand', Frontiers in Immunology, 11, article number 563362.

In-text citation: (Moise et al., 2020)

Examples for online-only journals

If the journal is ONLY available online, you should include the DOI or the URL in the full reference. Online-only journal articles may not have page numbers or reference numbers, or pagination for each article will begin with '1'. The rules for in-text citations are the same as for print articles.

Article with a DOI:

Reference list: Mair, A., Poirier, M. and Conway M.A. (2021) 'Age effects in autobiographical memory depend on the measure', PLoS one, 16(10), article number e0259279. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259279

Article without a DOI:

Reference list: Farrell, L.G. (2013) 'Challenging assumptions about IT skills in higher education'. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 6. Available at: http://www.aldinhe.ac.uk/ojs/index.php?journal=jldhe&page=article&op=view&path[]=173&path[]=138 (Accessed: 23 June 2021).

Examples for versions of articles found in repositories

Authors will often put versions of their articles into institutional repositories to comply with funding requirements to make the research Open Access. These may be pre-print versions (before peer review has taken place) or post-print versions, also known as author accepted manuscripts (the final version of the text, following peer review, to be published in the journal).

Allen, R. J., Horowitz, L. W., Naik, V., Oshima, N., O'Connor, F., Turnock, S., Shim, S., Le Sager, P., Van Noije, T., Tsigaridis, K., Bauer, S. E., Sentman, L. T., John, J. G., Broderick, C., Deushi, M., Folberth, G., Fujimori, S. and Collins, B. (2021) 'Significant climate benefits from near-term climate forcer mitigation in spite of aerosol reductions'. To be published in Environmental Research Letters [Preprint]. Available at: http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/view/creators/90004988.html (Accessed: 24 June 2021).

For post-prints which are identical in content to the published version, you should cite the published version instead of citing the repository version.