Harvard Referencing Generator

Free Harvard referencing generator in Cite Them Right style. Paste a DOI, ISBN, URL, or reference and copy the reference list entry and in-text citation.

Paste a source to get a Harvard reference

Harvard citation examples

The same two sources appear on every CiteTools generator page, so you can compare styles side by side.

Journal article

LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y. and Hinton, G. (2015) ‘Deep learning’, Nature, 521(7553), pp. 436–444. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539.

Book

Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Harvard in-text citations

Parenthetical: (LeCun, Bengio and Hinton, 2015)
Narrative: LeCun, Bengio and Hinton (2015)
With a page number: (LeCun, Bengio and Hinton, 2015, p. 438)

How Harvard formats a reference

Authors are inverted with initials and no space between them: LeCun, Y. The word and joins the last two names, not an ampersand.
The year follows the authors in round brackets with no full stop after it.
Article titles sit in single quotation marks. Journal and book titles are italic.
Volume and issue are written as 521(7553), followed by pp. and the full page range.
An online article ends with Available at: and the DOI or URL.
Books give the place of publication before the publisher: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Who uses Harvard referencing

Harvard is an author-date referencing system with no single official manual, so universities publish their own versions. The most widely adopted is Cite Them Right, which many universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland follow. CiteTools renders the Cite Them Right 12th edition form, the edition before the current 13th. In the text, cite the surname and year, as in (LeCun, Bengio and Hinton, 2015), and add a page number for a direct quotation. Sources with four or more authors are shortened to the first author plus et al. The reference list is alphabetical by surname.

Frequently asked questions

Which version of Harvard does this generator use?

Cite Them Right, 12th edition. A 13th edition has since been published, and Harvard has many local variants, so compare one generated reference with your university’s guide before you submit. Differences are usually small: punctuation after the year, or the wording before a link.

Is Harvard referencing the same as APA?

No. Both are author-date systems, so the in-text citations look alike, but the reference lists differ. Harvard puts article titles in single quotation marks, writes and instead of an ampersand, and adds Available at: before a link.

Do I need an access date for websites?

Yes for web pages. Cite Them Right ends a web page reference with the date you viewed it, written as (Accessed: 12 May 2026). Journal articles with a DOI do not need one.