Harvard Referencing Generator

Paste a DOI or article link and copy a Harvard reference for your reference list. Harvard is the author-date style used by most UK and Australian universities. There is no single official version, so this generator follows Cite Them Right, the version many universities use. Check your university’s or journal’s guide for small differences.

Generate a citation

A DOI, PubMed ID, PMC ID, arXiv ID or the link to an article page.

Harvard reference format for a journal article

Surname, A.B. and Surname, C.D. (Year) ‘Title of article’, Title of Journal, Volume(Issue), pp. first–last. Available at: https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx.
  • Authors: surname, then initials with periods (Krejcie, R.V.). Join the last two names with and.
  • Year: in round brackets after the authors.
  • Title: in single quotation marks, followed by a comma.
  • Journal: the full journal title, in italics.
  • Volume, issue and pages: Volume(Issue), then pp. and the page range.
  • DOI: as a link after Available at:.

Harvard examples

These are the generator’s own results for real articles, copied on November 1, 2026. Paste the same DOI above to reproduce them.

Two authors

Krejcie, R.V. and Morgan, D.W. (1970) ‘Determining Sample Size for Research Activities’, Educational and Psychological Measurement, 30(3), pp. 607–610. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/001316447003000308.

Generated from DOI 10.1177/001316447003000308

Four or more authors

Harris, C.R. et al. (2020) ‘Array programming with NumPy’, Nature, 585(7825), pp. 357–362. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2.

Generated from DOI 10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2

Harvard in-text citations

Give the surname and year in brackets, or the surname in your sentence with the year in brackets. Add the page number for a direct quotation. With four or more authors, cite the first author followed by et al.

Sample sizes can be read from a table (Krejcie and Morgan, 1970).
Krejcie and Morgan (1970, p. 608) give the formula behind the table.
NumPy underpins most scientific Python code (Harris et al., 2020).

What to check before you submit

  • Order the reference list alphabetically by the first author’s surname. Sources by the same author in the same year become 2020a, 2020b.
  • Copied text loses italics. Set the journal title in italics after you paste the reference.
  • With four or more authors the reference gives the first author and et al., as Cite Them Right allows. Some universities ask for every author’s name in the reference list.
  • A journal article with a DOI needs no accessed date. Web pages without one do.
  • Your university’s Harvard guide wins over this page where they differ, for example on quotation marks or the word Available.

Harvard format for a book

Surname, A.B. (Year) Title of book. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher.

The book title is in italics, and the edition is given only when it is not the first. Books and chapters that have a DOI can be pasted into the generator.

Frequently asked questions

Which version of Harvard referencing does this generator use?
Cite Them Right, through its Citation Style Language definition. Harvard is a family of author-date styles without one official rulebook, and many universities in the UK and elsewhere base their guides on Cite Them Right. If your university publishes its own Harvard guide, follow it where the two differ.
How do I write a Harvard in-text citation?
Put the author’s surname and the year in brackets, such as (Krejcie and Morgan, 1970), or name the author in the sentence and put the year in brackets, such as Krejcie and Morgan (1970). Add a page number for a direct quotation: (Krejcie and Morgan, 1970, p. 608).
How do I reference a source with four or more authors?
In the text, cite the first author followed by et al., such as (Harris et al., 2020). The generated reference does the same in the reference list, which Cite Them Right allows. Some universities ask for all authors in the reference list, so check your guide.
Can I make a Harvard reference from a PubMed ID?
Yes, when the PubMed article has a DOI: the reference is built from the DOI record. A PubMed article without a DOI cannot be formatted in Harvard style here, because the National Library of Medicine’s exporter only offers APA, AMA, MLA and NLM.
Do I need an accessed date in a Harvard reference?
Not for a journal article that has a DOI, because the DOI is a permanent link. For a web page or an online source without a DOI, Cite Them Right asks for the date you viewed it, written as (Accessed: 1 November 2026) after the URL.

Other citation styles

Sources

Content updated November 1, 2026. Journal Metrics is not affiliated with the publishers of these style guides.