Quick guide to

Referencing
What is Referencing?
Referencing is providing information on the sources that you have used.

You need to reference your sources in the text of your assignment, this is called in-text
citation, and provide a reference list at the end of your assignment. In the Harvard
Northumbria style, references are listed in alphabetical order.

What is a Bibliography?
A bibliography includes all the material used in the preparation of your work. It will
therefore include your entire reference list as well as any other material you’ve read or
used but haven’t referred to directly. It is written in the same format as your reference
list.

Harvard Northumbria
Harvard Northumbria is the accepted referencing style of the University in line with
‘Cite them right: the essential guide to referencing and plagiarism’.

Referencing a book
When writing a book reference, use the order and punctuation as shown below. The Author(s) will appear first, followed
by year, title, edition (only include the book’s edition if it’s later than the first edition), place and publisher.

Author Year of publication Title Edition Place of publication Publisher

Fowkes, B. (1995) The rise and fall of communism in Eastern Europe. 2nd edn. Hampshire: Macmillan.

Comma Full stop Brackets Italics Full stop Full stop Colon Full stop

Referencing a printed journal article

For a journal reference, use the order shown below: author(s), year, article title, journal title, issue information and
page numbers. Issue information is the volume of the journal followed by the part number in brackets. In some cases,
the issue information may be a month or even a season. ‘pp.’ is the abbreviation for ‘pages’.

Author(s) Year of publication Article title Journal title Issue information Page numbers

Bremmer, I. & Zakaria, F. (2006) ‘Hedging political risk in China’, Harvard Business Review, 84 (11), pp. 22-25.

Comma Full stop Brackets Quotation marks Comma Italics Comma Full stop

Referencing an electronic journal article

If you read the article from an electronic source, you reference it as you would a print journal but include the electronic
journal collection eg Swetwise or EBSCO, the website address and the most recent date that you accessed it.

Author(s) Year of publication Article title Journal title Page numbers Name of collection

Mustard, S. (2007) ‘Communications conundrum’, Computing & Control Engineering, 18(2), pp.16-17. EBSCO
[Online]. Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com (Accessed: 12 June 2007).

[Online] Full stop Brackets URL Quotation marks Access date Italics Issue information

This leaflet is available in other formats on request. March 2009

 Referencing a web page
In some cases, it is not possible to identify the author of a webpage. In these cases, you should use the apparent title of
the website instead of the author.
Author(s) Year of publication Website title Website URL Access date

Nielson, J. (2007) Jakob Nielsen's website. Available at: http://www.useit.com/ (Accessed: 12 May 2008).

Comma Full stop Italics Full stop Colon Full stop

In-text citations
Examples of in-text citations and a reference list for a website, book and journal article:

In-text citation Nielson (2000, p.85) argues against using frames in website design and goes on to say that if
frames have to be used then they should be used sparingly.

In-text citation The BBC News (2008) website is a well respected site that uses a clear navigation structure
without frames.

In-text citation Websites should be treated as ‘electronic storefronts’ (Winter, Saunders & Hart, 2003) and as
such it’s important to ensure that the website is usable and easy to navigate.
Reference list
(alphabetical order)

References
website BBC News (2007) Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk. (Accessed: 10 May 2008).

book Nielson, J. (2000) Designing web usability. Indiana: New Riders Publishing.

journal article Winter, S.J., Saunders, C. & Hart, P. (2003) ‘Electronic window dressing: impressing
management with websites’, European Journal of Information Systems, 12 (4), pp. 309-322.

Secondary Referencing
Take your information from what you have actually read. If you can’t read the original source, only what another author
has written about it, then give a secondary reference. Remember, you are relying on the author you are reading giving
an accurate representation of the original work – this may not always be the case!

You must be clear in your text that you have not read the original source and are referring to it from a
secondary source. For example, you could say:

A description of education in the 1930s by Ella Ruth Boyce (Santer, Griffiths & Goodall 2007, p.8) is very
interesting because…
You have not read Ella Ruth Boyce so You have read Santer, Griffiths & Goodall so you
you will not cite it in your reference list. will cite it in your reference list.

Santer, J., Griffiths, C. & Goodall, D. (2007) Free play in early childhood: a literature review. London: National
Children’s Bureau.

Help with Referencing

If you would like further help with referencing you can consult Skills Plus, for more information see
www.northumbria.ac.uk/skillsplus.
You can also email your enquiry to ask4help@northumbria.ac.uk where our staff will be happy to help you.

‘Cite them right’ contains in depth guidance on referencing and avoiding

plagiarism, including many detailed examples of in-text and reference list citations.

You can purchase a copy of ‘Cite them right’ from the library shop in City Campus
or from the customer support desk in Coach Lane Campus Library or view it online
at: www.northumbria.ac.uk/cite. There are also reference copies of ‘Cite them
right’ available for use in the Libraries.
Pears, R. & Shields, G. (2005) Cite them right: The essential guide to referencing and
plagiarism. 2nd edn. Newcastle upon Tyne: Pear Tree Books.