Harvard Referencing System 2019/20

Amendment History

Release Version
Summary of Main Changes Owner
Date No.
Sept 2019 V1.1 Minor corrections made Academic Team
August 2019 V1.0 New policy Head of Academic
Development and
Product

Review Arrangements
This document will be reviewed annually as part of the NCUK self-evaluation
arrangements. It may also be revised as and when necessary in response to feedback,
trends from our internal monitoring arrangements, changes in our practices, actions from
the regulatory authorities (where applicable) or external agencies or changes in legislation.

If you would like to feedback your views, please contact quality@ncuk.ac.uk

Glossary
The NCUK Academic Handbook includes a glossary to explain words and terms that are
used by NCUK, but which may be unfamiliar to those working with us.

© 2019 Northern Consortium UK Ltd. Page 2 of 8

 Harvard Referencing System 2019/20

Contents
1. Introduction 4

2. In-text Referencing Examples 4

3. The Bibliography 5

4. Referencing Figures from web sources 6

5. Referencing figures from print sources 7

© 2019 Northern Consortium UK Ltd. Page 3 of 8

 Harvard Referencing System 2019/20

1. Introduction

During your studies with NCUK you will use the standard referencing system outlined in
this document. It is based on the Harvard system.

When you write your coursework assessments and use someone else’s words or ideas
you must reference them. This means that you need to provide information on all your
sources (e.g. books, journal articles and webpages etc.), both in your work (in-text
references) and at the end of your work (bibliography).

The only exception to is when the information you have included is common knowledge.
For example, you would not need to include a reference if you stated in the assessment
that leaves are green.

Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is when you take the ideas or information from a book or another source
and put it into your own words. You are still copying someone else’s work, so you must
reference it and clearly show the original source of your information.

2. In-text Referencing Examples

If the author’s name occurs naturally in the text:

e.g. The work of Preece (2014) was concerned to emphasise the importance of quality
in social research.

If the author’s name occurs at the end of a sentence or paragraph:

e.g. Customer compatibility management emphasises the controllability of customer to
customer interaction in the higher education environment (Rowley, 2016).

If the author has more than one item published in the same year, use lower case letters
after the date:
e.g. In an early report it was suggested by the CBI (2018a) that the careers service
should be transferred from……. It is significant, however that the CBI speaking on behalf
of its employers generally argued that……. (CBI, 2018b).

When giving a direct quotation, the page number must also be cited:
e.g. As Brown (2017, p12) states “Manchester as a city has long been of great strategic
importance in the north of England.”

In the case of four or more authors to a source, use the name of the first author followed
by ‘et al.’
e.g. Matlock et al. (2016)

In-text references to websites should include the author of the webpage or the
organisation/company plus the year of production of that website or webpage. If the
year is not known, ‘n.d.’ is used, standing for ‘no date’.
e.g. According to BMW (n.d.), ……

© 2019 Northern Consortium UK Ltd. Page 4 of 8

 Harvard Referencing System 2019/20

3. The Bibliography

Books
The book title should be highlighted using bold type, underlining or italics, though it is
important to be consistent.
e.g. Barton, P. and Bishop, E. (2019) Stories of a Manchester Street, Stroud: The
History Press

Journal articles

The article title should be in single quotation marks and the journal title should be
highlighted using bold type, underlining or italics, though it is important to be consistent.
e.g. Bennett, H. (1996) ‘Through a glass darkly: images of appraisal’. Journal of
Teacher Development 5/3, pp. 39-46

Newspaper articles

e.g. Rudy, K. (2019) ‘The True Costs of Research and Publishing’. The Times Higher
Education Supplement 29 August, p. 5

Electronic articles
The URL should lead to the exact page being referred to, not the home page. If there
is no date, you should write (n.d.) instead of the date.
e.g. Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (2016) [online] Teaching Quality
in Higher Education: Literature Review and Qualitative Research Available at:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attach
ment_data/file/524495/he-teaching-quality-literature-review-qualitative-research.pdf
[Accessed 28 August 2019]

Sample Bibliography
(must be in alphabetical order according to the first author’s surname)

Bartels, N. (2009) ‘Knowledge about Language' in Burns, A. and Richards, J. C. (eds.)

(2009) Second Language Teacher Education, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press

Burns, A. & Richards, J. C. (eds.) (2009) Second Language Teacher Education,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Lightbown, P. & Spada, N. (2013) How Languages are Learned, Fourth Edition,
Oxford: Oxford University Press

Littlejohn, A. (2015) Why are ELT materials the way they are? Unpublished PhD
thesis, Lancaster University

© 2019 Northern Consortium UK Ltd. Page 5 of 8

 Harvard Referencing System 2019/20

Wenden, A. (1986a) 'Helping language learners think about learning'. ELT Journal
40/1, pp. 3-12

Wenden, A. (1986b) 'What do second language learners know about their language
learning?'. Applied Linguistics 7/2, pp.186-201

(This section is adapted mainly from Skills for Learning, Leeds Beckett University)

4. Referencing Figures from web sources

The following instructions are for images that you are using from various webs sources,
such as webpages, blogs or wikis. You might have saved the image as a file such as a
jpeg or taken a screenshot of it. If you use an image from an electronic journal or
electronic book, treat it as a print source.

Caption
The caption is placed directly below the image, and includes the following information:

Number Use italics for the word “Figure” followed by a sequential number
(assuming you are using more than one image).

Title Give the image a brief, descriptive title.

Source The creator or owner of the image and its year of creation, preceded
by the word Source: and enclosed in parentheses.

© 2019 Northern Consortium UK Ltd. Page 6 of 8

 Harvard Referencing System 2019/20

In your writing
You should have a sentence just below or above the image, explaining why it is there.
This should mention the figure number and include an in-text citation (as you would for
a written quotation).

Example:
Figure 1 is an artist’s impression of what was envisaged for the Clifford Whitworth
Library (University of Salford, 1970).

Note than in your text the word “Figure” is not in italics, but it should have a capital F.
The citation includes the creator of the image and its date, enclosed in parentheses.

In your Reference List

In your Reference List, the above example would look like this:

University of Salford. (1970). Artist's impression of Clifford Whitworth Library.

[Drawing] Retrieved from http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/10922/ [Accessed 28
August 2019]

5. Referencing figures from print sources

You may find images in print sources such as book and journals that you scan and use
in your work. If this is the case you should follow the instructions on pages 2 & 3 of this
guide, but instead of having a URL as your source you should provide details of the
printed material. Also use these instructions for images found in e-journals and e-books.

Caption

Follow the instructions on page 6 of this guide.

In your writing

When you use someone else’s illustrative material in your writing you should always
treat it as direct quotation. In your citation, include the page number on which you
found the image.

Example:
In Figure 2 (Gauguin, 1887, p.15) we see the bright colours that are typical of the
artist’s later work.

© 2019 Northern Consortium UK Ltd. Page 7 of 8

 Harvard Referencing System 2019/20

Bibliography

Treat your image as an item in a book or journal.

 Start your reference with the creator of the work and the year it was created,
followed by its title and medium (as you would for web images (see page 6).
 The second part of your reference is for the work you found it in. Start with the
word “In”, followed by the author or editor of the work, its date, the title, the
either the publisher details (for a book) or journal details (for an image found in a
journal).
 For an image found in a journal, use the page number the image was found on,
rather than the whole page range of the article.
 Do not repeat the creators’ names if they are also the authors of the book or
article.

Bibliography examples

Please note – you should only follow this format of references if you have only used a
couple of images and are including them in your Bibliography (Reference List). If you
are using a List of Figures, please follow the layout example on page 7.

Brown, K. (2006). Frequency of Bulbil Watsonia before and then one year following
treatment with the herbicide 2,2-DPA [Graph]. In Ecological Management &
Restoration 7(1), p. 69

Fielding, A. & Haworth, P. F. (2002) Golden eagle distribution map [Map]. In Upland
Habitats. London: Routledge

Gauguin, P. (1887) At the pond [Oil on canvas]. In I. F. Walther (2004), Paul Gauguin:
1848- 1903: the primitive sophisticate. Koln: Taschen

Rentz, A. (2007) Confectionery tribute [Photograph]. In New Statesman 136(4857),

p.42

Tansley, S. A., & Brown, C. R. (2000). The broad extent of the Cape Floral Kingdom
[Diagram]. In Biological Conservation 95(1), p. 41

(This section is adapted from User Guides, Library, University of Salford)

© 2019 Northern Consortium UK Ltd. Page 8 of 8