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Harvard referencing handbook (2nd edition)

The University of Lincoln Harvard referencing style

In-text citation

An in-text citation does not give full publication details, such as the title or publisher: this information should be in your reference list.  Your in-text citation should go after you quote, paraphrase or summary and should include the author's surname, the year of publication and a page number (if relevant). If you use the author's name in the sentence you don't need to repeat it in the in-text citation.

Click on the text below for more information.

All your in-text citations should have a corresponding entry in your reference list.

For example, you cite from page 83 of a book by Goldacre (Goldacre, 2009, 83) and then cite from page 7 of the same book (Goldacre, 2009, 7) you only put one reference to the author in your reference list and do not include the page numbers, e.g. Goldacre, B. (2009) Bad science. London: Fourth Estate.

For sources with three or more authors, give the surname of the first author, followed by et al. (Latin for and others).

For example, (Alberts et al., 2014)

Acronyms such as the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) or NHS (National Health Service) can be given either in full or as the acronym.

You need to be consistent and make sure your in-text citation matches your reference list entry.

Page numbers should be included in the in-text citations when quoting and paraphrasing.

Some Schools only require a page number when directly quoting. If you are unsure, please contact your tutor.

Examples of in-text citations

In-text citation with...

Social media is deeply intertwined and analogous with open education and is "authored, critiqued and reconfigured by a mass of users (Selwyn, 2014, 106).

Give the surname of both authors:

The open education movement grew out of the open-source movement in software development (Deimann and Farrow, 2013, 345).

Give the surname of the first author followed by et al.:

Online resources offer opportunities for people living with disabilities (McAndrew et al., 2012, 345).

You can combine references in one in-text citations by separating them with a semi-colon:

Online resources offer opportunities for people living with disabilities but also create challenges (McAndrew et al., 2012, 345; Seale et al., 2015, 127)

When writing your assignment, if you include the author's surname within your text, only give the year and page number (if needed) in brackets. You can give this information directly after the author's name or at the end of the sentence:

Baggaley (2013, 373) writes quite sceptically about MOOCs, describing the inconclusive results of some evaluations.

Baggaley writes quite sceptically about MOOCs, describing the inconclusive results of some evaluations (2013, 373).