Harvard referencing — the working guide for UAE students

Harvard is the citation style most UAE business and management students see, and also the one most often misapplied. The trap is that there isn’t a single Harvard. There are at least four widely-used sub-variants in the UAE, and they disagree on small details — italics, punctuation, the order of elements in a reference. A perfectly applied Anglia Ruskin Harvard is wrong if your university teaches Cite Them Right Harvard.

This is the working guide we use at the studio when writing for any UAE university that uses Harvard.

The four Harvard variants you’ll see in the UAE

• Cite Them Right Harvard — the most common variant across UK-curriculum branch campuses. Used at Heriot-Watt Dubai (in some programs), Birmingham Dubai, parts of Middlesex Dubai.
• Anglia Ruskin Harvard — slight differences in punctuation and italicisation; appears at some UK-curriculum schools.
• Wollongong Harvard — the Australian variant; default at UOWD.
• Open University Harvard — appears in some distance-learning programs that pass through UAE colleges.

The first move on any Harvard assignment is to find which variant your university uses. Look in the module handbook, the student handbook, or the library’s referencing guide page. Don’t guess.

In-text citation — the basics

Two formats, depending on whether the author’s name appears in your sentence:

• Patel (2021) argues that… — name in narrative, year in parentheses.
• Recent research shows… (Patel, 2021) — name and year in parentheses at end.

For direct quotes, add a page number after the year: Patel (2021, p. 47) or (Patel, 2021, p. 47).

For two authors, use and in narrative form and & in parenthetical form: Patel and Singh (2021) vs (Patel & Singh, 2021). Some variants use and in both — check your handbook.

For three or more authors, use et al. from the first citation: Patel et al. (2021). The full author list goes in the reference list.

Reference list — what the elements are

A Harvard reference, in the most common Cite Them Right form, has these elements in this order:

For a journal article:

Patel, R. (2021) ‘Title of article’, Journal Title, 14(3), pp. 47–62.

For a book:

Patel, R. (2021) Title of Book. 3rd edn. London: Penguin.

For a chapter in an edited book:

Patel, R. (2021) ‘Title of chapter’, in Singh, A. (ed.) Title of Book. London: Penguin, pp. 23–48.

For a website:

Patel, R. (2021) Title of Web Page. Available at: https://example.com (Accessed: 15 January 2024).

Notice what gets italicised (journal/book/website titles), what’s in quotation marks (article/chapter titles), and what’s in plain text. Variants disagree on small details (commas vs full stops, italicised volume numbers, the use of Available at:) — match your variant’s PDF exactly.

Where students lose marks

In our experience, the four most common Harvard mistakes that quietly cost marks:

1. Mixing variants. Half your references look like Cite Them Right, half look like Wollongong. Markers spot this within seconds.

2. Missing page numbers on direct quotes. Any direct quotation must have a page number in the in-text citation. Students often add the quote and forget the page.

3. Wrong italicisation. Journal title italics, article title plain. Book title italics, chapter title plain. The inverse fails.

4. Inconsistent date format in retrieval dates. Accessed: 15 January 2024 vs Accessed: 15/01/2024 — pick one and use it for every website reference.

Reference manager workflow

The single highest-leverage move on Harvard referencing hygiene is to use a reference manager and configure it for your specific variant. Zotero has style files for all the major Harvard variants — go to Edit → Preferences → Cite → Get additional styles and search for the variant your university uses.

Once configured, the in-text citations and reference list are auto-generated from your library. You spend zero time on formatting and zero time worrying about whether Available at: needs a comma after it (it doesn’t, in Cite Them Right).

When The Essay Atelier writes Harvard-formatted briefs

For every brief, the editor confirms the Harvard variant at scope time. We match the variant your university uses exactly — not just “Harvard” in the abstract. We deliver the manuscript with consistent formatting throughout and supply the reference list in BibTeX or RIS if you’d like to import it into your own reference manager.

If you’re unsure which Harvard your university teaches, send the editor a screenshot of your module handbook’s referencing page and we’ll match it.