Whenever you refer to another person's work in your own essay, dissertation or article you must acknowledge them and give full details of your source. You risk being accused of plagiarism if you fail to do so.
The School of Biological Sciences uses the Harvard referencing style. For examples see below.
For general information on referencing, including an explanation of different citation systems, and guidance on citing specific types of publication, see our Citing references guide.
For help with citing specific types of publication contact your subject librarian, Tim Chapman.
For advice on using references in your work, and how to use them to support your arguments, consult the guidance on the Study Advice website or make an appointment with them.
When you do your dissertation you could consider using EndNote to manage your references. This bibliographic management package can be used to store references, and then insert the citation in your Word document, automatically building the bibliography for you in the correct style.
Find out more on our EndNote webpages:
For information on other options for electronic management of your references see our guide to Managing references:
As well as our citing references guide there are several books in the Library that can help you with referencing in your written work - here are a few examples;
Include the following in your reference:
Copy the format and punctuation of these examples.
Citation in the text: (Collard, 2019)
Full reference:
Collard, S.P. (2019) Human physiology. 2nd ed. Duxford, Woodhead Publishing.
Citation in the text: (Jones & Gamble, 2019)
Full reference:
Jones, A. and Gamble, M. (2019) Microbiology. Champaign, Human Kinetics.
Citation in the text: (Lawson et al. 2024)
Full reference:
Lawson, S.A., MacDonald, I.A., Roche, H.M., Williams, C. & Mills, P. (eds) (2024) Human metabolism. 2nd ed. Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell.
Note that all authors are included in the full reference.
Where an e-book looks like a printed book (usually PDFs) and you can find all the publication information (including place published and publisher) - cite it in the same way as a printed book (above). You do not need to include the web address.
Where it is not possible to find the publication information include the web address and date accessed instead, as in the example below:
Citation in the text: (Techco, 2022)
Full reference:
Techco (2022) The Blood Book. Available from https://techco.book.com/ (accessed April 2024).
Include the following in your reference:
Include the page extent of the whole chapter when writing your full citation. Put just the pages you have referred to in the in-text citation.
Copy the format and punctuation of these examples.
Note that all authors are included in the full reference.
Where an e-book chapter looks like a printed book chapter (usually PDFs) and you can find all the publication information (including place published and publisher) - cite it in the same way as a printed book (above). You do not need to include the web address.
Where it is not possible to find the publication information include the web address and date accessed instead:
Copy the format and punctuation of this example:
Note that the default 'Cite Them Right Harvard' style in EndNote does not handle e-book sections very well. Download and use our amended style which corrects these issues:
Alternatively as a final step before submission, create a plain text version of your document. Go to the EndNote toolbar in Word and select 'Convert citations and bibliography' to 'Plain text' (this will be under 'Tools' on the Mac version of the toolbar). This will create a copy of your document which is divorced from EndNote so that you can make final tweaks to the reference to match the guidance above.
Include the following in your reference:
Copy the format and punctuation of these examples.
Citation in the text: (Thomas, 2021)
Full reference:
Thomas, T.F. (2021) Current microbiology research in the UK: a review, Microbiology Frontiers, 2(4), 407-416.
Citation in the text: (Harbord and Sims, 2020)
Full reference:
Harbord, M. & Sims, S. (2020) Zebra stripes: a review, Zoology Research International, 131, 108973.
Citation in the text: (Li et al., 2020)
Full reference:
Li, H., Zhang, T., Li, C., Zheng, S., Li, H. & Yu, J. (2020) Ecology of the Plastisphere, Nature & Technology, 122, 109033.
You must include all authors in the full reference.
Include the following in your reference:
Copy the format and punctuation of these examples:
Citation in the text: (Mossfegh et al., 2015)
Full reference:
Articles are often made available before they receive their official publication details (volume and issue number). If an article is shown as 'In press' or 'early online' and doesn't yet have these details, just use (in press) instead.
Citation in the text: (Kanton et al., 2024)
Full reference:
You should be able to download details for most articles from databases such as Summon, Web of Science, Scopus and PubMed. If you need to type one in from scratch this is the information to include.
You should avoid citing webpages unless you are clear of their quality and suitability for inclusion in academic work. See the 'Websites' tab within this guide for more information on evaluating webpages.
Only follow this guidance if the item you want to reference is not a book, a book chapter or a journal article. When you search the internet you will find many different types of content. The first step to referencing correctly is to recognise what you are looking at.
Include the following in your reference:
Copy the format and punctuation of these examples.
Citation in the text: (Clark, 2020)
Full reference:
Example 1:
Citation in the text: (National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Dietary supplements (ODS), 2022)
Full reference:
Example 2:
Citation in the text: (Health Standards Agency, 2023)
Full reference:
Example 3:
Citation in the text: (PubBio, 2024)
Full reference:
Example 4:
Citation in the text: (BioMed Commission, 2022)
Full reference:
If there isn't a date on the website, even at the bottom of the page, use 'no date'.
Citation in the text: (Genetic manipulation, no date)
Full reference:
You can also download our amended 'Cite Them Right-Harvard' style to correct the issue with the missing closing bracket: