Citing and Referencing in the Cardiff

University BIOSI Harvard style

For all academic assignments it is vital that you acknowledge the sources of information you have used for
your research. This helps protect you against charges of plagiarism and demonstrates that you
understand the importance of professional academic work.

You must acknowledge your sources whenever you paraphrase or summarise another person's ideas or
when you quote another person's work, or use tables, graphs, images, etc. taken from another source, be
it from a printed document or from the web. This guide explains how this is done using Cardiff University
BIOSI Harvard, a variant of the author-date system.

There are two steps to acknowledging your sources: citing in the text to show where you have drawn upon
another person’s work, and then providing a full reference at the end of your work

Citing your sources in the text

When you refer to someone else’s words or ideas, you must cite your source. At an appropriate point in
your text, provide the author last name(s) and year of publication in round brackets. Alternatively, if you
include the author name(s) in your sentence, only provide the year in brackets:

It has been argued (Harris 2001) that the main considerations are…
Or
It has been argued by Harris (2001) that the main considerations are…

 For edited books that contain collections of chapters written by different authors, cite the author(s) of
the chapter not the editor(s) of the overall book.

 If citing different publications written by the same author in the same year, label the first cited with
the letter ‘a’ after the year and the second ‘b’ etc. e.g. (Smith 2004a), (Smith 2004b). You will need
to do the same in your list of references.

 Where two authors have produced the work, include both their last names e.g. (Cullingworth and
Nadin 2007) or Cullingworth and Nadin (2007).

 When there are three or more authors use the abbreviation et al. (i.e. and others) after the first author
e.g. Tayler et al. (2003) or (Tayler et al. 2003). Don’t forget to italicize et al.

 When discussing a point about which several authors have expressed similar views, include them all in
one set of brackets in chronological order of publication. List any works published in the same year in
alphabetical order by author e.g. (Midgley 1994; Smith 1994; Gandelsonas 2002).

 When citing a web site there may not be a named author. In such cases, use the name of the institution
or organisation responsible for the content e.g. (World Health Organization 2012). You must ensure
that any cited web pages have an authoritative and reputable source.

 When paraphrasing an argument or point from your source, you are not required to include page
numbers.
National Audit Office. (2019). Transforming courts and tribunals – a progress
update. UK: Comptroller and Auditor General [Online]. Available at:
https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Transforming-
Courts-and-Tribunals.pdf [Accessed: 21 December 2022]
Pedraja-Chaparro, F. and Salinas-Jimenez, J. (1996). An assessment of the
efficiency of Spanish courts using DEA. Applied Economics 28:1391-1403.
Pellegrina, L.D. (2008). Court delays and crime deterrence. European Journal of
Law and Economics 26:267-290.
Petitclerc, A., Gatti, U., Vitaro, F., Trembaly, R.E. (2013). Effects of juvenile
court exposure on crime in young adulthood. The Journal of Child
Psychology and Psychiatry 54:291-297.
Posner, R.A. (1993). What do judges and justices maximize? (The same thing
everybody else does). Supreme Court Economic Review 3:1-14.
Priest, G.L. (1989). Private litigants and the court congestion problem. Boston
University Review 69:527-560.
Rasmusen, E., Raghav, M., Ramseyer, M. et al. (2009). Convictions versus
conviction rates: the prosecutor’s choice. American Law and Economics
Review 11:47-78.
Reinganum, J. (1988). Plea bargaining and prosecutorial discretion. The American
Economic Review 78:713-728.
Rosales-Lopez, V. (2008). Economics of court performance: an empirical analysis.
European Journal of Law and Economics 25:231-251.
Schneider, A. (2019). Deterrence theory in Paraguay: exploring fraud and violation
of trust cases. Social Science 8:23
Shamir, J. and Shamir, N. (2012). The role of prosecutor’s incentives in creating
congestion in criminal courts. Review of Law and Economics 8:579-618.
Shaw, C.R. and McKay, H.D. (1942). Juvenile delinquency and urban areas.
University of Chicago Press.
Shermer, L.O. and Johnson, B.D. (2010). Criminal prosecutions: examining
prosecutorial discretion and charge reductions in U.S. federal district
courts. Justice Quarterly 27:394-430.

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Directly quoting from your sources
BIOSI staff have indicated that they prefer you to paraphrase information provided by an author i.e. use your
own words rather than quote large amounts of the original text verbatim. This helps demonstrate your
understanding of the information. However, if it is necessary to quote directly from the text when you cannot
present the information more succinctly or in any other way, enclose the writer’s words in quotation marks
then cite the author and date:

Shortened rotations in the growing of crops is one obvious response to ‘the global food security
challenge’ (Bennett et al. 2012).

Longer quotations should be separated from the body of your text and indented from the left-hand margin.
When indenting a quotation, there is no need to include quotation marks:

As Hyde et al. (2012) observe:

It is clear that the process of normal parturition at term is a significant stimulus to the
neonate at a point in time when the respiratory, metabolic and immunological systems in
the infant need to change markedly to adopt to the outside world.

If you omit some words from the quotation, indicate this by typing three dots, e.g. ‘A number of predator
species … respond numerically to bark beetle density’ (Kausrud et al. 2012).
If you add your own words within the quotation (this is sometimes necessary in order to clarify matters of
context), place these in [square brackets] to distinguish them from those of the author. Remember to quote
exactly as the words appear in the original: do not add bold or italics.

Referencing
Referencing entails giving a full description of each source cited in your work. This takes the form of a
references list or bibliography at the end of your work. Present this in alphabetical order by first author.

 Author names: for each item, list the authors in the order in which they appear in the source. Do not
rearrange these alphabetically.
o Put the first author’s last name first and then his/her initials e.g. Woodgate, L.
o Include the names and initials of all authors up to a total of seven. If there are more than
seven authors, use the abbreviation et al. after the seventh author.
N.B. Do not use et al. in your bibliography / references list unless there are more than 7
authors:
Price, H.D., Arthur, R., Sexton, K., Gregory, C., Hoogendoorn, B., Matthews, I., Jones, T.P.
et al. (2010). Airborne particles in Swansea, UK: their collection and characterisation.
Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A, 73:355-367.
o Arrange references by the same author by publication year, beginning with the earliest.

 Publication dates: to discover when a book was published check the back of the title page. This will
contain details of the publisher and date. If there is more than one date, use the publication date, not
the latest reprint date. This is often located next to the © symbol.
Enclose the publication date in round brackets e.g. (2012). If no publication date is given put [no date]
in the citation e.g. (Smith [no date]) and in the reference.
  Editions: the cover or back of the title page should tell you the edition of the book. State this in
numerals not words (12th ed. not Twelfth ed.). There is no need to specify that a book is the 1st ed.

Fox, S.I. (2011). Human Physiology. 12th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

 Publishers: omit peripheral terms in publisher names e.g. John Wiley not John Wiley & Sons, Bodley
Head not Bodley Head Inc.

 Capitalisation:
o capitalize the first letter of each author’s last name and each initial e.g. BéruBé, K.A.
o capitalize the first letter of each main word of book, thesis and report titles e.g. Life: the
Science of Biology
o capitalize the first word only of journal article titles e.g. Population dynamics in changing
environments
o capitalize each significant word of a journal publication name e.g Trends in Cell Biology
o capitalize all first letters of a place name and publisher e.g. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.

 Italicization: use italics for the title of a journal publication (but not for the title of the journal article),
also for titles of theses, web pages and for the titles of books from which you are referencing a specific
chapter or section (see examples on p.4).

 Bold: the volume number of a journal should appear in bold font e.g. Genetic Medicine 12:634-640.

Web sources
If no personal author is given, web pages can be referenced using the name of the organisation responsible.
A good web site should have sufficient ownership details to enable you to cite it. If not, you should question
whether the source is of sufficient quality. Include the following:

Author or Organisation. (Publication Date). Document title [Online]. Place (if identified): Publisher.
Available at: web address of document [Accessed: date you viewed the site].

e.g. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2011). Learn about health literacy [Online].
Atlanta, GA: CDC. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/healthliteracy/Learn/index.html [Accessed:
23 May 2012].

Secondary referencing
Where possible, aim to reference from the original source. However, sometimes you may need to cite an
author whose work you have not personally read, but whose work is presented or summarised by the author
of a publication you have consulted. This can be referenced as follows:

Rondinelli (1983), cited in Potts (2002), describes the stages of a project…

or
A process project might consist of a number of stages including experimentation and
production (Rondinelli 1983, cited in Potts 2002).

In your references list you should include the source you have actually read, i.e. Potts not Rondinelli.
Example references
Aden, R. P., Gaunt, J. P. K. and Ranagae, P. (2010). Biology Today. Book.
New York: Garland.

Kale, L. and Ryan, J. (eds.). (2010). The Fundamentals of Biology. 3rd Edited book
ed. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Ray, L. and Moran, K. L. P. (2010). Photosynthesis. In: Kale, L. and Chapter from an edited book.
Ryan, J. (eds.) The Fundamentals of Biology. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford Note that book title is
UP, pp. 25-53. italicized to distinguish it
from the chapter title.
Provide chapter page numbers.

Gervasini, C., Grati, F. R., Lalatta, F., Tabano, S., Gentilin, B., Journal article. Reference
Colapietro, P., De Toffol, S. et al. (2010). SHOX duplications found in both print articles and their
some cases with type I Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome. electronic equivalents in this
Genetic Medicine 12:634-640. way. Note that volume
number is in bold and issue
numbers are omitted.
Fledelius, H.C. (2000). Myopia and significant visual impairment: Conference paper. Include
global aspects. In: Lin, L.L.-K. et al. (eds.) Myopia Updates II: the date and location of the
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Myopia. Taipei, conference.
17-20 November, 1998. Tokyo: Springer, pp. 31-37.

Piasecka, A. (2011).Towards Better Understanding of Structures PhD thesis. Note that thesis
and Evolution of Proteasomes. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. titles should be italicized

Kaschner, K., Tittensor, D.P., Ready, J., Gerrodette, T. and Worm, Electronic only journal
B. (2011). Current and future patterns of global marine mammal article. If a journal is only
biodiversity. PLoS One [Online] 6. Available at: available online, use this
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3 Adoi%2F10. format. Journal issue
1371%2Fjournal.pone.0019653 [Accessed: 22 May 2012]. numbers and pages may be
omitted if unavailable.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2011). Lyme disease Web page.
[Online]. Atlanta, GA: CDC. Available at:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/Lyme/index.htm [Accessed: 25 May
2012].

Gray, C. (2009). Blood clotting. In: Encyclopedia of Life Sciences Online encyclopedia article
[Online]. Available at: http://mrw.interscience.wiley.com/emrw e.g. E.L.S.
/9780470015902/els/article/a0000904/current/pdf [Accessed: 20 May
2012].

For further help or information contact Science Library - Tel: 029 2087 4085. Email:[email protected]

BIO-018-Q-1 / August 2012 / NJM Also available in alternative formats.