Authoring a PhD

in-text reference
includes only the author surname
(family name), the year date of publication, and page
number details, all enclosed in brackets. For example:
( Jones, 1999, p. 14; Jones and Crank, 1997, pp. 86–7).
An alternative way of citing page numbers leaves out the
p. or pp. and just puts in a colon after the year date,
followed by the pagination, as (Jones, 1999: 14–17).
Chapters can be indicated by Ch. or Chs. Whole-book
references can be given with just the author surname and
date. Where the same author has several publications with
the same year date included in the bibliography, add single
letters to the date to differentiate, as: 1999a.
◆
The
bibliography
lists every source cited in the work,
arranged in alphabetical order of the first author’s surname,
and then date order, for example:
1 2 6
◆
A U T H O R I N G A P H D
Jones, Terence B. (1999) ‘Academic time-wasting in universities’,
American Journal of Scholasticism
, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 12–71.
Jones, Terence B. and Crank, Arthur (1997) 
One Book Academics:
What Goes Wrong?
(London: Futuristic Press). Second edition.
Jones, Terence B. and Winge, Steven A. (2001) ‘Deconstructing 
post-modern writers’ angst’, 
Times Literary Supplement
,
26 September, pp. 70–1.
Notice that authors’ single-author works come before those
written with others, and thereafter dual-authored works
come before triple-author works, and so on. If a 
first author has several co-written works with the same
number of people involved, use the alphabetical order 
of the second co-author’s surnames to set the sequence 
(thus Jones and Crank comes before Jones and Winge in 
the box above).

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◆
For journal articles the bibliography reference must include
in sequence: author surname, full forename, second
forename initial, year date, article title, journal title, volume
number, issue number, and pagination. I have included vol.
and no. here because some journals and publishers require it.
Others will ask for the volume number and issue number
without these labels, separated by a colon, as 4: iii. But
deleting or replacing elements that are already in your
references is much easier using ‘find and replace’ facilities on
your word processor than it is inserting them from scratch.
◆
For magazine or newspaper articles use the same sequence as
for journal articles, but replace the volume and issue
numbers with the day and month date of publication.
◆
For books the bibliography reference must include in
sequence: author surname, full forename, second forename
initial, year date, book title (and subtitle if there is one),
place of publication, and publisher. Add any essential
information on the edition or translation that readers might
need to know. For a republished later edition of a work give
the first publication date at the end of the reference, as:
‘Originally published in 1847’.
One great advantage of the Harvard system is that it provides
a clean-looking text which includes immediate information for
an expert reader (who will often know what source is being cited
from the in-text reference alone). Yet it also gives easy access to
more detailed information. The second great advantage is that
every thesis has to have a comprehensive bibliography organ-
ized on exactly these lines anyway. Thus with any notes system
you have to provide referencing for each source at least twice,
once in a bibliography format, and then again in notes format,
as well as repeating note citations of the same source. The
Harvard system eliminates all this duplication and along with it
the difficult ‘version control’ problems which often arise when-
ever you have two different citations of the same source. If you
find that you have a source wrong there is only one place to
change the reference under Harvard (although you will need to
update the in-text referencing if the author name or year date is
altered). You also do not have notes taking up some of the valu-
able space within the doctorate’s word limit.
W R I T I N G C L E A R LY
◆
1 2 7

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Finally Harvard referencing has big advantages because it
tends to discourage authors from proliferating and expanding
‘subtexts’ in footnotes or endnotes. In any notes system the
temptation for authors to create learned subtexts is normally
irresistible. Critical asides and authorial digressions multiply,
along with methods comments, lower level data, debates with
opponents, and similar materials. Where authors rely on notes,
it often looks as if the main text is surrounded by a forest of
subsidiary commentaries, especially in academic books or arti-
cles with long footnotes at the bottom of the page, which some-
times squeeze the main text into less than half a page. Harvard
referencing should prevent this completely, and yet it is still
possible to put in special endnotes to include some bulky but
indispensable subsidiary information (see below). Harvard ref-
erencing is attractive for publishers and journals precisely
because it discourages subtexts, forcing you to make up your
mind about what is key in your sources and what is not. Being
constrained to pursue a single line of argument through your
text can improve the clarity of your writing and your thought.
Many students who are used to notes systems anticipate that
if they try Harvard referencing they will have four main diffi-
culties. In fact these commonly cited ‘problems’ are all familiar
ones, to which easy solutions exist:
◆
If you have to reference a large amount of literature at one
point in your text, more than three or four works, then (but
only then) it is permissible to add an endnote to accommodate
the references. This exception violates the one-stop look-up
rule, but it is preferable to having an unsightly wodge of
referencing disrupting your main text. If you find that this 
is a common problem in your work, you may want to check
whether you are over-referencing.
◆
Primary texts and older works may require unconventional
referencing different from that shown above. For instance, you
may want to refer to books, chapters and verses in sources like
the Bible or the work of pre-modern philosophers, or to the
acts, scenes and lines in plays. This problem arises because the
page numbers for a classic work or other specialized text
inevitably vary from one edition to another. Yet you want to
make references in such a way that other people can find the
1 2 8
◆
A U T H O R I N G A P H D

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passage you cite whatever edition of the work they are using.
Legal case referencing also has its own forms. And citations of
documents in historical archives should also follow referencing
and numbering conventions, often ones particular to that
archive. In all such cases you should preferably use a
convention that is already well established in your discipline
for the Harvard in-text reference, explaining what you are
doing on first use for that source. The idea here is to maximize
the ability of other professionals to retrieve and check the
documents or other material that you cite. If no convention
exists for your source then establish your own rule clearly on
first use, giving readers a brief reminder about it later on when
needed. Primary sources that are constantly referred to can
also be abbreviated, so long as you explain the shortened form
used to readers on first use and include it in the glossary of
acronyms. For example, a reference to John Locke’s