There are a variety of referencing styles in use at the University of Northampton, including Harvard, the predominant style, and also subject specific styles such as APA, OSCOLA, MHRA and MLA. We maintain the Subject Referencing Styles web page showing which referencing styles are currently in use for which subject. Please contact your Academic Librarian if this is not displaying the correct referencing style for your subject discipline. Students are always advised to check with their tutor if there is a specific style they should use.
Academic staff are advised to mark referencing for style consistency and accuracy, rather than whether a particular referencing style variant has been used, providing there is no conflict with a subject professional specification (for example, OSCOLA or APA). By "accuracy" we mean referencing that enables the reader to easily and unambiguously locate the source used.
Academics are advised to be open to making reasonable adjustments for students who struggle with a particular referencing style. For example, to enable them to use Cite Them Right Vancouver rather than Cite Them Right Harvard, providing this does not conflict with a referencing style required by a professional body, e.g. OSCOLA or APA. This is because some students find "name and date" systems, such as Harvard, disrupt the flow of the text (Watkins, 2023).
Reference
Watkins, F. (2023) 'Do institutional or subject referencing style choices create barriers for students with Specific Learning Disability?', Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 29 Available at: https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi29.1094.
Your Academic Librarian will deliver sessions on referencing as part of the Integrated Learner Support (ILS) sessions embedded within your programme, and your students can also book a tutorial with their Academic Librarian if they want further guidance, with supplementary support also offered by the Learning Development team. In addition to this in-person support, guidance is also available online, which from September 2025 will be provided via the Cite Them Right platform. This platform provides referencing guidance for all of the major referencing styles, and is also available for our students based at partners.
There are four main reasons that we are adopting Cite Them Right Harvard and a move to the Cite Them Right Platform:
Most programmes at the University use Harvard, and to help with the transition we have created a comparison table for students and staff so that you can easily see the core differences between Cite Them Right Harvard and UON Harvard.