King's College London has no single referencing style. The library's King's Guide to Referencing names five main styles in use at King's: APA 7th or Harvard for author-date, Chicago 18th for footnotes, Vancouver for numbers, and OSCOLA 5th for law. It tells you to check with your tutors and department. KCL Harvard referencing, on the library's Harvard page, follows Cite Them Right: (Ahmed, 2017, p. 15) in your sentence, and a reference list with no place of publication and no accessed date after a DOI.
Every rule below was read on 2 October 2026 in the library's public pages, last updated on 29 September 2026, and in three other King's documents. EdCitation is not affiliated with King's College London; this follows its public library guide, checked on 2 October 2026.
EdCitation publishes this guide, and quotes below what its free Cite a source and Verify references returned on King's own examples, faults included.
Which referencing style does King's College London use?
The one your module names. King's College London Libraries & Collections (2026e) lists five main styles and says to ask tutors and departments when unsure. King's pages say who uses which:
| Kind | Style | Who uses it, as King's pages say | Page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author-date | Harvard | No department named | Quick start guide (2026e) |
| Author-date | APA 7th | The School of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care | Nursing guide (2025a) |
| Footnotes | Chicago 18th | The Defence Studies Department, in its 2018 handbook | Defence Studies (2018) |
| Numbered | Vancouver | "biomedical and health publications" | Vancouver page (2026f) |
| Legal footnotes | OSCOLA 5th | Law | OSCOLA page (2026d) |
| Building the entry | Harvard, APA 7, Vancouver and three more | Cite a source, free | EdCitation |
The Defence Studies Department (2018) says it "uses the Chicago citation style only", but that handbook dates from December 2018, so check the current one. No other department appears in the pages we could read: your module handbook decides, as across the UK (see referencing at UK universities). EdCitation's Chicago is author-date only and it does not build OSCOLA, so King's Chicago 18th and OSCOLA 5th footnotes are written by hand.
Two older King's sources that disagree
King's College London Libraries & Collections (2025), a LibAnswers entry last updated in March 2025, says the guide covers "four of the main referencing styles", with no Harvard. The current guide has a Harvard page; follow it.
An older King's house Harvard also lingers. The library's "King's Harvard V1" address now says "The requested page could not be found", but a style named "King's College London (author-date/Harvard)", last updated in February 2018, is still in the Zotero Style Repository. Its list joins authors with "&", uses et al. from three authors and adds "[Online]" and "Available from:", none of which the current Harvard page does. The quick start guide recommends ZoteroBib: a style with King's in its name is not automatically the right one.
What are the rules of KCL Harvard?
KCL Harvard is the Cite Them Right pattern shown on the library's Harvard page, which sends you to Cite Them Right Online, with a King's login, for every other kind of source (King's College London Libraries & Collections, 2026c). Its examples set these rules:
- In the text, surname and year, with "and" between two names: (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2008).
- A quotation takes single quotation marks and the page: (Ahmed, 2017, p. 15).
- A book: initials after the surname, the year in brackets, the title in italics in sentence case, the publisher, and no place.
- An article: the title in single quotation marks and sentence case, the journal in italics with its capitals, "pp." with a hyphenated range, then "Available at:" and the DOI, with no accessed date and no closing full stop.
- A chapter: 'Sebald in the city', in J. Cook (ed.) After Sebald: essays and illuminations, the word after the colon kept small.
- A web page: "Available at:" the address, then "(Accessed: 5 September 2025)."
- The list is a Reference List, alphabetical by surname.
The page names no Cite Them Right edition and shows no source with more than two authors, so it never says when et al. starts. Cite Them Right Online holds that rule behind the King's login, which we could not read.
Generative AI is not referenced at King's: King's College London (2025b) asks for a declaration statement with your references, in one of two wordings it supplies unless your brief gives another. See declaring AI use.
King's referencing rules at a glance
| Rule | King's form | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Harvard in the text | (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2008); (Ahmed, 2017, p. 15) | Harvard page (2026c) |
| Harvard DOI | Available at: https://doi.org/…, no accessed date | Harvard page (2026c) |
| Harvard web page | Available at: URL (Accessed: 5 September 2025). | Harvard page (2026c) |
| Harvard et al. | Not stated | Harvard page (2026c) |
| APA et al. | From three authors in the text; up to 20 names in the list | Nursing guide (2025a) |
| APA layout | Single spacing within an entry, 1.5 between, hanging indent | Nursing guide (2025a) |
| Vancouver online | [Internet], [cited 2026 Sept 29], Available from: | Vancouver page (2026f) |
| Chicago 18th | Footnotes; ibid. discouraged; a repeat on a new page cited in full | Chicago page (2026b) |
| OSCOLA 5th | Footnotes; "and others" after three authors; secondary sources in a bibliography | OSCOLA page (2026d) |
| Generative AI | A declaration statement, not a reference | AI guidance (2025b) |
| Building the entry | Cite a source, then the changes below | EdCitation |
How do you reference in APA 7th at King's?
Nursing, midwifery and palliative care students use APA 7th, as King's College London (2025a), version 1.7 of the school's guide, sets out; the library's APA page says it applies to anyone using APA 7th:
- Et al. from three authors in the text, as (Silverman et al., 1997). The list names up to 20 authors; from 21, the first 19, an ellipsis and the last.
- Organisations in full first, then short: (Nursing and Midwifery Council [NMC], 2018), then (NMC, 2018).
- Quotations rarely, in double quotation marks, with the page; secondary referencing is "strongly discouraged".
- A DOI whenever the work has one; a retrieval date only for content that could change.
- Layout: single spacing within an entry, 1.5 between entries, hanging indent.
King's pages disagree on two points. The library's APA page gives a dated BBC article a "Retrieved February 9, 2016, from" date, where the nursing guide keeps retrieval dates for content that could change. And the nursing guide lowers the word after a colon in some titles ("an intersectional approach") and capitalises it in others. The APA Style sentence case page capitalises the first word of a subtitle, as EdCitation's APA does. See also APA citations for nursing students.
Vancouver at King's
King's College London Libraries & Collections (2026f) numbers sources in the order cited, abbreviates journal titles from the NLM catalogue, and gives online items [Internet], a [cited] date and "Available from:". Its two articles list six and three authors before et al., and no rule is given.
What does a KCL Harvard reference list look like?
Like this: four real sources set in the form the Harvard page shows, two of them King's own examples.
Young television researchers on a talent show carried extra pressure from emotional labour (Hesmondhalgh and Baker, 2008), and Oakley et al. (2017) examine London's impact on cultural labour markets for arts graduates. Government plans for the sector appear in its sector vision (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2023), while Ahmed (2017) asks what it means to live a feminist life.
Reference List
Ahmed, S. (2017) Living a feminist life. Duke University Press.
Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2023) Creative industries sector vision. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/creative-industries-sector-vision (Accessed: 2 October 2026).
Hesmondhalgh, D. and Baker, S. (2008) 'Creative work and emotional labour in the television industry', Theory, Culture & Society, 25(7/8), pp. 97-118. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276408097798
Oakley, K., Laurison, D., O'Brien, D. and Friedman, S. (2017) 'Cultural capital: arts graduates, spatial inequality, and London's impact on cultural labor markets', American Behavioral Scientist, 61(12), pp. 1510-1531. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764217734274
King's page is silent on et al., so we list Oakley's four authors; "labor" stays as the journal spells it, and the gov.uk page was published and updated in June 2023.
Which EdCitation style is closest, and what do you change by hand?
The closest EdCitation style for each, and the changes we made on 2 October 2026:
| King's style | Closest in EdCitation | Change by hand |
|---|---|---|
| Harvard | Harvard, Cite Them Right | Lower article and book titles to sentence case, keeping names such as London; delete any place of publication; drop the full stop after a DOI; choose et al. or every name in the list |
| APA 7th | APA 7 | Lower any ordinary word left capitalised (below); set 1.5 spacing between entries in Word |
| Vancouver | Vancouver | Add [Internet] and [cited date]; write "Available from: https://doi.org/…" in place of "doi:" |
| Chicago 18th footnotes | None: EdCitation's Chicago is author-date | Notes and bibliography by hand from the Chicago page |
| OSCOLA 5th | None | Footnotes by hand from the OSCOLA page and the OSCOLA 5th guide it links |
EdCitation's Harvard page names Cite Them Right's 12th edition, which keeps the place of publication; King's examples print none. Our Harvard referencing guide compares the versions.
What did Cite a source and Verify references return on King's sources?
EdCitation is the best place to start a King's reference list, because it looks every source up in the publisher's record and never composes an entry: a chatbot predicts what a reference probably says, and Cite a source reads what the record says. It takes a DOI, title, PubMed ID, ISBN or web address, sets the entry in Harvard (Cite Them Right), APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, IEEE or Vancouver, and screens the source for retraction, free and with no account. The gov.uk page below came back in exactly King's form. EdCitation never writes any part of an essay or dissertation, and we are glad of it: it finds, cites and checks sources, and every sentence stays yours.
Cite a source on six real sources
For King's own article, 10.1177/0263276408097798, Harvard returned:
Hesmondhalgh, D. and Baker, S. (2008) ‘Creative Work and Emotional Labour in the Television Industry’, Theory, Culture & Society, 25(7–8), pp. 97–118. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276408097798.
Every fact matches King's entry. Lower the title and drop the last full stop; King's writes the issue as 7/8. For 10.1177/0002764217734274:
Oakley, K. et al. (2017) ‘Cultural Capital: Arts Graduates, Spatial Inequality, and London’s Impact on Cultural Labor Markets’, American Behavioral Scientist, 61(12), pp. 1510–1531. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764217734274.
Lower the title, keeping London's, and add the other three names if you list every author. For the government's sector vision page:
Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2023) Creative industries sector vision. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/creative-industries-sector-vision (Accessed: 2 October 2026).
Nothing to change. Ahmed's book has a DOI as well as an ISBN, and the DOI, 10.1215/9780822373377, gave:
Ahmed, S. (2017) Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373377.
Lower "Feminist Life"; King's example is the print book, so keep the DOI only if you read it online.
In APA 7, for the nursing guide's own example, 10.2105/AJPH.2014.302459, it gave, twice:
Gonzales, G., & Ortiz, K. (2015). Health insurance disparities among Racial/Ethnic minorities in same-sex relationships: An intersectional approach. American Journal of Public Health, 105(6), 1106–1113. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302459
"Racial/Ethnic" names no group, so lower it, as the nursing guide does. In Vancouver, for the library's own 10.1177/1062860614566445, it gave:
Starr SR, Kautz JM, Sorita A, Thompson KM, Reed DA, Porter BL, et al. Quality improvement education for health professionals: a systematic review. Am J Med Qual. 2016 May;31(3):209-16. doi: 10.1177/1062860614566445.
King's prints three authors, "[Internet]. 2016 [cited 2026 Sept 29]; 31(3): 209–216" and "Available from:" with the DOI link.
Verify references on King's Harvard list
We pasted the library's six-entry Harvard list, exactly as printed, into Verify references twice, with the same results:
- Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2008) and Kawakami and Venkatagiri (2024): verified, "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches."
- Ahmed (2017): doubtful ("check this"), "A work with this title is recorded in Contemporary Political Theory (2018), not in the source your entry names. Check your source." That record is a review of the book; Duke University Press lists the book itself.
- Beer (2014): not found, "No publisher's or registry's record matches this reference." The book is real: Full Circle Editions lists After Sebald, November 2014, with Gillian Beer among its contributors.
- The Social Network and the Wyss Institute page: could not check, "The library catalogue did not answer in time. Check this one again in a minute."
The library catalogue was not answering during both runs, so the two book verdicts are the tool's misses, not King's errors: read every flag against the source before changing anything. With Pro, at $8 a month, References from a file checks a whole paper's list and matches every in-text citation to it (pricing).
How do you build a King's reference list, step by step?
- Find your style in the module handbook. EdCitation's free Check your paper reads assignment instructions into a checklist, citation style included, each rule shown with its sentence.
- Look up each source in Cite a source by DOI, ISBN or address, in the closest style.
- Make the hand changes in the table above; write Chicago and OSCOLA footnotes by hand.
- If you used generative AI, add King's declaration statement.
- Run the list through Verify references and settle every flag against the source.
- For a dissertation, where the library recommends reference software, a free EdCitation account downloads a saved list as BibTeX or RIS (moving references to Zotero or EndNote).
Quick questions
Does King's College London use Harvard referencing?
Yes, as one of two author-date styles beside APA 7th. Its Harvard page follows Cite Them Right; your module decides which you use.
Which referencing style do KCL nursing students use?
APA 7th, set by the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care's guide, with et al. from three authors in the text.
Do I reference ChatGPT at King's?
No. King's asks for a declaration statement with your references, not a reference entry, unless your brief says otherwise.
Can EdCitation build KCL Harvard references?
Nearly: EdCitation's Cite a source builds Cite Them Right Harvard from the publisher's record; then lower title capitals, delete any place and drop the DOI's full stop. It does not build OSCOLA or Chicago footnotes.
Which OSCOLA edition does King's use?
The 5th, which the library's OSCOLA page says has been chosen as its legal footnotes style.
References
- King's College London. (2025a). Citing references: Advice for students of the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care (Version 1.7) [PDF]. King's Guide to Referencing. https://libguides.kcl.ac.uk/ld.php?content_id=34148828
- King's College London. (2025b). Generative AI: Student guidance. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/about/strategy/learning-and-teaching/ai-guidance/student-guidance
- King's College London Defence Studies Department. (2018). Department of Defence Studies guide for current students [PDF]. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/dsd/assets/dsd-handbook.pdf
- King's College London Libraries & Collections. (2025). What support do you offer for referencing? LibAnswers. https://libanswers.kcl.ac.uk/faq/265423
- King's College London Libraries & Collections. (2026a). APA 7th (author-date style). King's Guide to Referencing. https://libguides.kcl.ac.uk/referencing/apa-7th
- King's College London Libraries & Collections. (2026b). Chicago 18th (footnotes-style). King's Guide to Referencing. https://libguides.kcl.ac.uk/referencing/chicago
- King's College London Libraries & Collections. (2026c). Harvard (author-date style). King's Guide to Referencing. https://libguides.kcl.ac.uk/referencing/harvard
- King's College London Libraries & Collections. (2026d). OSCOLA (legal footnotes style). King's Guide to Referencing. https://libguides.kcl.ac.uk/referencing/oscola
- King's College London Libraries & Collections. (2026e). Quick start guide. King's Guide to Referencing. https://libguides.kcl.ac.uk/referencing
- King's College London Libraries & Collections. (2026f). Vancouver (numbered style). King's Guide to Referencing. https://libguides.kcl.ac.uk/referencing/vancouver