# University of Nairobi referencing style and UoN thesis format

**Which referencing style does the University of Nairobi use?** The University of Nairobi sets no single referencing style. Its thesis submission regulations ask only for citations by author and date or by number, with a reference list at the end, and each school names its own style: APA 6th edition in Business, APA 7th in Civil and Construction Engineering, its own author-date style in Physical Sciences, and numbered or author-date in Engineering.

Published 2026-10-02 by EdCitation. https://edcitation.com/newsletter/referencing-at-the-university-of-nairobi

The University of Nairobi (UoN) has no single referencing style. Its thesis submission regulations ask only for citations by author and date or by number, and a reference list. Your school or department sets the style, and their documents differ: APA 6th edition in the School of Business, APA 7th in the Civil and Construction Engineering template, and an author-date style of its own in the School of Physical Sciences.

We found no referencing rulebook from the University of Nairobi Library: its Referencing & Citation page offers two Zotero training videos, and its FAQ, on engineering sources, tells students to find out which style their lecturer or supervisor expects (University of Nairobi Library, n.d.-a). Every rule below comes from a UoN document read on 2 October 2026. EdCitation is not affiliated with the University of Nairobi; this follows its public documents, checked on 2 October 2026.

EdCitation publishes this guide; near the end, sources a UoN student would cite go through its free [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite) and [Verify references](https://edcitation.com/verify-references), faults included. Other Kenyan universities are in [referencing at Kenyan and Ghanaian universities](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/referencing-at-kenyan-and-ghanaian-universities).

## Which referencing style does the University of Nairobi use?

The one your school or department names; where it says nothing, ask your supervisor, as the Library advises. The UoN documents readable today:

| Who it covers | Style the document names | UoN document |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Every higher-degree thesis or project | Author and date, or a number, in the text; a reference list at the end | Submission regulations, printed in Faculty of Arts (2012) |
| Faculty of Arts | A preferred style, used consistently; footnotes, in-text citations or endnotes by discipline | Faculty of Arts (2012); its Postgraduate Studies Committee (n.d.) |
| School of Business, MBA and MSc | APA 6th edition (2010) | School of Business (n.d.-a, n.d.-b) |
| School of Physical Sciences, MSc and PhD | Its own author-date style | SPS Postgraduate Committee (2020) |
| School of Engineering | Numbers in square brackets, IEEE among them, or author and date | School of Engineering (2011) |
| Civil and Construction Engineering | APA 7th edition | Department thesis template (n.d.-a) |
| "MEME", in the Library's FAQ | IEEE or Vancouver | Library FAQs (n.d.-a) |

The Business documents name APA's sixth edition, which the seventh has replaced (American Psychological Association, 2020), and the Engineering guidelines date from 2011; where your department has a newer template, follow that.

## What do the UoN Board of Postgraduate Studies guidelines say about references?

They ask for citations by author and date or by number, and name no style, which is why the schools fill the gap. The regulations for submitting a higher-degree thesis or project, addressed to the Director of the Board of Postgraduate Studies and printed at the end of the Faculty of Arts' 2012 guidelines, say "Literature must be cited by author and date or by number in the text", with references listed at the end (University of Nairobi Faculty of Arts, 2012).

### What the Faculty of Arts adds

The same freedom. Its proposal guidelines, readable today only in an archived copy, ask for a preferred style used consistently, and leave footnotes, in-text citations or endnotes to the discipline or department (University of Nairobi Faculty of Arts Postgraduate Studies Committee, n.d.). The 2012 guidelines add that MLA and APA style sheets are kept in the main library reserve and in departments.

## What are the School of Physical Sciences referencing rules?

The School of Physical Sciences (SPS) sets out its own author-date style in a slide deck for MSc and PhD theses, posted by the Department of Chemistry on 6 July 2020 (University of Nairobi School of Physical Sciences Postgraduate Committee, 2020). Its rules, with their slides:

| Rule | SPS form | Slide |
| --- | --- | --- |
| One author | (Derese, 2013) or Derese (2013) | 34 |
| Two authors | Joined by "and", not "&": (Ndakala and Derese, 2013) | 35 |
| Three or more | First author and et al.: (Onyatta et al., 2014) | 36 |
| Authors in the list | All of them, surname then initials, "and" before the last, no comma before it | 36 |
| Year | In brackets, with no full stop after it: (2013) | 37 |
| Journal article | Title, journal in italics, volume in bold, then pages: Innate Intelligence 102, 21-38 | 37 |
| Book | Title in italics, publisher, city, page range | 38 |
| Chapter | "In:" then the editors and "Eds.", the book in italics, publisher, city, pages | 39 |
| The list | Alphabetical; every source cited is listed, and every listed source is cited | 33 |
| The abstract | No citations at all | 17 |

### What the slides leave out

No DOI, web address, accessed date or issue number, and no example for a web page or report. No rule on capitals, though every example title capitalises its main words. The examples are patterns, not sources: Verify references found no record of the Derese (2013) entry, below.

### An SPS reference, worked

In the text: Owor et al. (2020) report anti-inflammatory flavanones and flavones from *Tephrosia linearis*. In the list, set exactly as the slides set a journal article:

> Owor, R. O., Bedane, K. G., Zühlke, S., Derese, S., Ong’amo, G. O., Ndakala, A. and Spiteller, M. (2020) Anti-inflammatory Flavanones and Flavones from *Tephrosia linearis*. *Journal of Natural Products* **83**, 996-1004.

All seven authors are listed; issue and DOI are left out, as in every SPS example.

## Does UoN's School of Business use APA 6th or APA 7?

APA 6th. The MBA and MSc guidelines for both the research proposal and the final project say to follow "APA, 6th Edition, 2010", in the text and in the list (University of Nairobi School of Business, n.d.-a, n.d.-b). APA's guide to its seventh edition sets out what changed (American Psychological Association, 2020):

| Element | APA 6th, as Business asks | APA 7th |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Three or more authors in the text | Names spelled out the first time, as APA's example shows, then et al. | Et al. from the first citation |
| DOI | After a label | As a link beginning https://doi.org/, with no label |
| Book publisher | City first, as in "Washington, DC: SAGE" | Publisher only |
| Web address | "Retrieved from" before it | "Retrieved from" only with a retrieval date |

### A Business reference in APA 6th, worked

A study of Kenyan universities by four UoN business researchers. First citation: (Ng’ang’a, K’Obonyo, Muindi, & Kariuki, 2025); after that, (Ng’ang’a et al., 2025).

> Ng’ang’a, M., K’Obonyo, P., Muindi, F., & Kariuki, M. M. (2025). Performance management, organizational learning and operational efficiency in universities in Kenya. *African Journal of Management Research, 32*(2), 136–155. doi:10.4314/ajmr.v32i2.8

The pages come from the article's PDF on the journal's site; the publisher's record holds none.

## What does the Civil and Construction Engineering thesis template ask for?

APA 7th. The template linked from the department's thesis submission page ends "Refer to the APA 7th Edition Manual" and wants tables and figures in APA 7th format (University of Nairobi Department of Civil and Construction Engineering, n.d.-a, n.d.-b). Its own additions: UK "-se" spellings; web sources cited in the text with the address and access date, as in (www.ojose.com, accessed on 12 December 2011); and dates as day, month, year, never the US order.

Its samples mix an older layout, "Benediktsson J. A. and I. Kanellopoulos (1999)", with APA 7 entries; follow the APA 7 ones. The template calls itself guidance and defers to your supervisor.

### Engineering's 2011 options and the Library's FAQ

The School of Engineering's 2011 guidelines allow numbered citations in square brackets, [1, 2], listed in order, a method the document says IEEE follows, or author-date citations listed alphabetically (University of Nairobi School of Engineering, 2011). Its samples print surnames in capitals, inverting only the first author: "WISMER, R. D. and H. J. LUTH, (1973)". Web references should come from reputable institutions. The Library's FAQ names IEEE and Vancouver as the two main styles in "MEME", which it does not expand.

## Which EdCitation style is closest, and what do you change by hand?

APA 7 for the author-date documents, IEEE or Vancouver for the numbered ones. EdCitation builds six styles (APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver), not the SPS style, APA 6th or footnotes, so those are finished by hand.

| UoN document asks for | Start in EdCitation's | Then change by hand |
| --- | --- | --- |
| SPS author-date | [APA 7](https://edcitation.com/cite/apa) | "and" for "&", in the text too, with no comma before it in the list; no full stop after the year; drop the issue and the comma after the journal; bold the volume; hyphen in the page range; no DOI unless your supervisor wants one |
| Business, APA 6th | [APA 7](https://edcitation.com/cite/apa) | First citations as in the APA 6th table above; put the DOI after its label; add the city before a book's publisher; "Retrieved from" before a web address |
| Civil Engineering, APA 7th | [APA 7](https://edcitation.com/cite/apa) | Add pages the record lacks; lower title capitals the record kept; give the address and accessed date in the text for web sources |
| Engineering, numbered | [IEEE](https://edcitation.com/cite/ieee) | Check each journal abbreviation against the journal |
| MEME, Vancouver | [Vancouver](https://edcitation.com/cite/vancouver) | Ask your supervisor which version |
| Arts, MLA | [MLA 9](https://edcitation.com/cite/mla) | Ask which edition the reserve sheet follows |
| Footnotes or endnotes | Not built | Write them by hand from your department's sheet |

## How do you build a University of Nairobi reference list, step by step?

1. Find your document in the first table and note the style and edition. EdCitation's free [Check your paper](https://edcitation.com/check) reads a brief into a checklist, citation style included, each rule beside its sentence.
2. Build each entry in [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite) from its DOI, title, PubMed ID, ISBN or web address, in the closest style.
3. For a web page, correct the author, date and site in the form before the entry is built.
4. Make the changes in the table above, holding each entry against your document's example.
5. Paste the list into [Verify references](https://edcitation.com/verify-references), settle every "check this" at the source, and open any "could not check" page yourself.

## What did EdCitation return on sources a UoN student would cite?

[Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite) is the best place to start a UoN list, because it looks every source up in the publisher's record, or reads the web page itself, and never composes a reference; no chatbot can do that. The same kind of lookup found no record of the SPS slides' own journal example, below. Cite a source builds six styles, screens for retraction, and is free with no account. EdCitation never writes any part of a paper: it supplies the record behind each reference, and the reading, the argument and every sentence of your thesis stay yours. Our runs, on 2 October 2026:

### Cite a source on two DOIs and a government page

For 10.4314/ajmr.v32i2.8, APA 7 returned:

> Ng’ang’a, M., K’Obonyo, P., Muindi, F., & Kariuki, M. M. (2025). Performance management, organizational learning and operational efficiency in universities in Kenya. *African Journal of Management Research*, *32*(2). https://doi.org/10.4314/ajmr.v32i2.8

The apostrophes in Ng’ang’a and K’Obonyo came through; add the pages, 136–155, by hand. IEEE shortened the journal to "Afr. J. Man. Research", leaving "Research" whole: check it.

For 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.9b00922, APA 7 named all seven authors correctly and set the species name in italics, but kept the title's capitals on two runs: "Anti-inflammatory Flavanones and Flavones from Tephrosia linearis". Vancouver did the same. Lower them by hand for APA 7: Anti-inflammatory flavanones and flavones from *Tephrosia linearis* (Owor et al., 2020).

For the Central Bank of Kenya's monetary policy page, APA 7 first returned "Monetary policy. (n.d.). CBK. Retrieved October 2, 2026, from https://www.centralbank.go.ke/monetary-policy/", having read no author or date there. With the bank entered as author and the site left empty in the form, it returned:

> Central Bank of Kenya. (n.d.). *Monetary policy*. Retrieved October 2, 2026, from https://www.centralbank.go.ke/monetary-policy/

### Verify references on six entries

We pasted six entries into [Verify references](https://edcitation.com/verify-references), three copied from UoN documents exactly as printed:

- Owor and colleagues in the SPS form, with no DOI; WISMER and LUTH (1973), from the 2011 Engineering sample, capitals and all; and Fekete and Hall (2017), from the Civil Engineering template's samples: all verified, "Title, year and first author match a published record."
- Ng’ang’a and colleagues in APA 6th, with the "doi:" label: verified, "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches."
- The Central Bank of Kenya page: verified, "The page is at this address, and its title matches."
- Derese (2013), the SPS slides' own journal example: not found, "No publisher's or registry's record matches this reference."

Copy the SPS pattern, never its example entries. With the whole thesis ready, [References from a file](https://edcitation.com/tools/references-from-a-file), part of Pro at $8 a month (see [pricing](https://edcitation.com/pricing)), checks every reference and pairs each in-text citation with its entry.

## Quick questions

### Does the University of Nairobi use APA or Harvard?

Neither across the whole university. The School of Business asks for APA 6th and the Civil and Construction Engineering template for APA 7th; none of the UoN documents we read names Harvard.

### Which APA edition should a UoN MBA or MSc project use?

The sixth edition (2010), as the School of Business's MBA and MSc guidelines state. Ask your supervisor before switching to APA 7.

### What do the UoN Board of Postgraduate Studies guidelines require for citations?

Citations by author and date or by number in the text, and a reference list at the end. The submission regulations name no style.

### Does the University of Nairobi Library have a referencing guide?

We found none. It offers Zotero training videos, and its FAQ tells engineering students to ask which style their lecturer or supervisor expects.

### Can EdCitation build the SPS style or footnotes for a UoN thesis?

Not directly. EdCitation's [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite) builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver; start the SPS style from APA 7 and change it by hand, and write footnotes yourself.

## References

- American Psychological Association. (2020). *Guide to what’s new in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, seventh edition* [PDF]. APA Style. [https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/whats-new-7e-guide.pdf](https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/whats-new-7e-guide.pdf)
- Central Bank of Kenya. (n.d.). *Monetary policy*. Retrieved October 2, 2026, from [https://www.centralbank.go.ke/monetary-policy/](https://www.centralbank.go.ke/monetary-policy/)
- Ng’ang’a, M., K’Obonyo, P., Muindi, F., & Kariuki, M. M. (2025). Performance management, organizational learning and operational efficiency in universities in Kenya. *African Journal of Management Research, 32*(2), 136–155. [https://doi.org/10.4314/ajmr.v32i2.8](https://doi.org/10.4314/ajmr.v32i2.8)
- Owor, R. O., Bedane, K. G., Zühlke, S., Derese, S., Ong’amo, G. O., Ndakala, A., & Spiteller, M. (2020). Anti-inflammatory flavanones and flavones from *Tephrosia linearis*. *Journal of Natural Products, 83*(4), 996–1004. [https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jnatprod.9b00922](https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jnatprod.9b00922)
- University of Nairobi Department of Civil and Construction Engineering. (n.d.-a). *CCE thesis template* [Word document]. [https://app.box.com/s/pueg3bi14zicred6jqohdtu7zu9w8zf2](https://app.box.com/s/pueg3bi14zicred6jqohdtu7zu9w8zf2)
- University of Nairobi Department of Civil and Construction Engineering. (n.d.-b). *Thesis submission guidelines*. [https://civil.uonbi.ac.ke/thesis-submission](https://civil.uonbi.ac.ke/thesis-submission)
- University of Nairobi Faculty of Arts. (2012). *Research proposals, research papers and theses and projects: Format guidelines* [PDF]. [https://philosophy.uonbi.ac.ke/sites/default/files/chss/arts/philosophy/Guidelines%20to%20writing%20papers%20MARCH%202012_1.pdf](https://philosophy.uonbi.ac.ke/sites/default/files/chss/arts/philosophy/Guidelines%20to%20writing%20papers%20MARCH%202012_1.pdf)
- University of Nairobi Faculty of Arts Postgraduate Studies Committee. (n.d.). *Guidelines for project paper and thesis proposal writing* [PDF, archived copy]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20240703180800/https://arts.uonbi.ac.ke/sites/default/files/chss/arts/arts/print_pdf/Guidelines%20on%20Research%20Proposals.pdf](https://web.archive.org/web/20240703180800/https://arts.uonbi.ac.ke/sites/default/files/chss/arts/arts/print_pdf/Guidelines%20on%20Research%20Proposals.pdf)
- University of Nairobi Library. (n.d.-a). *Library FAQs*. University of Nairobi. [https://uonlibrary.uonbi.ac.ke/basic-page/library-faqs](https://uonlibrary.uonbi.ac.ke/basic-page/library-faqs)
- University of Nairobi Library. (n.d.-b). *Referencing & citation*. University of Nairobi. [https://uonlibrary.uonbi.ac.ke/basic-page/referencing-citation](https://uonlibrary.uonbi.ac.ke/basic-page/referencing-citation)
- University of Nairobi School of Business. (n.d.-a). *MBA/MSc final project guidelines* [PDF]. Graduate Business Studies. [https://business.uonbi.ac.ke/sites/default/files/2021-08/MBA.Msc_.%20Final%20Project%20Guidelines.pdf](https://business.uonbi.ac.ke/sites/default/files/2021-08/MBA.Msc_.%20Final%20Project%20Guidelines.pdf)
- University of Nairobi School of Business. (n.d.-b). *MBA/MSc guidelines on the research proposal* [PDF]. Graduate Business Studies. [https://business.uonbi.ac.ke/sites/default/files/2021-08/The%20Research%20Proposal.pdf](https://business.uonbi.ac.ke/sites/default/files/2021-08/The%20Research%20Proposal.pdf)
- University of Nairobi School of Engineering. (2011). *Guidelines for admission to Doctor of Philosophy and masters programmes and research proposal format* [PDF]. [https://ebe.uonbi.ac.ke/sites/default/files/cae/engineering/ebe/GUIDELINES%20FOR%20ADMISSION%20TO%20POST%20GRADUATE%20STUDIES-Approved%20by%20SoE-Final.pdf](https://ebe.uonbi.ac.ke/sites/default/files/cae/engineering/ebe/GUIDELINES%20FOR%20ADMISSION%20TO%20POST%20GRADUATE%20STUDIES-Approved%20by%20SoE-Final.pdf)
- University of Nairobi School of Physical Sciences Postgraduate Committee. (2020). *School of Physical Sciences (SPS) guidelines for dissertations/theses* [PDF]. Department of Chemistry. [https://chemistry.uonbi.ac.ke/sites/chemistry.uonbi.ac.ke/files/2020-07/Thesis%20guidelines%20for%20PHD%20%26%20MSC.pdf](https://chemistry.uonbi.ac.ke/sites/chemistry.uonbi.ac.ke/files/2020-07/Thesis%20guidelines%20for%20PHD%20%26%20MSC.pdf)