Which referencing style do UK universities use? Harvard to OSCOLA

UK universities do not share one referencing style. There is no national rule: each department sets its own, and the University of Essex says plainly that it uses seven styles, "set by each department". Harvard, most often the Cite Them Right version, covers more courses than any other, but law, history, medicine, psychology and engineering usually ask for something else. This guide is published by EdCitation, whose citation tools take each entry from the publisher's own record instead of composing it.

Everything below was read on 27 September 2026 in the universities' own library guides, policies and marking criteria: fifteen universities, each linked. We quote only what a page says, and where a page gives no figure we give none. The last section shows what EdCitation's free Cite a source and Verify references returned on real UK sources, faults included.

Which referencing style do UK universities use?

The one your department names. Library guides that list styles by department show the pattern: Harvard across business, social science and health; a subject style wherever a discipline has its own. London Metropolitan University supports four main styles and says most of its courses use Harvard; Imperial College London names Harvard and Vancouver as the two most common there (Imperial College London, n.d.); Manchester lists Harvard, MLA and Vancouver as commonly used.

Where two universities disagree

The same subject does not always get the same style. History is MHRA at Essex but Chicago at York. Mathematics is Vancouver at Essex and "AMS/LMS" at York. York's biology uses Harvard and Vancouver, adding that most taught module assessments require Harvard, and its medical school lists both. Essex even files sociology under Harvard and under Vancouver. The lesson is the one every guide gives: the module handbook outranks any list, this one included, and a module taken in another department may use that department's style.

What is Cite Them Right, and which Harvard do UK universities mean?

Cite Them Right is the Harvard version most UK university guides point to, published as a book and as a subscription website. The University of Staffordshire (2026) says it subscribes to Cite Them Right Online, which its students reach with their university login, and that its Harvard is "the Cite Them Right version", 13th edition. The University of Birmingham (2026) sends students to the same resource for detailed examples, cites the 2022 edition, and tells them to ask their lecturers whether to include the place of publication. Essex labels its Harvard and APA both "Cite Them Right".

So "Harvard" at a UK university usually means Cite Them Right, but not always the same edition, and some universities publish their own variant. EdCitation's Harvard style follows the 12th edition. The two small changes the 13th made, and the house variants such as Leeds Harvard, are set out in our Harvard referencing guide and in when to use Harvard referencing.

Which style do law, humanities, psychology, medicine and engineering use?

Each has a style of its own at most of the universities above, and each style has a publisher whose current edition decides.

OSCOLA in law

OSCOLA, the Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities, is the law style at Essex, York and London Met. Its fifth edition was published on 25 March 2026, edited by James Goudkamp, and the Oxford Faculty of Law puts the full text and a quick reference guide online without charge (University of Oxford Faculty of Law, 2026). Citations go in footnotes. The fifth edition adds sections on international law and on citing output from generative AI (Goudkamp, 2026). If your handbook still names the 2012 fourth edition, ask which one your markers expect.

MHRA in the humanities

The MHRA Style Guide is set for history at Essex, and for theatre and film at York alongside Harvard. Its fourth edition replaced the third in February 2024 and is open access under a Creative Commons licence (Modern Humanities Research Association, 2024b). It presents citation in notes and author-date "on an equal footing", so check which your department wants (Modern Humanities Research Association, 2024a).

APA 7 in psychology

Psychology uses APA at every university in the table that lists it, and Manchester says APA is used predominantly in the social sciences. Our APA 7 guide for psychology students covers the rules.

Vancouver in medicine and IEEE in engineering

Brighton and Sussex Medical School says it uses Vancouver; Liverpool's School of Medicine names the National Library of Medicine's Citing Medicine as the authoritative version; Manchester calls Vancouver the style most used in medical and clinical sciences. IEEE is the style of computer science and electronic engineering at Essex and York. See our Vancouver and IEEE guides.

EdCitation builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver. It does not build OSCOLA, MHRA or Chicago notes and bibliography: for those, follow the free guides above by hand.

What is the difference between a reference list and a bibliography in the UK?

A reference list holds only the works you cited; a bibliography adds what you read and did not cite. Oxford Brookes University (n.d.) and the University of Birmingham (2026) define them that way, and then part company: Brookes says you normally have one or the other, not both, while Birmingham says a course may want a reference list, a bibliography or both. Your brief settles it.

The footnote styles use "bibliography" differently again. OSCOLA asks for a bibliography only in longer works such as theses, lists secondary sources there (primary sources go in tables of cases and legislation), puts the surname first, and ends each entry without a full stop (Goudkamp, 2026). MHRA's bibliography also inverts the first name and drops the final full stop. Our guide to reference list, bibliography or works cited covers the other styles.

What does a 2:1 marker expect from your referencing?

What your module's marking criteria say, and the university-wide scale may say nothing. The University of Warwick (2025) calls 60 to 69 an upper second (2.1) and describes that band without mentioning referencing at all.

Where criteria do name it, the difference between bands is precision. The University of Edinburgh's School of Social and Political Science (n.d.) describes its bands like this:

For a dissertation in its 60 to 69% band, the same school expects referencing and writing "without major blemish". Neither Warwick nor Edinburgh states a share of the mark for referencing, and nor do we. Our guide to why you lost marks for referencing reads more criteria.

What do UK misconduct policies say about poor referencing?

They differ on where a careless reference stops being a mistake. Cranfield University's (2026) handbook says "Improper or incomplete referencing is plagiarism", intended or not. It also issues Poor Academic Practice Notices, not recorded as misconduct, where a student has misunderstood academic practice and the offence is unintentional; a student can receive only one. It permits AI-generated text in principle, if the student says what the tool did and references the content.

The University of Dundee (2022) defines plagiarism as "the unacknowledged use of another's work as if it were one's own", and says minor poor practice in referencing or quoting "need not necessarily" be treated as misconduct, but met with feedback and support. Read your own university's policy: the wording differs, and it is the one that applies to you.

How do you reference correctly at a UK university?

1. Find your style in the module handbook, or your library's list by department. A module from another department may use that department's style.
2. Note the version: which Harvard, which Cite Them Right edition, OSCOLA fourth or fifth.
3. Build each entry from its DOI, ISBN or web address in EdCitation's Cite a source if the style is one of its six; write OSCOLA, MHRA and Chicago notes by hand from their free guides.
4. Correct what the record gets wrong, above all a web page's title and author. Cite a source sets APA and Vancouver titles in sentence case and keeps names; glance at any name made of ordinary words.
5. Give the list the name your brief uses, reference list or bibliography, and include only what that name allows.
6. Run the whole list through Verify references, then resolve each entry marked "check this".
7. Read your marking criteria for what they say about referencing.

What did EdCitation return on UK sources?

EdCitation is the right tool for building and checking a UK reference list, because every entry starts from the publisher's record rather than being written. A chatbot cannot promise that. Give Cite a source a DOI, title, PubMed ID, ISBN or web address and it sets the entry in any of six styles, Harvard (Cite Them Right) and APA 7 among them, and screens the source for retraction. Neither tool needs an account or costs anything, and EdCitation writes no part of anyone's essay, report or dissertation. We ran four DOIs and one Oxford web page.

Cite a source on four DOIs and a web page

For 10.1191/1478088706qp063oa it returned, in Harvard:

Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) ‘Using thematic analysis in psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp. 77–101. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.

That is correct, and so were its APA 7 and Vancouver entries. For the PRISMA 2020 statement, 10.1136/bmj.n71, Harvard gave "BMJ, 372, article number n71", the 12th-edition form; under the 13th, write "article n71".

For a Modern Law Review article, 10.1111/1468-2230.12876, deposited in title case, APA set the title in sentence case, "The challenge of ‘factual hard cases’ for guilty plea regimes", as APA asks (American Psychological Association, 2022), in a rerun on 27 September 2026. For 10.1111/1468-2230.12917, online since 2 September 2024 but with no volume or pages in its record, Harvard added "[Preprint]", as the Cite Them Right style file does for an article with no volume or pages yet. It is the published article, online ahead of its issue: look for the issue on the journal's site, and follow your university's guide on how to mark it.

The Oxford Faculty of Law's news page on OSCOLA's fifth edition came back with its full headline, "Fifth edition of The Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities published", dated 25 March 2026, but with no author, so the Harvard entry opened with the title. Add the University of Oxford Faculty of Law as author in the form before the entry is built.

Verify references on six UK entries

Six Harvard entries for real works, one misdated on purpose, went into Verify references:

• Braun and Clarke with its DOI: verified, "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches."
• PRISMA without a DOI: verified, "Title, year and first author match a published record."
• The Helm article, which we dated 2023: "check this", "The work was published in 2024, not 2023". Right.
• Cite Them Right, 12th edition, 2022: verified, "Title, author and year match a library catalogue record."
• The MHRA's news page: verified, "The page is at this address, and its title matches."
• OSCOLA's fifth edition, 2026: "check this", pointing to a 2021 Cite Them Right Online page about OSCOLA. That is the wrong work, though "check this" was the honest verdict for a book too new for the records it reached.

No entry in this run was "could not check"; when one is, EdCitation says so and never reports it as "not found". To check a finished dissertation at once, the Pro plan at $8 a month brings References from a file, which pairs each in-text citation with its entry, and Mechanics QA for formatting; see pricing.

Quick questions

Do all UK universities use Harvard referencing?

No. Harvard covers the most courses, but law usually uses OSCOLA, psychology APA, medicine Vancouver and engineering IEEE, department by department.

Is Cite Them Right the same as Harvard?

Cite Them Right is a guide to several styles whose Harvard version is the one most UK universities adopt. Staffordshire uses its 13th edition; EdCitation's Harvard follows the 12th.

Can EdCitation build OSCOLA or MHRA references?

No. EdCitation's Cite a source covers Harvard, APA 7, Vancouver, IEEE, MLA 9 and Chicago 18 author-date; OSCOLA and MHRA entries are written by hand from their free guides.

Do I need a reference list or a bibliography?

Whichever your brief names. At Oxford Brookes and Birmingham, a reference list holds only cited works and a bibliography adds background reading.

Is bad referencing plagiarism at UK universities?

It depends on the university. Cranfield's handbook says improper or incomplete referencing is plagiarism; Dundee's code says minor poor practice need not be treated as misconduct.

References

• American Psychological Association. (2022). Sentence case capitalization. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/capitalization/sentence-case
• Brighton and Sussex Medical School. (n.d.). Guidance. BSMS Library. https://www.bsms.ac.uk/about/library/guidance.aspx
• Cranfield University. (2026). Senate handbook: Academic misconduct (Version 3.2) [PDF]. https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/-/media/files/corporate_documents/academicmisconduct.ashx
• Goudkamp, J. (Ed.). (2026). OSCOLA: The Oxford University standard for citation of legal authorities (5th ed.) [PDF]. Hart Publishing. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2026-03/OSCOLA%205.pdf
• Imperial College London. (n.d.). What is referencing? Library. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/admin-services/library/learning-support/reference-management/what-is-referencing/
• London Metropolitan University. (n.d.). Referencing. Library guides. https://libguides.londonmet.ac.uk/referencing
• Modern Humanities Research Association. (2024a). MHRA style guide (4th ed.). https://www.mhra.org.uk/style/
• Modern Humanities Research Association. (2024b, February 27). Take the fourth. https://www.mhra.org.uk/news/2024/02/27/take-the-fourth.html
• Oxford Brookes University. (n.d.). Reference list / bibliography. https://www.brookes.ac.uk/students/academic-development/online-resources/reference-list
• University of Birmingham. (2026). Harvard (author-date). Library Services. https://libguides.bham.ac.uk/c.php?g=713203&p=5156587
• University of Dundee. (2022). Academic misconduct by students code of practice. https://www.dundee.ac.uk/corporate-information/code-practice-academic-misconduct-students
• University of Edinburgh School of Social and Political Science. (n.d.). Marking criteria. https://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/students/undergraduate/your-studies/assessment-regulations/marking-descriptors
• University of Essex. (2026). Referencing styles. Skills at Library. https://library.essex.ac.uk/skillsatlibrary/referencing-styles
• University of Liverpool. (2026). Vancouver. Referencing, Library Guides. https://libguides.liverpool.ac.uk/referencing/vancouver
• University of Manchester. (2026). Other styles. Referencing guide. https://subjects.library.manchester.ac.uk/referencing/otherstyles
• University of Oxford Faculty of Law. (2026, March 25). Fifth edition of The Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities published. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/content/news/fifth-edition-oxford-university-standard-citation-legal-authorities-published
• University of Staffordshire. (2026). Harvard. RefZone. https://libguides.staffs.ac.uk/refzone/harvard
• University of Warwick. (2025). UG mark scale. Education Policy and Quality Team. https://warwick.ac.uk/services/aro/dar/quality/categories/examinations/marking/ug/
• University of York. (2026). Referencing style guides. Subject Guides. https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/referencing-style-guides