UNSW Sydney accepts two referencing styles: APA and its own version of Harvard. The Academic Skills referencing page calls them "the two accepted referencing frameworks", links a guide to each, and adds a footnote system and two Vancouver guides for medicine. Your course outline or school style guide decides which applies.
EdCitation is not affiliated with UNSW Sydney; this follows its public library guide, checked on 2 October 2026. Every UNSW rule below was read that day on UNSW's own pages. For the national picture, see referencing at Australian universities.
EdCitation publishes this guide. Its last section quotes what the free Cite a source and Verify references returned on UNSW-style entries.
Which referencing style does UNSW use?
APA or UNSW Harvard, whichever your course outline names. UNSW Academic Skills (n.d.-d) adds that many faculties and schools have style guides of their own and that your lecturer or tutor's preference comes first.
| Style | Where UNSW's pages place it | Page it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| APA, 7th edition | One of the two accepted styles; recommended by the Medicine Program; on UNSW Canberra's list | UNSW Academic Skills (n.d.-a, n.d.-c); UNSW Medicine (n.d.); UNSW Canberra (n.d.) |
| UNSW Harvard | The other accepted style; the Business School's choice when in doubt; on UNSW Canberra's list | UNSW Academic Skills (n.d.-d); UNSW Business School (n.d.-b); UNSW Canberra (n.d.) |
| Footnotes and bibliography | Academic Skills' notes system, which UNSW Canberra calls Oxford | UNSW Academic Skills (n.d.-b); UNSW Canberra (n.d.) |
| AGLC4 | Law, and the Business School's School of Business Law and Taxation | UNSW Library (2026a); UNSW Business School (n.d.-b) |
| Vancouver | Suggested for medicine and public health, linking an AMA-based guide and the NLM's | UNSW Academic Skills (n.d.-c) |
| Chicago notes, IEEE, MLA, ACS | UNSW Canberra's list, with IEEE and MLA through other universities' guides | UNSW Canberra (n.d.) |
What the faculty and campus pages add
- Business School. Its introduction to referencing says the School of Business Law and Taxation requires legal footnotes, the other schools prefer in-text referencing, and many lecturers accept any major style used consistently; when unsure, use Harvard (UNSW Business School, n.d.-b). Its Harvard PDF, which still names the Australian School of Business, is another variant: initials keep their full stops, the access date is "viewed", and four or more authors are all named at the first citation (UNSW Business School, n.d.-a). If a Business School course names Harvard, ask which version.
- Medicine. UNSW Medicine (n.d.) recommends APA for the Medicine Program's Phase 1 assignments, while the Academic Skills page suggests Vancouver for medicine and public health. The course outline settles it.
- Law. UNSW Library (2026a) calls AGLC4 the standard citation style in Australian law schools.
UNSW's engineering writing site would not open on 2 October 2026, so engineering is left out.
What are UNSW Harvard's rules?
UNSW Harvard modifies the author-date system of the 2002 Style manual for authors, editors and printers, 6th edition, and where that manual has no example, it falls back on APA (UNSW Academic Skills, n.d.-d). It is not the Cite Them Right Harvard, the version EdCitation builds; our Harvard referencing guide covers that one.
In the text
- Author, year and, when the idea sits on a particular page or is quoted, the page: (Karskens 1997, p. 23). No comma between name and year.
- One to three authors are all named, joined by "&" in brackets and "and" in a sentence: (Gerster & Basset 1987), Gerster and Basset (1987).
- Four or more: the first surname and et al.: (Leeder et al. 1996).
- ABS statistics: the full name the first time, then "ABS".
- Online articles without pages: section and paragraph, (Morris 2004, sec. 3, par. 2).
- Emails and conversations: (B Daly 1994, pers. comm., 7 Aug.), usually with nothing in the list.
In the reference list
- Alphabetical by surname, with hanging indents and titles in italics.
- Initials without full stops: Karskens, G; Leeder, SR. Every author is listed, never et al., with "&" before the last.
- The year straight after the names, without brackets, then a comma.
- Books: title in italics with minimal capitals, an edition as "2nd edn", then publisher and place: Oxford University Press, Melbourne.
- Articles: title in single quotation marks with minimal capitals, the journal in italics with full capitals, then "vol. 28, no. 3", the pages and the DOI written "DOI:10.1207/s15326985ep2803_5".
- Web pages: the person or organisation, the year created or last revised, the title in italics, the sponsor, "accessed" with the day you viewed it, and the address in pointed brackets. "n.d." when there is no date.
- A thesis title takes quotation marks, not italics.
Where UNSW's own examples slip
Copy the pattern, not every detail. The Gerster and Basset book is cited as 1987 in the text and listed as 1991, and the APA guide's list spells the second author Bassett. UNSW's Kozulin example ends at page 265; the publisher's record in Crossref gives 253–264. One e-book example writes "doi: 10.1036/007142363X" where the journal pattern has "DOI:". Take years, spellings and pages from the source.
How do you write a reference list in UNSW Harvard?
Three real sources a UNSW student might cite: a three-author article, a five-author article and an Australian Bureau of Statistics page. In the text:
Marsden, Carroll and Neill (2005) report a self-report study of dishonest academic behaviour among Australian university students. Predictors of depression and anxiety in the same population were examined by Farrer et al. (2016). The March 2026 population figures come from the national statistics agency (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2026); later citations read (ABS 2026).
Inside brackets, the first becomes (Marsden, Carroll & Neill 2005) and the second (Farrer et al. 2016). Under "References":
Australian Bureau of Statistics 2026, National, state and territory population, March 2026, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra, accessed 2 October 2026, <https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and-territory-population/mar-2026>.
Farrer, LM, Gulliver, A, Bennett, K, Fassnacht, DB & Griffiths, KM 2016, 'Demographic and psychosocial predictors of major depression and generalised anxiety disorder in Australian university students', BMC Psychiatry, vol. 16, no. 1, article 241, DOI:10.1186/s12888-016-0961-z.
Marsden, H, Carroll, M & Neill, JT 2005, 'Who cheats at university? A self-report study of dishonest academic behaviours in a sample of Australian university students', Australian Journal of Psychology, vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 1-10, DOI:10.1080/00049530412331283426.
The ABS page shows a release date of 17 September 2026 and no person, so the agency is the author; we cite the March 2026 release's own address, since "latest-release" changes every quarter. UNSW's guide has no pattern for an article number, so "article 241" sits where pages would go.
What are UNSW's APA rules?
UNSW's APA guide follows the Publication manual, 7th edition, and points to the APA Style website for anything it does not show (UNSW Academic Skills, n.d.-a). What it spells out:
- Page numbers are required for quotations; for a paraphrase they help but are not essential, so ask your lecturer.
- Three or more authors take et al. in the text, so Marsden, Carroll and Neill become (Marsden et al., 2005). The list names every author.
- "References" starts a new page, centred, with hanging indents, and every entry is cited in the text.
- Sentence case for article and book titles, the journal and volume in italics, a book's edition in brackets after the title, and no place of publication.
- The DOI as https://doi.org/10.xxxx, with no full stop after it.
Where UNSW's APA examples disagree
Most UNSW examples drop the comma before "&" (Gerster, R. & Bassett, J.), a few keep it, and the APA Style site keeps it even with two authors (American Psychological Association, n.d.): keep it. Older examples put "Retrieved from" before a web address, while APA uses "Retrieved" only with a retrieval date, for a page designed to change (American Psychological Association, 2026); UNSW's 2023 to 2025 examples leave it out. The Tucker example ends its DOI with a full stop, against the guide's own rule. One book's DOI runs through the Library's proxy address; use https://doi.org/ instead. UNSW's organisation example repeats the author as the site name, which APA omits.
A worked example in UNSW's APA
The same sources, exactly as EdCitation's APA 7 returned them. In the text: (Marsden et al., 2005), Farrer et al. (2016) and (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2026).
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2026, September 17). National, state and territory population, March 2026. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/national-state-and-territory-population/mar-2026
Farrer, L. M., Gulliver, A., Bennett, K., Fassnacht, D. B., & Griffiths, K. M. (2016). Demographic and psychosocial predictors of major depression and generalised anxiety disorder in Australian university students. BMC Psychiatry, 16(1), Article 241. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-016-0961-z
Marsden, H., Carroll, M., & Neill, J. T. (2005). Who cheats at university? A self-report study of dishonest academic behaviours in a sample of Australian university students. Australian Journal of Psychology, 57(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/00049530412331283426
Which EdCitation style is closest, and what do you change by hand?
Both of UNSW's accepted styles have a close EdCitation style to start from. APA needs almost nothing; UNSW Harvard needs punctuation changes on every entry.
| UNSW style | Build it in | Change by hand |
|---|---|---|
| APA 7 | EdCitation's APA 7 | Restore capitals on names the record lowers, and lower any it keeps; add an end page when the record has only the first. |
| UNSW Harvard | EdCitation's Harvard | Initials without full stops; "&" before the last author; year without brackets, then a comma; every author in place of et al.; minimal capitals in titles; "57(1), pp. 1–10" to "vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 1-10"; "Available at: https://doi.org/…" to "DOI:10.…"; for web pages, "accessed 2 October 2026, <address>" in place of "Available at: … (Accessed: …)". In the text, no comma before the year and "&" inside brackets. |
| Vancouver, IEEE, MLA 9 | Vancouver, IEEE, MLA 9 | Compare with the guide your course names; UNSW links two Vancouver versions. |
| Footnotes and bibliography, Chicago notes, AGLC4, ACS | Not built | EdCitation does not build these: write them from UNSW's or the AGLC4 guide. |
Building a UNSW list, step by step
- Find the style in your course outline, and for Harvard, which version.
- Look each source up by DOI or web address in EdCitation's Cite a source and choose APA 7 or Harvard.
- For a web page, fill in the author and the date the page shows before the entry is built.
- Make the hand changes in the table, with UNSW's patterns beside you.
- Paste the finished list into Verify references and settle every "check this" at the source.
What did EdCitation return on UNSW sources?
Cite a source is the best place to start a UNSW list because it never writes a reference: it looks the source up in the publisher's record, lays it out in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE or Vancouver, and screens it for retraction. A chatbot cannot show where its entry came from; every entry below can. It is free, with no account. EdCitation never writes any part of a student's paper: the reading, the argument and every sentence stay yours, and what it adds is the record behind each reference. We ran four DOIs and an ABS page on 2 October 2026.
Cite a source on four articles and an ABS page
For 10.1080/00049530412331283426, APA 7 gave the Marsden entry shown above, word for word. Harvard returned Cite Them Right's form, which the table converts to UNSW's:
Marsden, H., Carroll, M. and Neill, J.T. (2005) ‘Who cheats at university? A self-report study of dishonest academic behaviours in a sample of Australian university students’, Australian Journal of Psychology, 57(1), pp. 1–10. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00049530412331283426.
Its in-text citation was "(Marsden, Carroll and Neill, 2005)". For Farrer's article, Harvard opened "Farrer, L.M. et al. (2016)": write all five names.
For UNSW's own APA example, 10.2307/3052637, APA gave "Nobody’s sweethearts: Gender, race, jazz, and the darlings of rhythm" and "16(3), 255". The Darlings of Rhythm is a band's name, as UNSW's example shows it, and the record holds only the first page; UNSW gives 255-288. Restore both by hand. For 10.1007/bf03376591, Karskens on The Rocks, APA kept "Revisiting the Worldview" and lowered "Sydney’s rocks neighborhood": lower "Worldview", capitalise "Rocks".
For the ABS release page, nothing named an author or date: APA began "National, state and territory population, March 2026. (n.d.)" and Harvard wrote "(no date)". With the agency and 17 September 2026 entered in the form, APA gave the worked example's entry, without the repeated site name.
Verify references on UNSW's own examples
We pasted seven entries, four copied from UNSW's guides and three from our UNSW Harvard example. Verify references answered:
- UNSW's Kozulin (Harvard) and Tucker (APA) examples, and our Marsden and Farrer entries in UNSW Harvard: verified, "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches."
- UNSW's Karskens 2003a example, which gives only the journal's home page: verified, "Title, year and first author match a published record." The record carries DOI 10.1007/bf03376591: add it.
- UNSW's book example with the proxy address: verified on its DOI. The record names the editors as "Yu, F.-L. T., & Kwan, D. S. (Eds.)", where UNSW writes "Fu-Lai, T. Y. & Kwan, D. S.": the verdict did not mention names, so check them yourself.
- Our ABS entry in UNSW Harvard: "check this", "The address works, but the page there has a different title. Check it is the page meant." It is the right page. Pasted again with its title in quotation marks, and in APA form, it came back verified: "The page is at this address, and its title matches."
UNSW Library (2026b) puts it plainly: whatever tool you use, checking references before you submit is your responsibility. For a whole assignment, References from a file, part of Pro at $8 a month, checks every reference and matches every in-text citation to the list; see pricing.
Quick questions
Does UNSW use Harvard or APA referencing?
Both. UNSW Sydney accepts APA 7 and its own Harvard, and the course outline names the one to use; law uses AGLC4.
Is UNSW Harvard the same as Cite Them Right Harvard?
No. UNSW Harvard follows the 2002 Style manual: no brackets round the year, initials without full stops, every author listed and DOI:10.xxx, not Cite Them Right's (2005) and "Available at:".
When does et al. start in UNSW referencing?
From four authors in UNSW Harvard and from three in UNSW's APA, in the text only. Both list every author in the reference list.
Can EdCitation build AGLC4 or footnotes for UNSW?
No. EdCitation's Cite a source builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver; AGLC4, Chicago notes and UNSW's footnote system are written by hand.
Does EdCitation write any part of my assignment?
No. EdCitation looks references up and checks them against the publisher's record; the ideas, the argument and every sentence remain the student's own work.
References
- American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Elements of reference list entries. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/elements-list-entry
- American Psychological Association. (2026). Webpage on a website references. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/webpage-website-references
- UNSW Academic Skills. (n.d.-a). APA referencing. UNSW Sydney. https://www.unsw.edu.au/student/managing-your-studies/academic-skills-support/toolkit/referencing/apa
- UNSW Academic Skills. (n.d.-b). Bibliography & footnote referencing system. UNSW Sydney. https://www.unsw.edu.au/student/managing-your-studies/academic-skills-support/toolkit/referencing/bibliography
- UNSW Academic Skills. (n.d.-c). Referencing. UNSW Sydney. https://www.unsw.edu.au/student/managing-your-studies/academic-skills-support/toolkit/referencing
- UNSW Academic Skills. (n.d.-d). UNSW's Harvard referencing guide. UNSW Sydney. https://www.unsw.edu.au/student/managing-your-studies/academic-skills-support/toolkit/referencing/harvard
- UNSW Business School. (n.d.-a). Business School Harvard referencing guide [PDF]. UNSW Sydney. https://www.unsw.edu.au/business/sites/default/files/documents/Harvardreferenceguide.pdf
- UNSW Business School. (n.d.-b). Business School introduction to referencing [PDF]. UNSW Sydney. https://www.unsw.edu.au/business/sites/default/files/documents/referencing.pdf
- UNSW Canberra. (n.d.). Referencing and citations. Academy Library. https://www.unsw.edu.au/canberra/library/support/referencing-and-citations
- UNSW Library. (2026a). AGLC 4. Searching in Law. https://subjectguides.library.unsw.edu.au/law/aglc4
- UNSW Library. (2026b). Keeping track of references. Library search skills. https://subjectguides.library.unsw.edu.au/search-skills/references
- UNSW Medicine. (n.d.). Citation standards. Medicine Program. https://medprogram.med.unsw.edu.au/citation-standards