This article provides access to a range of Harvard reference wizards, 37 at September 2009, for generating a bibliography, "Works Cited", references or citations to books, speeches, images, legal rulings, websites and many other sources of information using the Harvard style, author-date citation method; the legal rulings are not referenced using the Harvard system but are included because many students need to cite at least one legal citation. 

Over the past 10-15 years, there has been an enormous increase in the sources of information available to students; if you are an academic  just look at your own thesis and determine how many different citations you used.  If you graduated more than 10-years ago it is unlikely that you used more than 10-different reference types. The diversity of information sources that today's students encounter can create difficulties when it comes to correctly citing some sources, particular electronic sources, let alone judging the validity of the source. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that referencing causes so many problems across higher education wherever it is undertaken!

Following my experiences as a research supervisor, teacher, education manager and external examiner I decided that I would try to make referencing a little easier by creating a series of 'wizards'; these are forms in which information is entered, and if entered correctly, will  result in a correctly formatted reference. Hopefully through this facility, supervisors may avoid the tautology of citations with ISBN numbers, incorrect Mintel citations and web references!

There are two Harvard style reference generators that you can use on this site; the reference wizard which will provide a correctly formatted reference that you can either copy and paste into a reference list or export to "Word". Alternatively you may use the reference list writer which will provide a list of references arranged in date and alphabetical order. The latter requires registration; this can be as simple as using any two words, numbers or combinations thereof. However if you want to retrieve your list at a future time and forget your details you are advised to use an Email address!

To access the Harvard reference wizard click here.

If you want to produce a list of references in alphabetical and date order then you should use the Harvard Reference List Writer application.

A beta version of the Harvard Reference List writer is now available (October, 2009). This will work on the desktop of  a PC running on Windows XP, Windows Vista and other Windows operating systems. If there is sufficient demand I will make a Mac version. The application works well but with any beta version there are a number of 'tweaks' that will be required before the final version is released. I will post screen shots and offer the opportunity to download it at a nominal cost over the next few weeks.  If there is sufficient interest I will use the funding from this source to have the application professionally developed and purchasers of the beta version will get the finished version and all future updates for free. I would also welcome declarations of interest from any software companies who might also be interested in this project. Send me your views about the Desktop Reference List writer.

Note the Harvard system of referencing is not 'tightly' specified and some variation in the use of capital letters, italics, the use of parentheses and text styles does occur in different institutions and journals. Please check the 'house style' that is specified for your publication, thesis, dissertation or assignment before submitting your work.

Do you want to cite a reference source that is not available in the applications above? If so, please use this form to let me know. Most suggestions have been implemented!

If you note an error or problem in a reference citation please Email me at webmaster at dairyscience.info, replacing the "at" with a @ and I will fix.

If you find the applications useful please visit an advert or two or consider donating to the site. These simple actions will help to cover the running costs of the Dairy Science and Food Technology website.

How to cite this article

Mullan, W.M.A. (2007) . [On-line]. Available from: http://www.dairyscience.info/harvard-reference-generator.html . Accessed: 2 September, 2010.

There are a range of formulae that can be used to assess the readability of written text.  While these all have limitations, judicious use of several ‘readability' predictors can improve the clarity of writing of articles, theses, reports and assignments.

The software used here, an online readability calculator, will return the average words per sentence, Fog index, Flesch reading ease score, and Flesch-Kincaid grade level. These readability indicators may be of help in editing and developing your written work.

It is unclear how useful computer programmes are for analysing scientific writing since the language used tends to be complex. However, some studies have shown that the indicators derived using the software here do have value.