When you submit work for assessment it is important that you credit where the ideas and information you have used originated. This could be from books, journals, websites, lectures, television programmes and so on. Most of the courses at the University of the Highlands and Islands require you to use the system called Harvard Referencing.
It also demonstrates to your lecturer that you have carried out background reading and have a thorough understanding of the issues being discussed. Anyone who reads your essay or assignment in future can then follow your work and find the references you used to construct your arguments. Perhaps most importantly, it shows you are not passing off someone else's work as your own. Plaigarism is covered in the second section of this guide.
Please jump down to Other referencing styles to see alternatives to Harvard used on History, Theology and Psychology degrees.
Harvard Referencing is a two-part system where you indicate briefly in the text of your assignment that you are using someone else’s idea (an in-text citation), and then provide a List of References at the end of your work, giving full details of everything you have cited. You need to do this not just when you quote directly, but also when you summarise or paraphrase ideas attributable to someone else.
Important : Legacy Refworks is being withdrawn by the supplier in June 2023. In order to minimise any potential disruption to users workflows, users of Legacy RefWorks should create an account in New RefWorks and transfer their references from Legacy to New RefWorks. See the instructions here. Please do this by 20th January 2023.
We have learnt from feedback that this is an area of study that causes students a lot of stress. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools and information to help.
The full UHI Harvard referencing guide can be downloaded as a PDF. This is the comprehensive guide for all courses that use the UHI referencing system. Some courses, including History (see box below), may use alternative systems, the details of which should be confirmed with your lecturer.
Full UHI Harvard referencing guide (English version):
Along with the full UHI referencing guide, there are other materials and tools to help:
These videos provides a useful introduction to the Refworks service.
The form of Referencing is used in all History and Scottish History Courses is found below. Please speak to your tutor if you are unsure which method applies to your module.
Please note that students at Highland Theological College should refer to the Referencing at HTC tab in this guide, as the system differs from UHI Harvard.
Psychology courses use APA style from 1st year and it is also used in the MSc conversion course. The guide produced by the Psychology Department is available in the Psychology Cybercafe on Brightspace, and in each of the psychology modules. Further details can be found on the American Psychological Association's extensive website APA Style.