Harvard Referencing Guide: Web pages

Electronic references should contain the following elements:

AUTHOR(S) (Year) Title of document. [Type of resource] Organisation responsible (optional). Available from: web address [Accessed date].

If you are referencing an electronic journal article, newspaper article or book, use the standard referencing format for that item, as shown on the pages for Books, Journals and Newspapers.

Note: Dates are not always available for web pages. If this is the case use (n.d.) where n.d. represents no date so that the reader knows you have omitted this element.

The principles for citing online resources are the same as for other formats; use the author and date of publication in the text, then follow the convention as detailed for the type of source. The nature of web resources means that author names are often not available and dates can be very vague. You will therefore need to decide who is responsible for producing the web page and use them as the author; often this will be an organisation rather than a personal name. You should be able to find this information by following “about us” or “contact us” links.

If there is no author or organisation you can use the title of the web page. If there is no title use a truncated web address (you should consider whether this resource is suitable for academic work).