You have read the book, marked the passage, and now only the reference is missing. That last step swallows more time than it should: the place of publication is nowhere on the title page, the year on the copyright page does not match the edition you borrowed, and two university guides give you two different patterns for the same Harvard style.
A book reference needs the author, the year, the title with its subtitle, the volume and edition where relevant, the publisher and, depending on the variant, the place of publication. In your text you add a short citation in brackets or a footnote, in the order and punctuation your school prescribes.
By the end of this guide you have a copy-ready pattern for Leeds Harvard, Cite Them Right and APA 7, you know which of the seven details your own variant needs, and you can check a finished reference list in one pass instead of entry by entry.
📌 Key takeaways
- A book reference is built from seven pieces of information.
- There is no single Harvard: Leeds keeps the place, Cite Them Right does not.
- APA 7 and Chicago 18 dropped the place of publication as well.
- A chapter in an edited collection is referenced with In.
- Add the DOI whenever the book has one, print or digital.
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What a book reference is made of
A full book reference is made of seven details: author, year, title and subtitle, volume, edition, publisher and place of publication. No style asks for all seven, but every style draws on the same list.
All seven sit inside the book, spread over two pages at the front. The title page carries the author, the title, the subtitle and the publisher. The reverse of it, the copyright page, carries the edition, the year, the place of publication and the ISBN. The cover is not a source, because publishers shorten titles and drop names there.
| Detail | Where to find it | If it is missing |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Title page, at the top | Use the organisation as a corporate author |
| Year | Copyright page | UK Harvard guides write "no date" in full |
| Title and subtitle | Title page, never the cover | Without a title there is no reference |
| Volume | Title page or series page | Only needed for multi-volume works |
| Edition | Copyright page, above the ISBN | A first edition is never named |
| Publisher | Foot of the title page | UCL uses [no publisher] |
| Place of publication | Copyright page, next to the publisher | UCL uses [no place] |
The edition is the detail that goes missing most often. A new edition appears when the previous one sells out or when the content has been revised. Only in the second case do the page numbers shift, and that is exactly why the edition belongs in the reference: without it, your page 87 points at a different book.
Year of publication, copyright year or year of the edition?
The year in your reference is the year of the edition you actually held. Copyright pages often print two years next to each other, the year of first publication and the year of the current edition. The second one governs, because only that one matches your page numbers. For an unchanged reprint, the year of the underlying edition stays.
Guides often claim you should always take the copyright year and never the year of the edition. Both agree only when the book has been reprinted without changes. Every revised edition carries its own copyright year, and that is the one your reader needs. Copy the year of first publication instead and you date a 2024 edition to 1998.
Place of publication: when Harvard still wants it
Whether a book reference names the place of publication is not settled by the word Harvard. It is settled by the variant your school uses. Leeds Harvard still asks for it, Cite Them Right Harvard does not, and APA 7 dropped it altogether. Get that one decision right and the rest of the entry falls into place.
The pattern the University of Leeds gives its students runs "Family name, INITIAL(S). Year. Title. Edition (if not first edition). Place of publication: Publisher", and the library adds that the place is usually the main office of the publisher and sits on the copyright page near the front of the book.
APA dropped the publisher location with its 7th edition, published in October 2019 with a 2020 copyright, and the Chicago Manual of Style followed with its 18th edition in 2024. Reference a book in APA and name a city, and you are working from a template built for APA 6.
Chicago keeps one exception. For books published before 1900, its Citation Quick Guide still gives the city in place of the publisher, as in its Melville entry, which closes with "New York, 1851". For anything printed later, the publisher stands alone.
| Style | Place of publication | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Leeds Harvard | Yes | Place of publication: Publisher, with the year unbracketed |
| Cite Them Right Harvard | No | Publisher only, with the year in brackets |
| APA 7 | No | The publisher follows the title directly |
| Chicago 18 | Only before 1900 | City instead of publisher for older works |
Correct as of August 2026, subject to change.
Those first two rows are the ones that catch students out, because the two most widely used British Harvard variants disagree with each other. The Leeds Harvard book examples keep the city and give "Finch, E. and Fafinski, S. 2015. Legal skills. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press". The Cite Them Right style sheet issued by Newcastle University Library gives the book pattern as "Surname, Initial. (Year of publication) Title. Edition (if not the first). Publisher", with no place at all. Both are current, and both are British.
Where your variant does want the place, take it from the copyright page, usually on the same line as the publisher. If the book names several cities, use the first one and keep that habit for every entry in your list. If no place is given at all, mark the gap rather than guessing: the UCL Harvard guide on references with missing details uses [no place] and [no publisher] for exactly these cases.
Book reference examples for UK styles
The same example book runs through every version below: Anna Weber, "Doing empirical research: a guide for your dissertation", third edition, published in London by Example Press in 2024, cited from page 87.
One warning before the patterns. A referencing style is a closed system, not a pick and mix. Harvard and APA put a short citation in brackets in the running text, while MHRA and OSCOLA put the details in a footnote. Mix the two and you lose marks even when every single detail is right. Which style applies to you is set out in your module handbook, and the basics are covered in our guide to citing correctly.
Leeds Harvard
Leeds Harvard puts the year after the author without brackets, shortens the edition to "ed." and keeps the place of publication. Only the first word of the subtitle is capitalised. Page numbers appear as p.87 with no space, and as pp.20-29 for a range.
Reference list: Weber, A. 2024. Doing empirical research: a guide for your dissertation. 3rd ed. London: Example Press.
In the text: (Weber, 2024, p.87)
Cite Them Right Harvard
Cite Them Right is the guide most UK libraries hand out, now in its 13th edition of 2025. Its book pattern runs "Surname, Initial. (Year of publication) Title. Edition (if not the first). Publisher", so the year goes in brackets and no place of publication appears at all. The worked example in the style sheet, "Grix, J. and Watkins, G. (2010) Information skills: finding and using the right resources. Palgrave Macmillan", names no city either. Cite Them Right also shortens the edition to "edn." rather than the "ed." Leeds uses.
Reference list: Weber, A. (2024) Doing empirical research: a guide for your dissertation. 3rd edn. Example Press.
In the text: (Weber, 2024, p. 87)
APA 7
APA is the usual style in psychology and across much of the social sciences. Author and year come first, the title is in italics with a capital after the colon, the edition sits in brackets after the title, and the publisher closes the entry with no city in front of it.
Reference list: Weber, A. (2024). Doing empirical research: A guide for your dissertation (3rd ed.). Example Press.
In the text: (Weber, 2024, p. 87)
Footnote styles: MHRA and OSCOLA
Two UK footnote styles turn up often enough to be worth knowing about. Law schools use OSCOLA, published by the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford and now in its 5th edition. History, English and music departments often use MHRA, whose style guide reached its 4th edition in 2024. Both give the full details in a footnote at the first mention and a short form afterwards, and both close the work with a bibliography. Check your school's guidance before you set up a reference manager, because switching styles halfway through a dissertation is slow work.
Why two Harvard references can both be right
Harvard is a family of house styles rather than one rulebook, which is why Leeds calls its version Leeds Harvard rather than Harvard. Put the same book through the two variants above and they part company three times:
- Leeds Harvard: Weber, A. 2024. Doing empirical research: a guide for your dissertation. 3rd ed. London: Example Press.
- Cite Them Right Harvard: Weber, A. (2024) Doing empirical research: a guide for your dissertation. 3rd edn. Example Press.
2024 against (2024), "ed." against "edn.", and a place of publication against none. The title is capitalised the same way in both, with only the first word of the subtitle in upper case. Neither version is wrong in itself. The wrong one is the one your school does not use, so pick your variant once, note it at the top of your working document, and keep it for the whole reference list. Our article on the Harvard citation style works through the variants in more detail.
Whole book, edited collection or a single chapter?
A chapter in an edited collection is not referenced like a whole book. The chapter author comes first, then the chapter title, then the word In, then the editors and the book itself. The rule behind it is simple: reference the smallest unit you actually read.
Three things look alike on the shelf. A monograph is one continuous text by the same authors. An edited collection puts the editors in the author position, marked ed. or eds. A chapter in an edited collection has its own author, its own title and its own page range, and that is what goes at the front of your entry.
| Case | How to recognise it | What goes first |
|---|---|---|
| Monograph | One continuous text by the same authors | The author of the book |
| Edited collection | Title page names editors instead of authors | The editors, marked ed. or eds |
| Chapter in a collection | Own author, own title, own page range | The author of the chapter |
Leeds Harvard writes an edited book as "Crandell, K.A. ed. 1999. The evolution of HIV. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press", with the marker ed. straight after the initials rather than in brackets. Cite Them Right puts it in brackets instead. The chapter itself gets one entry in your list, and the collection it sits in gets a second entry only when you also refer to the volume as a whole somewhere in your text.
⚠️ Watch out
Reference list and bibliography are not the same thing, even though the words get swapped around. A reference list holds only the works you cited. A bibliography holds everything you read, cited or not. Your module handbook and the marking criteria say which one is expected, and handing in the wrong one costs marks that have nothing to do with your argument.
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Ebooks, PDFs and DOIs
An ebook is referenced like the printed book, with the DOI added when the book has one. The database you downloaded it from does not belong in the entry, and you do not need a date of access, because a book does not change after publication.
A DOI is a permanent identifier that keeps pointing at a document even when the publisher moves the address. APA 7 wants it as a full link in the form https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-92529-5, with no DOI label in front of it and no "Retrieved from". The rule holds for print books too: if the book has a DOI, it goes in. ISBNs are not used in APA, and UK Harvard guides leave them out as well.
- PDF with the same pagination as print: reference it as the printed book, without a URL.
- Ebook without fixed page numbers: give the chapter or section instead of a page.
- Ebook from a subscription database with no DOI: the entry ends after the publisher.
- Book published openly online: add the URL of the publisher page after the publisher.
- Digital pagination that differs from print: reference the version you actually read.
The last case is worth a second look, because it turns up in dissertations every year. Where the digital pagination differs from the printed pagination, the two count as separate publications as far as your reference list is concerned. Reference the version you had in front of you, and do not mix the two in one list. For sources that exist only online, our guide to citing internet sources covers the extra fields you need.
Special cases: several authors, no author, no date, translations
Special cases follow one rule: what is missing gets replaced or marked, never guessed. An estimated year in a reference is a mistake. An honest marker such as "no date" is not.
Six cases cover almost everything a dissertation throws at you. The markers differ between styles, so each case below says which style does what.
- Two authors: Leeds Harvard joins the names with "and", while APA uses an ampersand in the reference list.
- Three or more authors: Leeds Harvard gives the first name followed by "et al." in the citation, while APA 7 lists up to 20 names in the reference list.
- No author: where an organisation produced the book, Leeds Harvard treats it as a corporate author and puts it in the author position, government departments and universities included.
- No date: UK Harvard guides spell out "no date" rather than shortening it to n.d., and the marker appears in the in-text citation too.
- Translation: reference the version you read, add "Translated by" with the translator's initials and family name, and leave the translator out of the in-text citation.
- Volume in a series: Leeds Harvard puts the series title and volume number after the book title, as in "Attachment and loss series, Vol 3".
💡 Tip
If a detail is missing from the book itself, look the title up in Library Hub Discover, the Jisc service that brings together the catalogues of nearly 200 libraries across the UK and Ireland. Publisher, place, edition and year are recorded there in checked form, which is quicker than emailing your supervisor about a missing city.
Common mistakes when referencing books
Most of the marks lost on book references are not lost through ignorance. They are lost because a detail came off the wrong page. Four mistakes come up often enough to be worth a targeted check.
Each of the four takes minutes to fix if you check the reference list in one pass instead of entry by entry. How strictly your university treats formal errors is set out in your marking criteria, and what happens when a source is missing altogether is covered in our article on the plagiarism check.
Taking details from the cover instead of the title page
The cover of a book is a marketing surface, not a source. Publishers shorten titles there, drop subtitles and sometimes print one editor's name out of three. Copy that version and your entry matches no library catalogue, which makes it hard for a marker to check. Take the title from the title page and the numbers from the copyright page.
Mixing two Harvard variants in one reference list
Half a list with bracketed years and half without is the most visible error in a Harvard bibliography, and it usually happens when two templates get copied from two different university websites. The place of publication is the second tell, because Leeds Harvard keeps it and Cite Them Right does not. Decide on one variant, ideally the one your school publishes, then run a search for "edn." and "ed." and for a colon in front of the publisher to catch the strays.
Leaving out the edition
A missing edition sends your marker to the wrong book. Anyone who opens the first edition at your page number finds something else there. The edition sits on the copyright page, usually a line above the ISBN. Only a first edition goes unnamed, because it is the default case.
Naming a place of publication in an APA reference
A city in an APA entry almost always comes from a template built on APA 6. Plenty of guidance pages still show the old form years after the 7th edition arrived in 2019. Search your list once for the pattern "City: Publisher" and delete the city part wherever your school asks for APA 7.
Conclusion
Referencing a book depends less on knowing the rules than on where your details came from: the title page and the copyright page, not the cover and not an online shop. Settle first on the style your school requires, including which Harvard variant, then hold it across the whole reference list. Whether the place of publication belongs in the entry is the one question on which the styles genuinely disagree. Your school's guidance always outranks a website, this article included, and it is worth reading before you submit.
Which variant applies is not a matter of taste. Your module handbook names it, and where the handbook is silent the style guide your school publishes governs. If the two disagree, your supervisor decides. This article explains the mechanics of a reference, it does not replace that guidance.
What to read next
- Want the basics from the start? Citing correctly: the full guide
- Referencing a website or a PDF? Citing internet sources
- Working out your Harvard variant? The Harvard citation style
Missing your own data for your dissertation?
Figures from a survey you ran yourself are not referenced as an external source, because you describe them in your methodology chapter instead. With empirio.ai, an online survey tool from Germany, you can collect them free of charge. Our guide to creating a questionnaire shows how to build the survey first.
A book referenced in a footnote follows a different pattern. Our guide to the German citation style shows the full reference on first mention and the short reference after it.