Harvard referencing
How to cite a preprint article in Harvard referencing
Preprints carry DOIs but lack journal volumes and page numbers; styles require explicit repository names (arXiv, bioRxiv) and clear preprint designation.
THE FORMAT
A preprint article in Harvard, at a glance
Author, A. (Year) ‘Title of article’, Repository Name [Preprint]. Available at: DOI or URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
O’Connor, S. and Davies, R. (2024) ‘Epidemiological dynamics of respiratory syncytial virus in urban centers’, medRxiv [Preprint]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.01.18.24301490 (Accessed: 22 February 2024).
(O’Connor and Davies, 2024)
In prose: O’Connor and Davies (2024) modeled urban transmission dynamics.
Copyeditor formats APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE automatically — cite a source once and the reference list builds itself. See how citations work .
BEFORE YOU FORMAT
What Harvard needs from a preprint article
Elements to collect
- Author or authors
- Year and month of posting
- Article title
- Preprint repository name (e.g. arXiv, bioRxiv)
- DOI or persistent repository URL
Rules specific to this entry
- Preprints in Harvard style take the [Preprint] medium descriptor.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Harvard needs for a preprint article: Author or authors; Year and month of posting; Article title; Preprint repository name (e.g. arXiv, bioRxiv).
Build the reference list entry
Arrange those details in the Harvard order: Author, A. (Year) ‘Title of article’, Repository Name [Preprint]. Available at: DOI or URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as (O’Connor and Davies, 2024) — or work the same reference into your sentence as O’Connor and Davies (2024) modeled urban transmission dynamics..
Check it against the exceptions
Preprints in Harvard style take the [Preprint] medium descriptor.
Harvard RULES
The conventions behind every Harvard entry
your institution’s Harvard style guide — Harvard has no single governing manual is the authority. Where a journal or department publishes its own house rules, those win — check your submission guidelines before the reference list is final.
The rules that apply across every source — author order, capitalization, how the reference list is sorted, and where Harvard entries most often go wrong — are collected on the Harvard referencing guide.
The same preprint article in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Harvard and preprints
What if the preprint article has no author?
Move the title into the author position and alphabetize by the first significant word of that title — ignoring an initial “A”, “An” or “The”. In the text, use a shortened form of the title where the author name would go.
What do I need before I can cite a preprint article?
Author or authors, Year and month of posting, Article title, and the rest of the elements listed above. Preprints carry DOIs but lack journal volumes and page numbers; styles require explicit repository names (arXiv, bioRxiv) and clear preprint designation.
Is there anything unusual about a preprint article in Harvard?
Preprints in Harvard style take the [Preprint] medium descriptor.
Can I reformat this preprint article in another style later?
By hand, you would retype the entry — the element order, punctuation and italics all differ between styles. In Copyeditor, sources are stored as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
Cite it once
and never reformat it again
Copyeditor keeps sources as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
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