Harvard referencing
How to cite a report in Harvard referencing
Reports from governments, NGOs, and think tanks usually have a corporate author rather than a person, and often a report number that has to be preserved exactly.
THE FORMAT
A report in Harvard, at a glance
Organization (Year) Title of report. Report no. 00. Place: Publisher. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Halden Commission on Rural Transport (2021) Bus provision after deregulation: final report. HCRT Report 14. Edinburgh: Halden Commission. Available at: https://www.haldencommission.org/reports/14 (Accessed: 3 March 2024).
(Halden Commission on Rural Transport, 2021, p. 32)
In prose: The Halden Commission on Rural Transport (2021, p. 32) put the shortfall at eleven percent of scheduled mileage.
Halden Commission on Rural Transport (HCRT) (2021) Bus provision after deregulation: final report. HCRT Report 14. Edinburgh: Halden Commission.
In text: First mention: (Halden Commission on Rural Transport (HCRT), 2021, p. 32). Afterwards: (HCRT, 2021, p. 40).
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 report
Elements to collect
- Issuing organization, used as the author when no individual is named
- Year of publication
- Full title of the report
- Report or publication number, when there is one
- Publisher, when it differs from the author
- URL
Rules specific to this entry
- A corporate author sits in the author slot in normal word order and is not inverted — there is no given name to move behind a surname. Alphabetize by the first significant word of the name.
- Reproduce the report or series number exactly as printed, including any letters, and place it after the title where an edition would go.
- Most Harvard guides still repeat the organization as the publisher even when it is also the author. A few allow you to omit it; almost none allow “Author” as a substitute, which is an APA habit.
- Government reports often carry both a department and an agency. Lead with whichever appears as the issuing body on the title page, and keep that choice consistent across the list.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Harvard needs for a report: Issuing organization, used as the author when no individual is named; Year of publication; Full title of the report; Report or publication number, when there is one.
Build the reference list entry
Arrange those details in the Harvard order: Organization (Year) Title of report. Report no. 00. Place: Publisher. Available at: URL (Accessed: Day Month Year).
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as (Halden Commission on Rural Transport, 2021, p. 32) — or work the same reference into your sentence as The Halden Commission on Rural Transport (2021, p. 32) put the shortfall at eleven percent of scheduled mileage..
Check it against the exceptions
A corporate author sits in the author slot in normal word order and is not inverted — there is no given name to move behind a surname. Alphabetize by the first significant word of the name.
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 report in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Harvard and reports
What if the report 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 report?
Issuing organization, used as the author when no individual is named, Year of publication, Full title of the report, and the rest of the elements listed above. Reports from governments, NGOs, and think tanks usually have a corporate author rather than a person, and often a report number that has to be preserved exactly.
Is there anything unusual about a report in Harvard?
A corporate author sits in the author slot in normal word order and is not inverted — there is no given name to move behind a surname. Alphabetize by the first significant word of the name.
What else catches people out here?
Reproduce the report or series number exactly as printed, including any letters, and place it after the title where an edition would go.
Can I reformat this report 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.
