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Harvardauthor–date

How to cite a report in Harvard

Short answer

How do you cite a report in Harvard?

You need issuing organisation, year, report title, report number (if any), publisher, url. The reference list entry looks like this:

Students, O. F. (2025) Student outcomes and teaching excellence. Office for Students.

The matching in-text citation is (Students, 2025).

Step by step

Building the reference

Do it automatically

  1. Gather the details

    You need: Issuing organisation, Year, Report title, Report number (if any), Publisher, URL. Take them from the source itself, not from a database record, which is often incomplete.

  2. Order the elements

    Harvard is an author–date style, so the author and year come first. Follow the pattern in the example below exactly, including its punctuation.

  3. Add the in-text citation

    Every reference needs a matching in-text citation. In Harvard that is (Students, 2025). Missing or mismatched in-text citations are penalised more often than formatting slips.

  4. Check against your own guide

    Institutional variants exist, particularly in Harvard. Where your department's published guide differs from any generator, the department's guide wins.

What you need

Details to collect

  • Issuing organisation
  • Year
  • Report title
  • Report number (if any)
  • Publisher
  • URL

Watch out

Mistakes this pairing invites

  • Leaving the report number out when the organisation assigns one.
  • Citing a press release about a report rather than the report itself.
  • Using a personal author when the organisation is the corporate author.
  • There is no single Harvard authority — always use your institution's published guide.
  • Cite Them Right (the most common UK variant) uses single quotation marks around article titles.

Compare

The same report in all eight styles

  • Harvard

    This page

    Students, O. F. (2025) Student outcomes and teaching excellence. Office for Students.

  • APA 7

    Students, O. F. (2025). Student outcomes and teaching excellence. Office for Students. https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/publications/

  • MLA 9

    Students, Office for. Student Outcomes and Teaching Excellence. Office for Students, 2025.

  • Chicago 17

    Students, Office for. Student Outcomes and Teaching Excellence. Office for Students, 2025.

  • Vancouver

    Students OF. Student outcomes and teaching excellence. Office for Students; 2025.

  • OSCOLA

    Office for Students, Student Outcomes and Teaching Excellence (Office for Students 2025)

  • IEEE

    O. F. Students, Student Outcomes and Teaching Excellence, Office for Students, 2025.

  • AMA 11

    Students OF. Student outcomes and teaching excellence. Office for Students; 2025.

Frequently asked questions

How do you cite a report in Harvard?
Students, O. F. (2025) Student outcomes and teaching excellence. Office for Students. — that is the reference list entry. The matching in-text citation is (Students, 2025). You need issuing organisation, year, report title, report number (if any), publisher, url.
What details do I need to cite a report?
Issuing organisation, Year, Report title, Report number (if any), Publisher, URL. If a detail is genuinely unavailable, most styles have a defined substitute — for example 'n.d.' or 'no date' where no publication year exists — rather than simply omitting the element.
What is the in-text citation for a report in Harvard?
(Students, 2025). It appears in parentheses at the point the source is used, not only at the end of the paragraph.