How to cite a book chapter in Harvard
A chapter from an edited book, with its own authors. Author-date style widely used in UK universities. Many local variants exist.
Quick answer
To cite a book chapter in Harvard, include the author(s), year, title, and container or publisher details. A concrete example is below.
Example
Locke, E.A. and Latham, G.P. (2015) “A theory of goal setting and task performance,” in Miner, J.B. (ed.) Organizational Behavior: Essential Theories of Motivation and Leadership. Routledge, pp. 122–141.
This example is rendered with the official CSL definition for Harvard. For the exact style required by your journal, paste your references into DEEPNOTIS and pick that style from the dropdown — the app covers 2,800+ variants.
What you need
For a book chapter, Harvard expects these fields at minimum:
- Chapter author(s)
- Year
- Chapter title
- Book editor(s)
- Book title
- Page range of the chapter
- Publisher
Common mistakes
- Mixing bibliography formatting with in-text citation rules. Reference-list entries and in-text cites follow different patterns — use the style's official guide for both.
- Forgetting the DOI. When a DOI exists, most styles now require it (usually as a full https://doi.org/… URL).
- Inconsistent capitalization. APA uses sentence case for titles; MLA and Chicago use title case. Mixing them is the single most common style error.
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Last updated: 5 May 2026