How to cite a website in OSCOLA
A web page or online article. Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities. Required in UK law.
Quick answer
To cite a website in OSCOLA, include the author(s), year, title, and container or publisher details. A concrete example is below.
Example
Purdue Online Writing Lab, 'What is a citation?' (2024) https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/using_research/index.html
This example is rendered with the official CSL definition for OSCOLA. 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 website, OSCOLA expects these fields at minimum:
- Author or organization
- Year of publication
- Page title
- Website / organization name
- URL
- Access date (some styles)
Common mistakes
- Citing a dynamic page without an access date — crucial because the content can change.
- Using the URL as the title. The title is the page heading; the URL is a separate field.
- 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).
Cite every reference in OSCOLA — at once
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Last updated: 5 May 2026