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Leeds Harvard: Generative artificial intelligence

Reference examples

It is important that you first check the requirements for your assessment and that you understand exactly what you are, and are not, allowed to use generative AI to do. Your assessment instructions should include this information, but you should check with your tutor if you are unsure.  

If you have used generative AI to assist you in creating your work, you should include an acknowledgement of this use, including the details of which AI tool you used, and how you used it (eg for idea generation, summarising notes, generating an image, etc). Find out how to word this acknowledgement.   

If you are including the output from a generative AI tool in your work, you should cite and reference it. If you directly copy and paste words from the AI output, you must put these in quotation marks to show they are a direct quote.  

Some generative AI tools provide a shareable link to the conversation or output. If this is available, you should include it.  

Examples:

Company. Year. Name of Generative AI (Version number if known). [Generative AI]. [Date accessed]. Available from: URL of specific output if available.  

OpenAI. 2024. ChatGPT (GPT-3.5). [Generative AI]. [Accessed 12 March 2024]. Available from: https://chat.openai.com/share/771e3e48-78a3-4c5f-9083-d179149040b3  

Microsoft. 2024. Copilot. [Generative AI]. [Accessed 12 March 2024]. 

See also: Image.

Citation examples

Author and date

When the author name is not mentioned in the text, the citation consists of the author’s name and the year of publication in brackets.

Example:

It was emphasised that citations in the text should be consistent (Jones, 2017).

If you have already named the author in the text, only the publication year needs to be mentioned in brackets.

Example:

Jones (2017) emphasised that citations in the text should be consistent.

Three or more authors

If a source has three or more authors, the name of the first author should be given, followed by the phrase "et al."

Examples

It was emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent (Jones et al., 2017).

Jones et al. (2017) emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent.

Ibid.

Leeds Harvard does not use ibid to refer to previously cited items. If you are citing the same item twice in a row (i.e. you do not cite any other items in the text between the two citations) you must write the full citation again. As usual, if you are directly quoting or paraphrasing specific ideas, you should include a page number (if there is one). 

Example:

Jones et al. (2017, p.24) emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent and argued that referencing is a key part of academic integrity (2017, p.27). Furthermore, having a broad range of references in a text is an indicator of the breadth of a scholar's reading and research (Jones et al., 2017, p.14).

Corporate author

If the item is produced by an organisation, treat the organisation as a "corporate author". This means you can use the name of the organisation instead of that of an individual author. This includes government departments, universities or companies. Cite the corporate author in the text the same way as you would an individual author.

Example:

According to a recent report, flu jabs are as important as travel vaccines (Department of Health, 2017).
 

When to include page numbers

You should include page numbers in your citation if you quote directly from the text, paraphrase specific ideas or explanations, or use an image, diagram, table, etc. from a source.

Example:

"It was emphasised that citations in a text should be consistent" (Jones, 2017, p.24).

When referencing a single page, you should use p. For a range of pages, use pp.

Example:

p.7 or pp.20-29.

If the page numbers are in Roman numerals, do not include p. before them.

Example:

(Amis, 1958, iv)

Common issues

When you're referencing with Leeds Harvard you may come across issues with missing details, multiple authors, edited books, references to another author's work or online items, to name a few. Here are some tips on how to deal with some common issues when using Leeds Harvard.

Skip straight to the issue that affects you: