Skip to Main Content

Life and Health Sciences Harvard Referencing Guidelines: Encyclopedias

Life and Health Sciences Harvard Referencing Guidelines

Encyclopedias

If an encyclopaedia entry has a named author then the format for a contribution in an edited book should be used with the addition of the encyclopaedia volume number.

The required elements for the reference are:

Contributing author’s Surname, INITIALS. (Year) Title of contribution. In: Surname, INITIALS. (editor of publication) ed./eds. Title of book, Volume number (if  there are separate volumes). Edition (if not the first). Place of publication: Publisher, page numbers of contribution.

Reference List

Example of the full reference at the end of your assignment:

Pande, H. and Cheskin, L.J. (2003) Obesity: etiology and diagnosis. In: Trugo, L.C. and Finglas, P. eds. Encyclopedia of food sciences and nutrition, Vol. 2.  2nd ed.  Amsterdam: Academic Press, 4220-4227.

In-text citation 

Example 1 - where the author's name occurs naturally in the sentence

Pande and Cheskin (2003) define obesity as...

In-text citation

Example 2 - where the author's name does not occur naturally in the sentence

Obesity is defined as... (Pande and Cheskin 2003). 

Other points to note

Points to note:

  • If no author or editor details are available reference as follows:

Short Title/Publisher. (Year) Title of contribution. In: Title of source Edition (if not the first). Place: Publisher, page numbers of contribution.

Mosby. (2009)  Myocardial infarction (MI). In: Mosby's dictionary of medicine, nursing and health professions.  8th ed. St.Louis: Mosby, 1238-1239.

A short title is an abbreviated title which can be used for the in-text citation and beginning of the reference rather than the full title.

  • If the material you are referencing is only published in electronic format:

Contributing author’s Surname, INITIALS. (Year) Title of contribution. In: Surname, INITIALS. (editor of publication) ed./eds. Title of book, Volume number (if  there are separate volumes). Edition (if not the first). Place of publication: Publisher, page numbers of contribution. Available at: URL [Accessed date].

Rolla, A.R. (2013) Eating disorders: anorexia nervosa. In: Cabellero, B., Allen, L. and Prentice, A. eds. Encyclopedia of human nutrition. 3rd ed. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Academic Press, 113-119. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123750839000830 [Accessed 28 August 2017].

  • Where no author or editor details available for electronic material use the Short Title / Publisher:

Oxford University Press. (2017) Magnetic resonance imaging. In: Oxford living dictionaries. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/magnetic_resonance_imaging. [Accessed 25 September 2017].