Cite a conference paper in Harvard
Conference papers need careful handling because a published proceedings paper is not the same thing as an unpublished presentation or slide deck. In Harvard (Cite Them Right 12), cite the paper title, the proceedings title, and the conference details when available. The publisher, page range, DOI, and location tell readers whether the work was archived, presented live, or formally published.
Harvard rules for a conference paper
- Author and year identify the paper, not the conference organiser.
- Paper title appears before the proceedings title.
- Use In plus proceedings editor and proceedings title when the volume names editors.
- Include conference name, location, and dates when supplied by the proceedings.
- Add page range, publisher, DOI, or URL as the final locator.
Worked example
Harvard · conference paperA real conference paper formatted using the Harvard rules above.
Vaswani, Ashish, and Noam Shazeer, Niki Parmar (2017) Attention is all you need. [Online] Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 30. Available at: https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2017/hash/3f5ee243547dee91fbd053c1c4a845aa-Abstract.html (accessed January 15, 2025).
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