Leeds Harvard referencing

elivne · September 24, 2025

In settings I see the 'University of Leeds - Harvard' citation style was updated 4 months ago (May 2025). The UoL library website says "library staff produce and maintain the Leeds Harvard ... output styles for use in Endnote" only, not for other software like Zotero. So my first question is who manages this style in Zotero? It has served me well for 4 years but I now find it does not include
[ONLINE].
[Accessed ..date..].
Available from: DOI / URL links
in the reference list where it should. I can see these sections in the style editor but likely with some conditions that should be removed.

damnation · September 24, 2025

Going by the history of the style, the majority of the work for this style was done by the Citation Style Language team. (and not by UoL (either staff or student)).

If you see an issue, you can report it here with a concrete example and a link to the current guidelines of the style.

elivne · September 24, 2025

Thanks. The style is harvard-university-of-leeds.csl

The guidelines are here, specifically I'm looking at the most quoted which is journal article: https://library.leeds.ac.uk/referencing-examples/9/leeds-harvard/11/journal-article and the following comment:
"If you are referencing a journal article which you have read online (on a website or as a PDF), you should include [online], the DOI if available (or the URL if no DOI is available), and the access date in your reference. DOIs can be identified as a long code starting with “10.” and should be presented in your reference as a link (...) This advice was updated in September 2024."

A concrete example:
Efthymiou, D., Antoniou, C. and Waddell, P. 2013. Factors affecting the adoption of vehicle sharing systems by young drivers. Transport Policy. 29, pp.64–73.

Should be:
Efthymiou, D., Antoniou, C. and Waddell, P. 2013. Factors affecting the adoption of vehicle sharing systems by young drivers. Transport Policy. [Online]. 29, pp.64–73. [Accessed 3 April 2024]. Available from: doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2013.04.009

jesusbagpuss · January 16, 2026

Hi Elivne,
I will be submitting an updated version of the Leeds Harvard CSL soon.

This version of the CSL file has the necessary updates for DOIs/URLs:
https://github.com/uol-library/CSL-styles/blob/master/harvard-university-of-leeds.csl

You can use it by downloading the file (via this URL: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/uol-library/CSL-styles/refs/heads/master/harvard-university-of-leeds.csl) and then following the guidance here: https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step#install_your_edited_style_with_zotero

AAnguera · June 23, 2026

Hi. Thanks for the effort. I have downloaded it and updated my Zotero, but neither DOIs (or URLs if not present) and access dater are coming through despite having the DOI (starting with 10) in the corresponding field. I have restarted both Word and Zotero (the [online] is not there either but this is easier to add) Any ideas?

emrinke · 2026-10-30T11:34:01+00:00

Just a nudge that this issue appears to still be in need of resolution.

damnation · 2026-10-30T13:51:57+00:00

@jesusbagpuss
I'm really not a fan of creating duplicates of styles and spreading them around. The beauty of our open-source project is that it's open source. Everybody can submit a style update so only one single place of truth exists and end users always receive updates.

@emrinke
I've submitted a fix. You can grab the new style from there and try it out.
https://github.com/citation-style-language/styles/pull/8404

emrinke · 2026-11-01T15:12:55+00:00

Lovely. Thank you for the fix, Patrick. Final thing that is missing is the -[Date accessed]- following the page numbers as shown here.
https://library.leeds.ac.uk/referencing-examples/9/leeds-harvard/11/journal-article

Would it be possible to fix this too?

(NB: My testing a few different reference types just now suggests that the whole style may need a check; for example I found -Date- missing for newspaper articles as well as minor punctuation and italicisation errors for book chapters.)