Best examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples

Let’s start with what you actually came for: concrete, copy‑paste‑ready patterns. Below are short, realistic examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples, then we’ll unpack the logic behind them.

Example A – Printed conference proceedings (book‑like)
In‑text:

• Parenthetical: (Nguyen, 2024)
• Narrative: Nguyen (2024) argues that …

Reference list:
Nguyen, T. (2024) ‘AI‑assisted learning in first‑year composition’, in Patel, R. and Gomez, L. (eds.) Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy. Boston, MA: Academic Press, pp. 45–62.

Example B – Conference paper from online proceedings (with DOI)
In‑text:

• (Lopez and Carter, 2023)

Reference list:
Lopez, M. and Carter, J. (2023) ‘Climate‑aware urban planning models’, in Proceedings of the 2023 IEEE Smart Cities Conference. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1109/SC.2023.01234 (Accessed: 14 November 2025).

Example C – Unpublished conference presentation (slides only)
In‑text:

• (Singh, 2025)

Reference list:
Singh, P. (2025) ‘Rethinking vaccine communication on social media’. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American Public Health Association, New Orleans, LA, 3–7 November.

Example D – Online‑only conference paper (PDF on conference site)
In‑text:

• (Hernandez, 2022)

Reference list:
Hernandez, L. (2022) ‘Remote work and employee well‑being: A longitudinal study’. In: Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Organizational Psychology. Available at: https://www.icop2022.org/proceedings/hernandez.pdf (Accessed: 14 November 2025).

These are just the opening examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples. Now let’s go deeper and cover more variations you’re likely to face in 2024–2025.

Core pattern behind the best examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples

Different universities tweak Harvard style, but most modern systems follow the same basic pattern for a conference paper in the reference list:

Author(s) (Year) ‘Title of paper’, in Editor(s) (ed./eds.) Title of conference proceedings. Place of publication: Publisher, page range.

If the paper is online, you usually add Available at: URL or DOI and an Accessed: date.

That pattern is what drives the best examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples you’ll see in this guide. Once you recognize the building blocks — author, year, paper title, the word in, editors, conference title, place, publisher, and pages — you can adapt it to almost any conference situation.

To keep things practical, I’ll walk through different real‑life scenarios and show how the format shifts slightly each time.

Examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples from printed proceedings

Printed conference proceedings behave like edited books. So you treat the conference volume as a book and the paper as a chapter.

Imagine you used a paper from a psychology education conference that was published as a bound volume.

In‑text citation
You cite it just like any other source with an author and year.

• Parenthetical: (Brown and Keller, 2024)
• Narrative: Brown and Keller (2024) found that …

Reference list entry
Brown, S. and Keller, J. (2024) ‘Supporting first‑generation students in introductory psychology’, in Davis, R. and Holt, A. (eds.) Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Teaching Psychology in Higher Education. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 101–119.

Notice how this fits the general pattern you saw above. This is one of the cleanest examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples because everything you need is on the title page of the proceedings: editors, place, publisher, and sometimes even the ISBN.

Another printed‑proceedings example:

In‑text: (Osei, 2023)
Reference list:
Osei, M. (2023) ‘Inclusive design for campus navigation’, in Chen, Y. (ed.) Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Accessible Learning Environments. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 210–228.

Again, the rhythm is the same: author, year, paper title, in, editor, conference title, place, publisher, pages. Once you see that rhythm, you can create your own best examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples for any printed proceedings.

Online proceedings: examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples with URLs and DOIs

Most conferences now publish their proceedings online, often as PDFs or HTML pages. In 2024–2025, you’ll see DOIs and stable URLs much more often than ten years ago.

A typical online proceedings reference looks like this:

In‑text: (Martinez, 2024)

Reference list:
Martinez, R. (2024) ‘Machine learning for early diabetes detection’, in Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Health Informatics. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1234/healthinf.2024.567 (Accessed: 14 November 2025).

Here, there’s no named editor and no print publisher listed on the conference site, so the examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples focus on the paper title, conference name, and DOI. Many Harvard guides accept this streamlined format when formal publishing details are missing.

Another online‑only example with a regular URL instead of a DOI:

In‑text: (Jackson and Lee, 2023)

Reference list:
Jackson, A. and Lee, D. (2023) ‘Hybrid classrooms and student engagement after COVID‑19’, in Proceedings of the 2023 International Conference on Digital Learning. Available at: https://icdl2023.org/proceedings/jackson‑lee (Accessed: 14 November 2025).

This structure works well for conferences that host proceedings on their own website. If your university’s Harvard guide asks for an organization as the publisher, you can add it after the conference title, but many 2024–2025 examples include only the URL and access date.

For authoritative guidance on citing online materials, it’s worth checking a major style guide such as the Harvard Library citation guide or your own university’s writing center.

Unpublished conference presentations: example of Harvard referencing when there’s no proceedings

Sometimes you attend a conference (or find one online) where only the presentation slides or abstract are available. There are no formal proceedings or ISBN, just a session description.

In that case, Harvard style usually treats the source as an unpublished conference paper or paper presented at a conference.

Here’s a realistic example of Harvard referencing conference paper examples in this situation:

In‑text: (Chen, 2025)

Reference list:
Chen, L. (2025) ‘Teaching statistics with real‑time dashboards’. Paper presented at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association, Seattle, WA, 10–15 August.

Key points to notice:

• You still start with author and year.
• You keep the paper title in single quotation marks.
• Instead of in, you use the phrase Paper presented at.
• You give the conference name, location, and dates.

Another example of Harvard referencing an unpublished conference talk, this time specifying that only slides were available:

In‑text: (Garcia, 2024)

Reference list:
Garcia, N. (2024) ‘Student mental health trends in community colleges’. Paper presented at the National Conference on College Counseling, Denver, CO, 4–6 April. Presentation slides available at: https://nccc.org/2024/garcia (Accessed: 14 November 2025).

This kind of entry is very common now that conferences share slides or posters online but don’t always publish full proceedings.

Repeated annual conferences: real examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples with year and location

Many conferences run every year under almost the same name. That can make your reference look confusing if you don’t include the year or location clearly.

Here’s how you might handle a recurring education technology conference:

In‑text: (Miller, 2022)

Reference list:
Miller, J. (2022) ‘Using learning analytics to reduce course dropout rates’, in Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Educational Technology (ICET 2022). San Diego, CA: ICET Press, pp. 330–345.

The year appears twice: once after the author’s name (as usual) and once in the conference title. That’s normal and helps distinguish this year’s conference from earlier or later editions.

Another real‑style example of Harvard referencing conference paper examples for a recurring public health conference:

In‑text: (Rodriguez and Patel, 2023)

Reference list:
Rodriguez, A. and Patel, S. (2023) ‘Community‑based strategies to improve vaccination rates’, in Proceedings of the 2023 CDC National Immunization Conference. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pp. 88–96.

For context on vaccination research and conference work, you can explore the CDC’s immunization resources, which often link to conference materials and reports.

Citing conference papers in‑text: examples include single, multiple, and group authors

The good news: once your reference list entries are set up, in‑text citations for conference papers follow the same rules as books and journal articles in Harvard style.

Here are a few quick examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples for in‑text citations:

Single author

• Parenthetical: (Nguyen, 2024)
• Narrative: Nguyen (2024) argues that …

Two authors

• Parenthetical: (Lopez and Carter, 2023)
• Narrative: Lopez and Carter (2023) report that …

Three or more authors
Many Harvard variants use et al. after the first author’s surname.

• Parenthetical: (Kim et al., 2025)
• Narrative: Kim et al. (2025) found that …

Group author (organization as author)
Sometimes the conference paper is authored by an organization rather than an individual.

• Parenthetical: (World Health Organization, 2022)
• Narrative: According to the World Health Organization (2022) …

In your reference list, the entries for these examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples would look something like this:

Kim, Y., Park, J. and Ahmed, S. (2025) ‘AI‑driven diagnostics in low‑resource settings’, in Proceedings of the 2025 Global Health Innovation Summit. Geneva: World Health Organization, pp. 50–68.

World Health Organization (2022) ‘Strengthening primary care after COVID‑19’, in Proceedings of the 2022 WHO Global Primary Health Care Conference. Geneva: World Health Organization, pp. 12–27.

For more on how organizations publish and present health research, you can browse the WHO publications page.

2024–2025 trends that affect conference paper referencing

If you’re working with very recent sources, a few trends shape how the best examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples look today:

More DOIs and persistent identifiers
Conference organizers increasingly assign DOIs to individual papers, especially in technical fields like computing and engineering. If there’s a DOI, use it instead of a long, messy URL.

Hybrid and virtual conferences
Post‑2020, many conferences are hybrid. You might attend online, but the proceedings are still formally published. In Harvard style, you normally reference the published format. Whether you watched it on Zoom doesn’t change the citation unless you’re citing a recording.

Preprints and conference versions
A paper might appear first as a preprint, then as a conference paper, then as a journal article. In academic writing, you usually cite the most authoritative version you actually used. If you worked from the conference version, that’s the one you reference.

Institutional repositories
Universities often host conference papers in their own repositories. These behave like online proceedings. For example, if you downloaded a conference paper from a university repository, your entry might look like:

Hughes, K. (2024) ‘Open educational resources in community colleges’, in Proceedings of the 2024 Open Education Conference. Available at: https://repository.stateu.edu/opened2024/hughes (Accessed: 14 November 2025).

For guidance on using institutional repositories and academic sources, you can consult resources from major universities such as Harvard University’s research and writing support.

FAQ: Short answers and examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples

How do I write an example of Harvard referencing for a conference paper with no editor listed?
Skip the editor part and go straight from the paper title to the conference title. For instance:
Smith, J. (2024) ‘Title of paper’, in Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Biology Education. Available at: URL (Accessed: 14 November 2025).

Do I need page numbers in all examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples?
Include page numbers if the proceedings are paginated (printed books or PDFs with clear pages). If the online version has no page numbers and each paper is a standalone HTML page or PDF, many Harvard guides let you omit them.

What’s an example of Harvard referencing a keynote speech?
Treat it like an unpublished conference presentation and mention that it’s a keynote:
Jones, M. (2023) ‘The future of online learning’. Keynote address at the 2023 International Online Learning Summit, Austin, TX, 12 May.

Should I cite the conference or the journal article if the same paper appears in both?
If you actually read and used the journal article, cite the journal. If you only had access to the conference paper, cite the conference version. Don’t mix details from both into one reference.

Can I use these examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples for all universities?
Not blindly. Harvard is a family of similar styles, not a single fixed rulebook. Always check your local guide or style sheet. However, the patterns in these examples include the core elements almost every Harvard system expects, so they’re a solid starting point.

The bottom line: if you can identify the author, year, paper title, conference name, and where you found it (book, PDF, website, DOI), you can build your own accurate examples of Harvard referencing conference paper examples. Use the patterns here as templates, then tweak them to match your institution’s exact Harvard rules.