Secondary Referencing in Harvard Style, Explained

Sooner or later it happens to every CIPD learner: your textbook summarises a well-known model from an earlier writer, the summary is exactly what your assignment needs, and you are not sure how to cite it. Naming the original writer feels right, but you have never read their work. Citing only the textbook feels wrong, because the idea is not the textbook author's. Both instincts are picking up something true.

This is the problem secondary referencing solves. It is a small convention with a big principle behind it: your references should record the path you actually took to each idea. This guide explains how secondary referencing works in Harvard style, when to use it, when to avoid it, and how to need it less often. As with every fine detail of referencing, conventions vary between centres and style guides, and your centre's own guide takes precedence wherever it differs.

In this guide you'll learn

• What secondary referencing is and how the cited in convention works
• Which source belongs in your reference list, and why
• Why to keep secondary references to a minimum, and how to find originals instead
• A worked example, plus the mistakes learners make with it

What secondary referencing is

Secondary referencing is what you do when you want to use an idea from a source you have not read, which you encountered inside a source you have read. The source you read is the secondary source; the work it discusses is the original, sometimes called the primary source. The convention lets you credit the original thinker while being honest that your knowledge of their work came second-hand.

Suppose, as an invented illustration used throughout this guide, that a 2024 textbook by an author called Mensah summarises a feedback model proposed by an earlier writer called Virtanen. You have read Mensah. You have not read Virtanen. Citing Virtanen alone would claim reading you have not done; citing Mensah alone would hide where the idea originated. Secondary referencing threads the needle.

The cited in convention

In your text, name the original author, then show whose account you actually read, joined by the words cited in. The citation is shaped like (Virtanen, 1998, cited in Mensah, 2024). If the original author is named in your sentence, it might read: Virtanen's model, as described by Mensah (2024), puts timing ahead of content. Some centres prefer quoted in when you are reproducing exact words rather than an idea. The wording varies slightly between style guides; the structure, original author plus the source you read, does not.

Include the original work's year when your secondary source gives it, because it places the idea in time. If the secondary source never states the original's date, most conventions let you omit it and write a citation shaped like (Virtanen, cited in Mensah, 2024).

Which source goes in the reference list

Only the source you actually read. In the illustration above, Mensah appears in your reference list with a full entry, and Virtanen does not appear at all. This is the rule learners find most counterintuitive, and the logic is simple: the reference list exists so a reader can retrace your reading, and your reading was Mensah. Listing Virtanen would point the reader to a work you cannot vouch for, and it would quietly claim first-hand reading you never did.

Why keep secondary referencing to a minimum

The first reason is accuracy. Every summary is an interpretation, so when you rely on Mensah's account of Virtanen you inherit any simplification or emphasis in it, and then add your own on top. Chains of second-hand summary are exactly how models end up circulating in distorted form, and markers know it.

The second reason is the strength of your evidence trail. An assignment stacked with cited in constructions tells the marker that your reading stopped at one or two textbooks. Part of what CIPD assessments reward, increasingly so at Levels 5 and 7, is engagement with original evidence. One or two secondary references across an assignment are unremarkable; a pattern of them costs marks because of what it reveals.

How to find the original instead

1. Take the original work's details from your secondary source's own reference list, which will usually give you the author, year and title.
2. Search the title in Google Scholar, which often surfaces publisher pages, open-access copies, or at least an abstract that tells you whether the original is worth pursuing.
3. Check your study centre's or university's online library, because journal access often comes with your enrolment and learners forget it exists.
4. Ask your centre's librarian or your public library about inter-library requests for anything you cannot reach directly.
5. Once you have read even the relevant section of the original, you can cite it directly, your reference list gains a stronger entry, and the secondary construction disappears.

When secondary referencing is acceptable

It is a legitimate tool, not a confession of failure. Reasonable uses include an original that is out of print or behind access barriers you cannot cross, a work in a language you do not read, a historical source where a modern account genuinely serves your point better, or a detail that is peripheral to your argument, where chasing the original would be effort spent in the wrong place. The test is honesty plus proportion: the construction must reflect the path you actually took, and it should stay occasional.

A worked example, with invented sources

All names here are invented for illustration. Staying with the same two invented authors, suppose Mensah's 2024 textbook describes the feedback model Virtanen proposed in 1998. A sentence drawing on it might read: early feedback models emphasised timing above content (Virtanen, 1998, cited in Mensah, 2024), a view that later work has complicated.

The reference list then carries one entry for this material, for the book actually read, shaped like: Mensah, K. (2024) People Management in Context. London: Example Press. Virtanen appears nowhere in the list. A marker reading this knows exactly what was read, who originated the idea, and where to go to check, which is everything a reference is for.

Common mistakes with secondary referencing

• Citing the original author alone, as though you read their work first-hand
• Listing the original work in the reference list when you only read the summary of it
• Writing the construction backwards, so the marker cannot tell which source you actually read
• Using cited in so often that the reference list shrinks to a couple of textbooks
• Forgetting that exact words taken via a secondary source still need quotation marks and the page number of the source you read

The underlying principle is honesty

Strip away the formatting and secondary referencing is simply telling the truth about your reading: what you read, where you read it, and who originated the idea. Markers respect that honesty even when the evidence trail is modest, and academic integrity processes exist for the alternative. Cite the path you actually took to every idea, and the conventions in this guide fall into place on their own.

Go deeper

Secondary referencing is one corner of a bigger system. CIPD Harvard Referencing: The Complete Guide, the hub of this series, covers the whole method from in-text citations to the finished reference list. How to Reference CIPD Factsheets, Reports and the Profession Map handles the corporate-author sources you will cite most often, and the guide to critical analysis in CIPD assignments shows what to do with your sources once you can cite them cleanly.

If a second pair of expert eyes would help before you submit, our referencing support checks your cited in constructions along with the accuracy and consistency of your whole reference list, so you hand in knowing it holds up. Every word of the assignment stays your own.