# Harvard Mdx

> Harvard referencing to Middlesex University standard for the MGT4897 DXB report — in-text citation forms, full reference formats for journal articles (DOI mandatory), books, industry-body reports (ICAO, IATA, ACI), corporate press releases and newsroom items, statistical databases, and websites. Also covers the minimum-five-journal-article requirement and how to audit a reference list. Use when adding, formatting, checking, or auditing any citation or reference list.

- Skill: `faaz17/harvard-mdx` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add faaz17/harvard-mdx`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/faaz17/harvard-mdx/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Security
- Author: Faaz17 (https://skillmd.com/u/faaz17)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/faaz17/harvard-mdx

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# Harvard referencing — Middlesex standard

## The requirements

- **Minimum five high-quality journal articles** — count them, do not estimate
- Plus contemporary research: Dubai Airports releases, ICAO/IATA/ACI, quality press
- **Every journal article carries a DOI**
- Reference list in **alphabetical order** by author surname
- Every in-text citation appears in the list; every list entry is cited in text
- The brief permits **Harvard or APA**. This project uses **Harvard** throughout. Mixing the
  two is a visible defect under rubric item 8

Five journals is a **floor**. A report of this weight with exactly five reads as minimum
compliance; eight to twelve reads as research. Track the count in
`03-References/references.md` continuously — it is far easier to hold than to retrofit.

## In-text citations

| Situation | Form |
|---|---|
| One author | (Stevenson, 2021) |
| Two authors | (Womack and Jones, 2003) |
| Three or more | (Parasuraman *et al.*, 1988) |
| Author as part of the sentence | Deming (1986) argues that… |
| Direct quotation | (Deming, 1986, p. 88) — page number required |
| Organisation as author | (Dubai Airports, 2026) |
| Multiple sources, one point | (ACI, 2025; IATA, 2024) — alphabetical, semicolon-separated |
| Same author, same year | (Dubai Airports, 2026a), (Dubai Airports, 2026b) |
| Secondary citation | Deming (1986), cited in Oakland (2014) — *avoid; find the original* |

Page numbers are required for direct quotations and strongly advised for specific claims,
paraphrased arguments, and figures drawn from a particular page or table.

## Reference list formats

### Journal article — DOI mandatory

    Surname, Initial. (Year) 'Title of article', *Journal Name*, Volume(Issue), pp. x–y.
    doi:10.xxxx/xxxxx.

    Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A. and Berry, L.L. (1988) 'SERVQUAL: a multiple-item scale
    for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality', *Journal of Retailing*, 64(1),
    pp. 12–40.

If a DOI genuinely does not exist — common for older articles — give the stable URL and an
accessed date, and say so rather than inventing one. **Never fabricate a DOI.** A wrong DOI
is worse than a missing one: it is trivially checkable and reads as fabrication.

### Book

    Surname, Initial. (Year) *Title*. Edition. Place: Publisher.

    Slack, N., Brandon-Jones, A. and Burgess, N. (2022) *Operations management*. 10th edn.
    Harlow: Pearson.

### Chapter in an edited book

    Surname, Initial. (Year) 'Chapter title', in Editor, Initial. (ed.) *Book Title*.
    Place: Publisher, pp. x–y.

### Corporate press release or newsroom item — the backbone of the DXB data

    Dubai Airports (2026) *DXB welcomes 95.2 million passengers in 2025*. Available at:
    https://media.dubaiairports.ae/... (Accessed: 21 August 2026).

Cite the organisation as author. Give the release title in italics and the date of the
release, not just the year of access.

### Industry body report — ICAO, IATA, ACI, ATAG

    International Civil Aviation Organization (2026) *Air transport monthly monitor*.
    Montreal: ICAO. Available at: https://www.icao.int/air-traffic-monitor
    (Accessed: 21 August 2026).

    Airports Council International (2025) *ACI world airport traffic rankings 2024*.
    Montreal: ACI World. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

Spell the organisation out on first use in text — "the International Civil Aviation
Organization (ICAO)" — then abbreviate. File the reference under the full name.

### Corporate webpage

    Dubai Airports (2026) *Dubai World Central*. Available at:
    https://dubaiairports.ae/corporate/our-story/dwc-dubai-world-central
    (Accessed: 21 August 2026).

### Annual report

    Emirates Group (2025) *Emirates Group annual report 2024–25*. Dubai: Emirates Group.
    Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

### Government or statutory source

    Dubai Statistics Centre (2025) *Population estimates*. Dubai: Government of Dubai.
    Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

### Newspaper or magazine

    Surname, Initial. (Year) 'Article title', *Publication*, Day Month. Available at: URL
    (Accessed: date).

### Statistical database

    Statista (2025) *Title of the statistic*. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

Statista is an aggregator. Where it names an underlying source, **cite the original** and use
Statista only to locate it. A reference list padded with Statista entries signals shallow
research.

### Data supplied by the coursework brief

The passenger and movement tables are attributed in the brief to Dubai Airports, 2026. Cite
them as **(Dubai Airports, 2026)** and note in the methodology or a table footnote that the
data were provided in the coursework brief. Where you have verified a year against the
original newsroom release, cite that release directly — it is a stronger citation.

### Generative AI — where declared and unadapted

    Anthropic (2026) *Claude* [Large language model]. Available at: https://claude.ai
    (Accessed: 21 August 2026).

The substantive disclosure belongs in the Declaration of Gen AI Use, with the prompts.

## Alphabetical ordering rules

- Sort by first author surname, letter by letter
- Organisation authors sort by the first significant word: *Dubai Airports* under D,
  *Airports Council International* under A, *The Economist* under E
- Same author, multiple works: earliest year first
- Same author, same year: append a, b, c to the year and order by title
- Single-author works precede multi-author works by the same first author

## Auditing a reference list

Run in order:

1. **Count** total references
2. **Classify** each: journal / book / chapter / industry report / corporate release /
   database / web / news
3. **Journal count** — at least five? Name how many more are needed
4. **DOIs** — does every journal article have one, correctly formatted `doi:10.xxxx/...`?
5. **Alphabetical** — is the list actually sorted, letter by letter?
6. **Forward check** — every in-text citation has a list entry with a matching year
7. **Reverse check** — every list entry is cited in text. Uncited entries look like padding
8. **Consistency** — Harvard throughout, no APA drift; same entry type formatted the same way
9. **Plausibility** — does the journal exist, does the volume align with the year, is the DOI
   prefix consistent with the publisher? Flag anything unconfirmable
10. **Recency** — traffic and capacity data should be current; methodological theory can be
    old. Parasuraman *et al.* (1988) is foundational, not stale

Report findings as a table: what is wrong, where, and the corrected form.

## Common failures

- Journal article with no DOI — the most common deduction
- Reference list not alphabetised
- Harvard and APA mixed in one list
- In-text `et al.` used for a two-author work
- A press-release figure cited to a news article that reported it
- An uncited reference left in the list after a section was cut
- "Dubai Airports" filed under T for "The Dubai Airports"
- Fewer than five journal articles, with industry reports counted as journals to make up the
  number — reports are not journals and a marker will recount