Consult an official guide for the style you are using to write your paper. There is no HKS school-wide policy that mandates a certain citation style for student papers, so if you are unsure, we recommend checking with the individual faculty member who assigned your paper to determine if they have a required or preferred citation style.

Social Sciences: Chicago Manual of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style is a popular citation style for the social sciences. It recognizes two kinds of citations:

  • in-text citations, which include the author's last name and the publication date and require a bibliography; or
  • footnotes or endnotes, which may be preferable for policy writing because a full citation in the footnote/endnote does not necessarily require an added bibliography. 

Check with your instructor or faculty advisor if they have a specific preference. 

Behavioral Sciences: APA Publication Manual

Writing in the behavioral sciences (including education) tends to follow the style guidelines from the American Psychological Association (APA). APA style uses in-text citations with a list of references at the end. 

Journalism: AP Stylebook

The Communications Program at HKS recommends AP style—the most common style used in American journalism—for non-academic writing such as blog posts, op-eds and news stories.

Law: The Bluebook

The Bluebook is the standard system of legal citation in the United States, often referred to as the authoritative reference by other, non-legal styles guides as well (e.g., the Chicago Manual of Style).

An open access fork of the Blue Book can be found online as The Indigo Book. While not as up-to-date and not as authoritative as the Blue Book (particularly if your intent is to publish in a law journal), this resource is probably sufficient for legal citations in most student writing at HKS. 

Generative AI Guidance

Both Chicago and ALA have created recommendations on how to cite Generative AI. You can find links to them as well as a general overview of each below.

Chicago

Recommendations for citing Artificial Intelligence

In a footnote or endnote:
1. Text generated by ChatGPT, OpenAI, March 7, 2023, https://chat.openai.com/chat.

Or, if you want to be more specific about the prompt used: 
1. ChatGPT, response to “Explain how to make pizza dough from common household ingredients,” OpenAI, March 7, 2023.

"To sum things up, you must credit ChatGPT when you reproduce its words within your own work, but unless you include a publicly available URL, that information should be put in the text or in a note—not in a bibliography or reference list. Other AI-generated text can be cited similarly. Check back with us for updates on this evolving topic."

APA

How to Cite ChatGPT

In text citation example: (OpenAI, 2023)

Reference example: OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

 

Additional Resources

Last but not least, your friendly librarians at HKS Library & Research Services are happy to help you find and work with the wealth of resources Harvard Library has to offer. LRS is also the go-to support for Zotero at HKS.