# Proposal: Retire duplicate "Harvard" styles harvard1.csl & harvard7de.csl

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposal-retire-duplicate-harvard-styles-harvard1-csl-harvard7de-csl/1270>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [September 13, 2015, 10:46am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposal-retire-duplicate-harvard-styles-harvard1-csl-harvard7de-csl/1270 "2015-09-13T10:46:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Nick\_Bart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3bc359/32.png) [@Nick\_Bart](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Nick_Bart)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2015, 10:46am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposal-retire-duplicate-harvard-styles-harvard1-csl-harvard7de-csl/1270/1 "2015-09-13T10:46:29Z")

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Following up from a discussion at  
[https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/42317/duplicate-harvard-styles/](https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/42317/duplicate-harvard-styles/), I’d  
like to propose removing two duplicate “Harvard” styles  
from the github and Zotero CSL style file repositories:

harvard1.csl is a almost-duplicate of harvard-anglia-ruskin-university.csl;  
both are based on [http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm](http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm),  
[http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm](http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm)

harvard7de.csl (German) is a almost-duplicate of  
harvard-institut-fur-praxisforschung-de.csl; both are based on

> **[Harvard-Zitierweise.pdf](https://s6f64e4c038e01ba3.jimcontent.com/download/version/1410296308/module/6167762784/name/Harvard-Zitierweise.pdf)**
>
> 516.72 KB

  
resp.  
[http://www.institut-praxisforschung.ch/Portals/0/Jonas/Harvard-Zitierweise.pdf](http://www.institut-praxisforschung.ch/Portals/0/Jonas/Harvard-Zitierweise.pdf)  
(the second link is dead, redirecting to  
[http://www.institut-praxisforschung.com/](http://www.institut-praxisforschung.com/),  
[http://www.institut-praxisforschung.com/](http://www.institut-praxisforschung.com/) so this is/was clearly the same  
guide).

My proposal is to keep only those with the more specific style names -  
harvard-anglia-ruskin-university.csl and  
harvard-institut-fur-praxisforschung-de.csl - and to remove harvard1.csl  
and harvard7de.csl entirely.

Huge bonus: Getting rid of styles with overly generic names such as  
harvard1.csl and harvard7de.csl would reinforce the important message that  
there is no such thing as a single, official Harvard style, removing a very  
common source of confusion among students and, sadly enough, librarians and  
certain brands of commercial library and referencing software, too. See  
also  
[http://docs.citationstyles.org/en/stable/primer.html#author-date-author-styles:](http://docs.citationstyles.org/en/stable/primer.html#author-date-author-styles:)  
“Note that many style guides use the confusing term “Harvard” to refer to  
_author-date_ formats, even though most of these styles have no connection  
to Harvard University. There is also no such thing as a single official  
“Harvard” style.”

Any platforms where harvard1 seems popular would have to inform their users  
that they should switch to harvard-anglia-ruskin-university.csl (or some  
other author-date style) instead.

Are there any objections?

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**Author:** ![Sebastian\_Karcher](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/sebastian_karcher/32/176_2.png) [@Sebastian\_Karcher](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Sebastian_Karcher)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2015, 6:11pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposal-retire-duplicate-harvard-styles-harvard1-csl-harvard7de-csl/1270/2 "2015-09-13T18:11:18Z")

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To follow up on this–as I told Nick in the Zotero thread, our biggest  
concern here is Mendeley and any other product that uses Harvard1 as one of  
the default styles. We’d obviously include a redirect in the  
renamed-styles.json, but the formatting of the style would change for  
users. So we’d particularly want to hear from the reference managers here.

> From a purely CSL perspective, we’d definitely want to go ahead and remove  
> those styles.

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**Author:** ![Carles\_Pina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dbc845/32.png) [@Carles\_Pina](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Carles_Pina)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 10:29am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/proposal-retire-duplicate-harvard-styles-harvard1-csl-harvard7de-csl/1270/3 "2015-09-22T10:29:14Z")

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Hi,

I had a quick look: harvard1.csl is the second most used style by  
Mendeley users (data from 1 or 2 years but I don’t expect this to  
change much).

Very sadly at Mendeley we are not using the renamed-styles.json for  
what I remember. I’ll open a ticket but I’m not sure when this could  
be done.  
Having harvard1.csl a dependent style from  
harvard-anglia-ruskin-university.csl would be a good user experience  
for us - but not much correct for the CSL project.