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References in Research – Types, Examples and Writing Guide

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References in Research

Definition:

References in research are a list of sources that a researcher has consulted or cited while conducting their study. They are an essential component of any academic work, including research papers, theses, dissertations, and other scholarly publications.

Types of References

There are several types of references used in research, and the type of reference depends on the source of information being cited. The most common types of references include:

References to books typically include the author’s name, title of the book, publisher, publication date, and place of publication.

Example: Smith, J. (2018). The Art of Writing. Penguin Books.

Journal Articles

References to journal articles usually include the author’s name, title of the article, name of the journal, volume and issue number, page numbers, and publication date.

Example: Johnson, T. (2021). The Impact of Social Media on Mental Health. Journal of Psychology, 32(4), 87-94.

Web sources

References to web sources should include the author or organization responsible for the content, the title of the page, the URL, and the date accessed.

Example: World Health Organization. (2020). Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public

Conference Proceedings

References to conference proceedings should include the author’s name, title of the paper, name of the conference, location of the conference, date of the conference, and page numbers.

Example: Chen, S., & Li, J. (2019). The Future of AI in Education. Proceedings of the International Conference on Educational Technology, Beijing, China, July 15-17, pp. 67-78.

References to reports typically include the author or organization responsible for the report, title of the report, publication date, and publisher.

Example: United Nations. (2020). The Sustainable Development Goals Report. United Nations.

Formats of References

Some common Formates of References with their examples are as follows:

APA (American Psychological Association) Style

The APA (American Psychological Association) Style has specific guidelines for formatting references used in academic papers, articles, and books. Here are the different reference formats in APA style with examples:

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of book. Publisher.

Example : Smith, J. K. (2005). The psychology of social interaction. Wiley-Blackwell.

Journal Article

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year of publication). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume number(issue number), page numbers.

Example : Brown, L. M., Keating, J. G., & Jones, S. M. (2012). The role of social support in coping with stress among African American adolescents. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 22(1), 218-233.

Author, A. A. (Year of publication or last update). Title of page. Website name. URL.

Example : Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, December 11). COVID-19: How to protect yourself and others. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html

Magazine article

Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day of publication). Title of article. Title of Magazine, volume number(issue number), page numbers.

Example : Smith, M. (2019, March 11). The power of positive thinking. Psychology Today, 52(3), 60-65.

Newspaper article:

Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day of publication). Title of article. Title of Newspaper, page numbers.

Example: Johnson, B. (2021, February 15). New study shows benefits of exercise on mental health. The New York Times, A8.

Edited book

Editor, E. E. (Ed.). (Year of publication). Title of book. Publisher.

Example : Thompson, J. P. (Ed.). (2014). Social work in the 21st century. Sage Publications.

Chapter in an edited book:

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of chapter. In E. E. Editor (Ed.), Title of book (pp. page numbers). Publisher.

Example : Johnson, K. S. (2018). The future of social work: Challenges and opportunities. In J. P. Thompson (Ed.), Social work in the 21st century (pp. 105-118). Sage Publications.

MLA (Modern Language Association) Style

The MLA (Modern Language Association) Style is a widely used style for writing academic papers and essays in the humanities. Here are the different reference formats in MLA style:

Author’s Last name, First name. Title of Book. Publisher, Publication year.

Example : Smith, John. The Psychology of Social Interaction. Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.

Journal article

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Article.” Title of Journal, volume number, issue number, Publication year, page numbers.

Example : Brown, Laura M., et al. “The Role of Social Support in Coping with Stress among African American Adolescents.” Journal of Research on Adolescence, vol. 22, no. 1, 2012, pp. 218-233.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Webpage.” Website Name, Publication date, URL.

Example : Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “COVID-19: How to Protect Yourself and Others.” CDC, 11 Dec. 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Article.” Title of Magazine, Publication date, page numbers.

Example : Smith, Mary. “The Power of Positive Thinking.” Psychology Today, Mar. 2019, pp. 60-65.

Newspaper article

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Article.” Title of Newspaper, Publication date, page numbers.

Example : Johnson, Bob. “New Study Shows Benefits of Exercise on Mental Health.” The New York Times, 15 Feb. 2021, p. A8.

Editor’s Last name, First name, editor. Title of Book. Publisher, Publication year.

Example : Thompson, John P., editor. Social Work in the 21st Century. Sage Publications, 2014.

Chapter in an edited book

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Chapter.” Title of Book, edited by Editor’s First Name Last name, Publisher, Publication year, page numbers.

Example : Johnson, Karen S. “The Future of Social Work: Challenges and Opportunities.” Social Work in the 21st Century, edited by John P. Thompson, Sage Publications, 2014, pp. 105-118.

Chicago Manual of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style is a widely used style for writing academic papers, dissertations, and books in the humanities and social sciences. Here are the different reference formats in Chicago style:

Example : Smith, John K. The Psychology of Social Interaction. Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Article.” Title of Journal volume number, no. issue number (Publication year): page numbers.

Example : Brown, Laura M., John G. Keating, and Sarah M. Jones. “The Role of Social Support in Coping with Stress among African American Adolescents.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 22, no. 1 (2012): 218-233.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Webpage.” Website Name. Publication date. URL.

Example : Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “COVID-19: How to Protect Yourself and Others.” CDC. December 11, 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Article.” Title of Magazine, Publication date.

Example : Smith, Mary. “The Power of Positive Thinking.” Psychology Today, March 2019.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Article.” Title of Newspaper, Publication date.

Example : Johnson, Bob. “New Study Shows Benefits of Exercise on Mental Health.” The New York Times, February 15, 2021.

Example : Thompson, John P., ed. Social Work in the 21st Century. Sage Publications, 2014.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Chapter.” In Title of Book, edited by Editor’s First Name Last Name, page numbers. Publisher, Publication year.

Example : Johnson, Karen S. “The Future of Social Work: Challenges and Opportunities.” In Social Work in the 21st Century, edited by John P. Thompson, 105-118. Sage Publications, 2014.

Harvard Style

The Harvard Style, also known as the Author-Date System, is a widely used style for writing academic papers and essays in the social sciences. Here are the different reference formats in Harvard Style:

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of publication. Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher.

Example : Smith, John. 2005. The Psychology of Social Interaction. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of publication. “Title of Article.” Title of Journal volume number (issue number): page numbers.

Example: Brown, Laura M., John G. Keating, and Sarah M. Jones. 2012. “The Role of Social Support in Coping with Stress among African American Adolescents.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 22 (1): 218-233.

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of publication. “Title of Webpage.” Website Name. URL. Accessed date.

Example : Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2020. “COVID-19: How to Protect Yourself and Others.” CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html. Accessed April 1, 2023.

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of publication. “Title of Article.” Title of Magazine, month and date of publication.

Example : Smith, Mary. 2019. “The Power of Positive Thinking.” Psychology Today, March 2019.

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of publication. “Title of Article.” Title of Newspaper, month and date of publication.

Example : Johnson, Bob. 2021. “New Study Shows Benefits of Exercise on Mental Health.” The New York Times, February 15, 2021.

Editor’s Last name, First name, ed. Year of publication. Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher.

Example : Thompson, John P., ed. 2014. Social Work in the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of publication. “Title of Chapter.” In Title of Book, edited by Editor’s First Name Last Name, page numbers. Place of publication: Publisher.

Example : Johnson, Karen S. 2014. “The Future of Social Work: Challenges and Opportunities.” In Social Work in the 21st Century, edited by John P. Thompson, 105-118. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Vancouver Style

The Vancouver Style, also known as the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, is a widely used style for writing academic papers in the biomedical sciences. Here are the different reference formats in Vancouver Style:

Author’s Last name, First name. Title of Book. Edition number. Place of publication: Publisher; Year of publication.

Example : Smith, John K. The Psychology of Social Interaction. 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell; 2005.

Author’s Last name, First name. Title of Article. Abbreviated Journal Title. Year of publication; volume number(issue number):page numbers.

Example : Brown LM, Keating JG, Jones SM. The Role of Social Support in Coping with Stress among African American Adolescents. J Res Adolesc. 2012;22(1):218-233.

Author’s Last name, First name. Title of Webpage. Website Name [Internet]. Publication date. [cited date]. Available from: URL.

Example : Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. COVID-19: How to Protect Yourself and Others [Internet]. 2020 Dec 11. [cited 2023 Apr 1]. Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html.

Author’s Last name, First name. Title of Article. Title of Magazine. Year of publication; month and day of publication:page numbers.

Example : Smith M. The Power of Positive Thinking. Psychology Today. 2019 Mar 1:32-35.

Author’s Last name, First name. Title of Article. Title of Newspaper. Year of publication; month and day of publication:page numbers.

Example : Johnson B. New Study Shows Benefits of Exercise on Mental Health. The New York Times. 2021 Feb 15:A4.

Editor’s Last name, First name, editor. Title of Book. Edition number. Place of publication: Publisher; Year of publication.

Example: Thompson JP, editor. Social Work in the 21st Century. 1st ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications; 2014.

Author’s Last name, First name. Title of Chapter. In: Editor’s Last name, First name, editor. Title of Book. Edition number. Place of publication: Publisher; Year of publication. page numbers.

Example : Johnson KS. The Future of Social Work: Challenges and Opportunities. In: Thompson JP, editor. Social Work in the 21st Century. 1st ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications; 2014. p. 105-118.

Turabian Style

Turabian style is a variation of the Chicago style used in academic writing, particularly in the fields of history and humanities. Here are the different reference formats in Turabian style:

Author’s Last name, First name. Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication.

Example : Smith, John K. The Psychology of Social Interaction. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Article.” Title of Journal volume number, no. issue number (Year of publication): page numbers.

Example : Brown, LM, Keating, JG, Jones, SM. “The Role of Social Support in Coping with Stress among African American Adolescents.” J Res Adolesc 22, no. 1 (2012): 218-233.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Webpage.” Name of Website. Publication date. Accessed date. URL.

Example : Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “COVID-19: How to Protect Yourself and Others.” CDC. December 11, 2020. Accessed April 1, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Article.” Title of Magazine, Month Day, Year of publication, page numbers.

Example : Smith, M. “The Power of Positive Thinking.” Psychology Today, March 1, 2019, 32-35.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Article.” Title of Newspaper, Month Day, Year of publication.

Example : Johnson, B. “New Study Shows Benefits of Exercise on Mental Health.” The New York Times, February 15, 2021.

Editor’s Last name, First name, ed. Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication.

Example : Thompson, JP, ed. Social Work in the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2014.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Chapter.” In Title of Book, edited by Editor’s Last name, First name, page numbers. Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication.

Example : Johnson, KS. “The Future of Social Work: Challenges and Opportunities.” In Social Work in the 21st Century, edited by Thompson, JP, 105-118. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2014.

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Style

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) style is commonly used in engineering, computer science, and other technical fields. Here are the different reference formats in IEEE style:

Author’s Last name, First name. Book Title. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of publication.

Example : Oppenheim, A. V., & Schafer, R. W. Discrete-Time Signal Processing. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2010.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Article.” Abbreviated Journal Title, vol. number, no. issue number, pp. page numbers, Month year of publication.

Example: Shannon, C. E. “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 379-423, July 1948.

Conference paper

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Paper.” In Title of Conference Proceedings, Place of Conference, Date of Conference, pp. page numbers, Year of publication.

Example: Gupta, S., & Kumar, P. “An Improved System of Linear Discriminant Analysis for Face Recognition.” In Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Computer Science and Network Technology, Harbin, China, Dec. 2011, pp. 144-147.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Webpage.” Name of Website. Date of publication or last update. Accessed date. URL.

Example : National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “Apollo 11.” NASA. July 20, 1969. Accessed April 1, 2023. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11.html.

Technical report

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Report.” Name of Institution or Organization, Report number, Year of publication.

Example : Smith, J. R. “Development of a New Solar Panel Technology.” National Renewable Energy Laboratory, NREL/TP-6A20-51645, 2011.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Patent.” Patent number, Issue date.

Example : Suzuki, H. “Method of Producing Carbon Nanotubes.” US Patent 7,151,019, December 19, 2006.

Standard Title. Standard number, Publication date.

Example : IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic. IEEE Std 754-2008, August 29, 2008

ACS (American Chemical Society) Style

ACS (American Chemical Society) style is commonly used in chemistry and related fields. Here are the different reference formats in ACS style:

Author’s Last name, First name; Author’s Last name, First name. Title of Article. Abbreviated Journal Title Year, Volume, Page Numbers.

Example : Wang, Y.; Zhao, X.; Cui, Y.; Ma, Y. Facile Preparation of Fe3O4/graphene Composites Using a Hydrothermal Method for High-Performance Lithium Ion Batteries. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2012, 4, 2715-2721.

Author’s Last name, First name. Book Title; Publisher: Place of Publication, Year of Publication.

Example : Carey, F. A. Organic Chemistry; McGraw-Hill: New York, 2008.

Author’s Last name, First name. Chapter Title. In Book Title; Editor’s Last name, First name, Ed.; Publisher: Place of Publication, Year of Publication; Volume number, Chapter number, Page Numbers.

Example : Grossman, R. B. Analytical Chemistry of Aerosols. In Aerosol Measurement: Principles, Techniques, and Applications; Baron, P. A.; Willeke, K., Eds.; Wiley-Interscience: New York, 2001; Chapter 10, pp 395-424.

Author’s Last name, First name. Title of Webpage. Website Name, URL (accessed date).

Example : National Institute of Standards and Technology. Atomic Spectra Database. https://www.nist.gov/pml/atomic-spectra-database (accessed April 1, 2023).

Author’s Last name, First name. Patent Number. Patent Date.

Example : Liu, Y.; Huang, H.; Chen, H.; Zhang, W. US Patent 9,999,999, December 31, 2022.

Author’s Last name, First name; Author’s Last name, First name. Title of Article. In Title of Conference Proceedings, Publisher: Place of Publication, Year of Publication; Volume Number, Page Numbers.

Example : Jia, H.; Xu, S.; Wu, Y.; Wu, Z.; Tang, Y.; Huang, X. Fast Adsorption of Organic Pollutants by Graphene Oxide. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology, American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017; Volume 1, pp 223-228.

AMA (American Medical Association) Style

AMA (American Medical Association) style is commonly used in medical and scientific fields. Here are the different reference formats in AMA style:

Author’s Last name, First name. Article Title. Journal Abbreviation. Year; Volume(Issue):Page Numbers.

Example : Jones, R. A.; Smith, B. C. The Role of Vitamin D in Maintaining Bone Health. JAMA. 2019;321(17):1765-1773.

Author’s Last name, First name. Book Title. Edition number. Place of Publication: Publisher; Year.

Example : Guyton, A. C.; Hall, J. E. Textbook of Medical Physiology. 13th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders; 2015.

Author’s Last name, First name. Chapter Title. In: Editor’s Last name, First name, ed. Book Title. Edition number. Place of Publication: Publisher; Year: Page Numbers.

Example: Rajakumar, K. Vitamin D and Bone Health. In: Holick, M. F., ed. Vitamin D: Physiology, Molecular Biology, and Clinical Applications. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Springer; 2010:211-222.

Author’s Last name, First name. Webpage Title. Website Name. URL. Published date. Updated date. Accessed date.

Example : National Cancer Institute. Breast Cancer Prevention (PDQ®)–Patient Version. National Cancer Institute. https://www.cancer.gov/types/breast/patient/breast-prevention-pdq. Published October 11, 2022. Accessed April 1, 2023.

Author’s Last name, First name. Conference presentation title. In: Conference Title; Conference Date; Place of Conference.

Example : Smith, J. R. Vitamin D and Bone Health: A Meta-Analysis. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research; September 20-23, 2022; San Diego, CA.

Thesis or dissertation

Author’s Last name, First name. Title of Thesis or Dissertation. Degree level [Doctoral dissertation or Master’s thesis]. University Name; Year.

Example : Wilson, S. A. The Effects of Vitamin D Supplementation on Bone Health in Postmenopausal Women [Doctoral dissertation]. University of California, Los Angeles; 2018.

ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) Style

The ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) style is commonly used in civil engineering fields. Here are the different reference formats in ASCE style:

Author’s Last name, First name. “Article Title.” Journal Title, volume number, issue number (year): page numbers. DOI or URL (if available).

Example : Smith, J. R. “Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Sustainable Drainage Systems in Urban Areas.” Journal of Environmental Engineering, vol. 146, no. 3 (2020): 04020010. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)EE.1943-7870.0001668.

Example : McCuen, R. H. Hydrologic Analysis and Design. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education; 2013.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Chapter Title.” In: Editor’s Last name, First name, ed. Book Title. Edition number. Place of Publication: Publisher; Year: page numbers.

Example : Maidment, D. R. “Floodplain Management in the United States.” In: Shroder, J. F., ed. Treatise on Geomorphology. San Diego, CA: Academic Press; 2013: 447-460.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Paper Title.” In: Conference Title; Conference Date; Location. Place of Publication: Publisher; Year: page numbers.

Example: Smith, J. R. “Sustainable Drainage Systems for Urban Areas.” In: Proceedings of the ASCE International Conference on Sustainable Infrastructure; November 6-9, 2019; Los Angeles, CA. Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers; 2019: 156-163.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Report Title.” Report number. Place of Publication: Publisher; Year.

Example : U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “Hurricane Sandy Coastal Risk Reduction Program, New York and New Jersey.” Report No. P-15-001. Washington, DC: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; 2015.

CSE (Council of Science Editors) Style

The CSE (Council of Science Editors) style is commonly used in the scientific and medical fields. Here are the different reference formats in CSE style:

Author’s Last name, First Initial. Middle Initial. “Article Title.” Journal Title. Year;Volume(Issue):Page numbers.

Example : Smith, J.R. “Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Sustainable Drainage Systems in Urban Areas.” Journal of Environmental Engineering. 2020;146(3):04020010.

Author’s Last name, First Initial. Middle Initial. Book Title. Edition number. Place of Publication: Publisher; Year.

Author’s Last name, First Initial. Middle Initial. “Chapter Title.” In: Editor’s Last name, First Initial. Middle Initial., ed. Book Title. Edition number. Place of Publication: Publisher; Year:Page numbers.

Author’s Last name, First Initial. Middle Initial. “Paper Title.” In: Conference Title; Conference Date; Location. Place of Publication: Publisher; Year.

Example : Smith, J.R. “Sustainable Drainage Systems for Urban Areas.” In: Proceedings of the ASCE International Conference on Sustainable Infrastructure; November 6-9, 2019; Los Angeles, CA. Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers; 2019.

Author’s Last name, First Initial. Middle Initial. “Report Title.” Report number. Place of Publication: Publisher; Year.

Bluebook Style

The Bluebook style is commonly used in the legal field for citing legal documents and sources. Here are the different reference formats in Bluebook style:

Case citation

Case name, volume source page (Court year).

Example : Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

Statute citation

Name of Act, volume source § section number (year).

Example : Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. § 7401 (1963).

Regulation citation

Name of regulation, volume source § section number (year).

Example: Clean Air Act, 40 C.F.R. § 52.01 (2019).

Book citation

Author’s Last name, First Initial. Middle Initial. Book Title. Edition number (if applicable). Place of Publication: Publisher; Year.

Example: Smith, J.R. Legal Writing and Analysis. 3rd ed. New York, NY: Aspen Publishers; 2015.

Journal article citation

Author’s Last name, First Initial. Middle Initial. “Article Title.” Journal Title. Volume number (year): first page-last page.

Example: Garcia, C. “The Right to Counsel: An International Comparison.” International Journal of Legal Information. 43 (2015): 63-94.

Website citation

Author’s Last name, First Initial. Middle Initial. “Page Title.” Website Title. URL (accessed month day, year).

Example : United Nations. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ (accessed January 3, 2023).

Oxford Style

The Oxford style, also known as the Oxford referencing system or the documentary-note citation system, is commonly used in the humanities, including literature, history, and philosophy. Here are the different reference formats in Oxford style:

Author’s Last name, First name. Book Title. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication.

Example : Smith, John. The Art of Writing. New York: Penguin, 2020.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Article Title.” Journal Title volume, no. issue (year): page range.

Example: Garcia, Carlos. “The Role of Ethics in Philosophy.” Philosophy Today 67, no. 3 (2019): 53-68.

Chapter in an edited book citation

Author’s Last name, First name. “Chapter Title.” In Book Title, edited by Editor’s Name, page range. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication.

Example : Lee, Mary. “Feminism in the 21st Century.” In The Oxford Handbook of Feminism, edited by Jane Smith, 51-69. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Author’s Last name, First name. “Page Title.” Website Title. URL (accessed day month year).

Example : Jones, David. “The Importance of Learning Languages.” Oxford Language Center. https://www.oxfordlanguagecenter.com/importance-of-learning-languages/ (accessed 3 January 2023).

Dissertation or thesis citation

Author’s Last name, First name. “Title of Dissertation/Thesis.” PhD diss., University Name, Year of Publication.

Example : Brown, Susan. “The Art of Storytelling in American Literature.” PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2020.

Newspaper article citation

Author’s Last name, First name. “Article Title.” Newspaper Title, Month Day, Year.

Example : Robinson, Andrew. “New Developments in Climate Change Research.” The Guardian, September 15, 2022.

AAA (American Anthropological Association) Style

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) style is commonly used in anthropology research papers and journals. Here are the different reference formats in AAA style:

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of Publication. Book Title. Place of Publication: Publisher.

Example : Smith, John. 2019. The Anthropology of Food. New York: Routledge.

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of Publication. “Article Title.” Journal Title volume, no. issue: page range.

Example : Garcia, Carlos. 2021. “The Role of Ethics in Anthropology.” American Anthropologist 123, no. 2: 237-251.

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of Publication. “Chapter Title.” In Book Title, edited by Editor’s Name, page range. Place of Publication: Publisher.

Example: Lee, Mary. 2018. “Feminism in Anthropology.” In The Oxford Handbook of Feminism, edited by Jane Smith, 51-69. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of Publication. “Page Title.” Website Title. URL (accessed day month year).

Example : Jones, David. 2020. “The Importance of Learning Languages.” Oxford Language Center. https://www.oxfordlanguagecenter.com/importance-of-learning-languages/ (accessed January 3, 2023).

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of Publication. “Title of Dissertation/Thesis.” PhD diss., University Name.

Example : Brown, Susan. 2022. “The Art of Storytelling in Anthropology.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley.

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of Publication. “Article Title.” Newspaper Title, Month Day.

Example : Robinson, Andrew. 2021. “New Developments in Anthropology Research.” The Guardian, September 15.

AIP (American Institute of Physics) Style

The American Institute of Physics (AIP) style is commonly used in physics research papers and journals. Here are the different reference formats in AIP style:

Example : Johnson, S. D. 2021. “Quantum Computing and Information.” Journal of Applied Physics 129, no. 4: 043102.

Example : Feynman, Richard. 2018. The Feynman Lectures on Physics. New York: Basic Books.

Example : Jones, David. 2020. “The Future of Quantum Computing.” In The Handbook of Physics, edited by John Smith, 125-136. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Conference proceedings citation

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of Publication. “Title of Paper.” Proceedings of Conference Name, date and location: page range. Place of Publication: Publisher.

Example : Chen, Wei. 2019. “The Applications of Nanotechnology in Solar Cells.” Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Nanotechnology, July 15-17, Tokyo, Japan: 224-229. New York: AIP Publishing.

Example : American Institute of Physics. 2022. “About AIP Publishing.” AIP Publishing. https://publishing.aip.org/about-aip-publishing/ (accessed January 3, 2023).

Patent citation

Author’s Last name, First name. Year of Publication. Patent Number.

Example : Smith, John. 2018. US Patent 9,873,644.

References Writing Guide

Here are some general guidelines for writing references:

• Follow the citation style guidelines: Different disciplines and journals may require different citation styles (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago). It is important to follow the specific guidelines for the citation style required.
• Include all necessary information : Each citation should include enough information for readers to locate the source. For example, a journal article citation should include the author(s), title of the article, journal title, volume number, issue number, page numbers, and publication year.
• Use proper formatting: Citation styles typically have specific formatting requirements for different types of sources. Make sure to follow the proper formatting for each citation.
• Order citations alphabetically: If listing multiple sources, they should be listed alphabetically by the author’s last name.
• Be consistent: Use the same citation style throughout the entire paper or project.
• Check for accuracy: Double-check all citations to ensure accuracy, including correct spelling of author names and publication information.
• Use reputable sources: When selecting sources to cite, choose reputable and authoritative sources. Avoid sources that are biased or unreliable.
• Include all sources: Make sure to include all sources used in the research, including those that were not directly quoted but still informed the work.
• Use online tools : There are online tools available (e.g., citation generators) that can help with formatting and organizing references.

Purpose of References in Research

References in research serve several purposes:

• To give credit to the original authors or sources of information used in the research. It is important to acknowledge the work of others and avoid plagiarism.
• To provide evidence for the claims made in the research. References can support the arguments, hypotheses, or conclusions presented in the research by citing relevant studies, data, or theories.
• To allow readers to find and verify the sources used in the research. References provide the necessary information for readers to locate and access the sources cited in the research, which allows them to evaluate the quality and reliability of the information presented.
• To situate the research within the broader context of the field. References can show how the research builds on or contributes to the existing body of knowledge, and can help readers to identify gaps in the literature that the research seeks to address.

Importance of References in Research

References play an important role in research for several reasons:

• Credibility : By citing authoritative sources, references lend credibility to the research and its claims. They provide evidence that the research is based on a sound foundation of knowledge and has been carefully researched.
• Avoidance of Plagiarism : References help researchers avoid plagiarism by giving credit to the original authors or sources of information. This is important for ethical reasons and also to avoid legal repercussions.
• Reproducibility : References allow others to reproduce the research by providing detailed information on the sources used. This is important for verification of the research and for others to build on the work.
• Context : References provide context for the research by situating it within the broader body of knowledge in the field. They help researchers to understand where their work fits in and how it builds on or contributes to existing knowledge.
• Evaluation : References provide a means for others to evaluate the research by allowing them to assess the quality and reliability of the sources used.

Advantages of References in Research

There are several advantages of including references in research:

• Acknowledgment of Sources: Including references gives credit to the authors or sources of information used in the research. This is important to acknowledge the original work and avoid plagiarism.
• Evidence and Support : References can provide evidence to support the arguments, hypotheses, or conclusions presented in the research. This can add credibility and strength to the research.
• Reproducibility : References provide the necessary information for others to reproduce the research. This is important for the verification of the research and for others to build on the work.
• Context : References can help to situate the research within the broader body of knowledge in the field. This helps researchers to understand where their work fits in and how it builds on or contributes to existing knowledge.
• Evaluation : Including references allows others to evaluate the research by providing a means to assess the quality and reliability of the sources used.
• Ongoing Conversation: References allow researchers to engage in ongoing conversations and debates within their fields. They can show how the research builds on or contributes to the existing body of knowledge.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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APA (7th Edition) Referencing Guide

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Notes on the layout for your reference list:

Layout of page:

• The reference list starts on a new page, after your assignment and before any appendices. Place the word "References", centered, in bold, at the top of the page. APA does not require other formatting for the title of your reference page (like underlining), but check with your lecturer.
• Each entry in the reference list has a hanging indent , so that the first line of the entry is flush with the left margin, but all other lines are indented (this is the opposite of the paragraph structure in the body of your essay). Tip: You can do this easily by selecting your references, and pressing Ctrl + T on a PC, or Command (⌘) + T on a Mac. (For Word Online, see the instructions for creating a hanging indent here: https://libanswers.jcu.edu.au/faq/266638 ).

Order of references:

• For APA the reference list is arranged in alphabetical order of authors' surnames.
• Arrange by first author's name, then by second author if you have the same first author, etc. ( check the page on Authors for how to lay out the reference if you have more than one author ).
• If a reference has no author , list it alphabetically according to the title. Ignore the words 'A', 'An' and 'The' at the beginning of a corporate author or title for deciding where it fits alphabetically.
• N.B. A year without a date is considered to be "older" than a year with a date ("nothing comes before something"), so 2018 will go before 2018, September - and a month without a day will go before a month with a day, so 2018, September will go before 2018, September 12. Please note that the year only is required in-text, so you will need to follow the advice below whenever you have multiple citations in the same year.
• N.B. If you have a full date, only use the title to order the references if the date is identical. Always use 'a', 'b', etc after the year, if more than one work has been published by the same author in the same year, as this is used in the in-text referencing, e.g. (2019a, April 12), (2019b, March 23). For example:

Queensland Health. (2017a, April 9). Managing your asthma symptoms . https://www.health.qld.gov.au/news-alerts/news/managing-asthma-symptoms

Queensland Health. (2017b, August 23). Five things you might not know about asthma . https://www.health.qld.gov.au/news-alerts/news/5-things-you-might-not-know-about-asthma

Format of titles:

• APA uses sentence case for all titles except for journal titles.
• Begin each title and subtitle with a capital letter, but only names should be capitalised for all titles other than journal titles.

Below is an example of a reference list formatted in APA style.  Mouse over the references to find more information about writing a reference list.

This list has been single spaced for this guide, but you will probably be asked to double-space your assignment, and that includes the reference list.

Note: the DOIs and URLs in the reference list above should be hyperlinked to the appropriate page, but the code for hyperlinking and the code for mouseover text was not compatible. In your reference list, make sure your DOIs and URLs are hyperlinked to the relevant page.

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A Quick Guide to Harvard Referencing | Citation Examples

Published on 14 February 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on 15 September 2023.

Referencing is an important part of academic writing. It tells your readers what sources you’ve used and how to find them.

Harvard is the most common referencing style used in UK universities. In Harvard style, the author and year are cited in-text, and full details of the source are given in a reference list .

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Table of contents

Harvard in-text citation, creating a harvard reference list, harvard referencing examples, referencing sources with no author or date, frequently asked questions about harvard referencing.

A Harvard in-text citation appears in brackets beside any quotation or paraphrase of a source. It gives the last name of the author(s) and the year of publication, as well as a page number or range locating the passage referenced, if applicable:

Note that ‘p.’ is used for a single page, ‘pp.’ for multiple pages (e.g. ‘pp. 1–5’).

An in-text citation usually appears immediately after the quotation or paraphrase in question. It may also appear at the end of the relevant sentence, as long as it’s clear what it refers to.

When your sentence already mentions the name of the author, it should not be repeated in the citation:

Sources with multiple authors

When you cite a source with up to three authors, cite all authors’ names. For four or more authors, list only the first name, followed by ‘ et al. ’:

Sources with no page numbers

Some sources, such as websites , often don’t have page numbers. If the source is a short text, you can simply leave out the page number. With longer sources, you can use an alternate locator such as a subheading or paragraph number if you need to specify where to find the quote:

Multiple citations at the same point

When you need multiple citations to appear at the same point in your text – for example, when you refer to several sources with one phrase – you can present them in the same set of brackets, separated by semicolons. List them in order of publication date:

Multiple sources with the same author and date

If you cite multiple sources by the same author which were published in the same year, it’s important to distinguish between them in your citations. To do this, insert an ‘a’ after the year in the first one you reference, a ‘b’ in the second, and so on:

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

A bibliography or reference list appears at the end of your text. It lists all your sources in alphabetical order by the author’s last name, giving complete information so that the reader can look them up if necessary.

The reference entry starts with the author’s last name followed by initial(s). Only the first word of the title is capitalised (as well as any proper nouns).

Sources with multiple authors in the reference list

As with in-text citations, up to three authors should be listed; when there are four or more, list only the first author followed by ‘ et al. ’:

Reference list entries vary according to source type, since different information is relevant for different sources. Formats and examples for the most commonly used source types are given below.

• Entire book
• Book chapter
• Translated book
• Edition of a book

Journal articles

• Print journal
• Online-only journal with DOI
• Online-only journal with no DOI

• General web page
• Online article or blog
• Social media post

Sometimes you won’t have all the information you need for a reference. This section covers what to do when a source lacks a publication date or named author.

No publication date

When a source doesn’t have a clear publication date – for example, a constantly updated reference source like Wikipedia or an obscure historical document which can’t be accurately dated – you can replace it with the words ‘no date’:

Note that when you do this with an online source, you should still include an access date, as in the example.

When a source lacks a clearly identified author, there’s often an appropriate corporate source – the organisation responsible for the source – whom you can credit as author instead, as in the Google and Wikipedia examples above.

When that’s not the case, you can just replace it with the title of the source in both the in-text citation and the reference list:

Harvard referencing uses an author–date system. Sources are cited by the author’s last name and the publication year in brackets. Each Harvard in-text citation corresponds to an entry in the alphabetised reference list at the end of the paper.

Vancouver referencing uses a numerical system. Sources are cited by a number in parentheses or superscript. Each number corresponds to a full reference at the end of the paper.

A Harvard in-text citation should appear in brackets every time you quote, paraphrase, or refer to information from a source.

The citation can appear immediately after the quotation or paraphrase, or at the end of the sentence. If you’re quoting, place the citation outside of the quotation marks but before any other punctuation like a comma or full stop.

In Harvard referencing, up to three author names are included in an in-text citation or reference list entry. When there are four or more authors, include only the first, followed by ‘ et al. ’

Though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there is a difference in meaning:

• A reference list only includes sources cited in the text – every entry corresponds to an in-text citation .
• A bibliography also includes other sources which were consulted during the research but not cited.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2023, September 15). A Quick Guide to Harvard Referencing | Citation Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 30 July 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/referencing/harvard-style/

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APA Citation Guide (7th edition) : Reference List and Sample Paper

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Quick Rules for an APA Reference List

Your research paper ends with a list of all the sources cited in your paper. Here are some quick rules for this Reference list:

• Begin the reference list on a new page after the text.
• Name it "References," and center the section label in bold at the top of the page.
• Order the reference list alphabetically by author (last name of the first author followed by the initials of the author's given name(s)).
• Alphabetize entries by authors who have the same given name and last name with suffixes indicating birth order chronologically, oldest first.
• Double-space the entire list (both within and between entries).
• Apply a hanging indent of 0.5 in. to each entry. This means that the first line of the reference is flush left and subsequent lines are indented 0.5 in. from the left margin.

Sample Paper with Reference List

The American Psychological Association (APA) has created  a sample paper  that includes explanations of the elements and formatting in APA 7th ed. 

Headings and Title Pages

APA Running Head   This resource discusses how to format running heads in APA style.

APA Title Page: Format and Templates   This article discusses how to format APA title pages and provides templates for MS Word.

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Reference List: Reference List: Overview

Basics of reference list entries.

Reference list entries contain specific publication information, allowing readers to find the publication. The information is presented in a standard format, including order of information, use of italics and parentheses, and other markers to help distinguish between different parts of the reference entry. APA style entries follow this basic format:

Author. (Publication date). Title of document. Publishing information. Electronic retrieval information.

• Only list sources you cite in your text. Do not include sources you read but did not cite.
• The reference list should come after the text of your paper but before any tables, figures, or appendices.
• The reference list appears on its own page, with the title References at the top, centered and in bold type.
• As with the rest of the paper, reference entries should be double spaced.
• Use one space after the punctuation within each reference (e.g., after the period that follows the date). See APA 7, Section 16.1.
• All references have a hanging indent, which means the first line is flush left, and all subsequent lines are indented ½ inch to the right. Learn how to create a hanging indent under the "General Document Formatting" section at the Academic Skills Center.
• References appear in alphabetical order by surname of the author. If there is more than one source with the same author, then those references appear in chronological order, earliest source first.

For specific examples of numerous reference formats with notes and tips, see the  Common Reference List Examples  page. For help on evaluating resources and identifying types of resources, please visit the library's  Evaluating Resources  pages.

Start with each author's last name, followed by a comma and the first and middle initials (or just the first initial if that is all that is provided). Separate each author with a comma, and include the ampersand (&) before the last name in the list. When creating a reference for a work with two group authors, use an ampersand, not a comma to separate them (as you would with two individual authors).

List authors' names in the order in which they appear on the publication. The order of names often carries significance, so it is important not to change the order in your listing. To be listed as  first author  for a publication usually means that person is the lead researcher on the project.

Severino, C., & Knight, M. Graves, S. J., Anders, K. C., & Balester, V. M.

• For corporate authors—companies, institutions, and other types of collective authors—simply list the corporate name. Corporate authors are common in technical reports and other institutional documents that represent the work of a whole organization.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Note that when multiple layers of government agencies are listed as authors in a work, use just the most specific author in the reference.

Instead of “U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute,” use the most specific author.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Health and awareness . https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/education-and-awareness

When creating a reference for a work with multiple authors, provide surnames and initials for up to 20 authors. For sources with 21 or more authors, use ellipsis points after the name of the 19th author, followed by the final author's surname and initials.

Steyer, T., Ortiz, K., Schemmel, L., Armstrong, B., Hicks, L., Simac, M., Perez, K., Nyung, J., Schlenz, W., Robins, K., O’Neil, O., Muhammad, E., Moore, J. L., Rosinski, P., Peeples, T., Pigg, S., Rife, M. C., Brunk-Chavez, B.,Tasaka, R.... Curtis, F.

When providing a reference entry to a whole edited collection, list the editors at the beginning of the entry and include the abbreviation Ed. (for one editor) or Eds. (for two or more editors) in parentheses after the names.

Bodhran, A. T. (Ed.). Lai, P., & Smith, L. C. (Eds.).

Publication Date

For most publications, include just the year in parentheses.

For publications with no publication date noted, use the letters n.d. within the parentheses to indicate  no date . The most common type of resource with no date is a webpage .

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) . https://www.cdc.gov/copd/index.html

Newspapers and popular magazines are easier to find with the month or day of publication rather than a volume and issue number. For periodicals such as a weekly news magazine like Time or a daily newspaper like The New York Times , include the month or month and day.

Hubbard, A. (2014, January 8). New York to be 21st state to OK Medical Marijuana. Los Angeles Times . https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-sh-new-york-medical-marijuana-graphic-20140108-story.html

For republished texts, use the date from the republished version you read. At the very end of the reference list entry, include a note in parentheses with the original publication date.

Piaget, J. (2000). The psychology of the child. Basic Books. https://archive.org/details/psychologyofchil00piag_0/page/n5 (Original work published 1969)

For in-text citations of these republished texts, include both dates with a slash separating them, listing the original publication date first and then the date of the republished version you read.

(Piaget, 1969/2000).

Title of Document

Include the title of the document that you are referencing. Depending on the type of resource, you may have to include more than one title (for an article and the journal, for instance). Do not add quotation marks around titles (unless part of the original title).

• Article and chapter titles follow sentence-case capitalization in regular font style.
• Also capitalize the first word in a subtitle following a colon.
• Provide the periodical title exactly as shown on the cited work (e.g., The New England Journal of Medicine ). Abbreviate only if the official title has an abbreviation (e.g., JAMA Pediatrics ).
• Italicize journal titles and use title-case capitalization.
• Italicize book titles and use sentence-case capitalization.
• Italicize webpages and websites and use sentence-case capitalization.
• For books in multiple editions, include edition information in parentheses after the book title: (5th ed.).
• For ebooks, the format, platform, or device is not included in the reference. (Note that this guideline is a change from APA 6, which recommended including this information in brackets.)

Simpson, A.V., Stewart, C., & Pitsis, T. (2014). Normal compassion: A framework for compassionate decision making. Journal of Business Ethics , 119 (4), 473–491. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1831-y

Publishing Information

For articles.

For articles, you should generally provide the volume, issue number (if available), and page numbers for the publishing information. Italicize the volume number and use an en dash between the page numbers. For examples and more information, see the Common Reference List Examples page.

• In APA 7, you no longer need to include the publisher location (city and state) as part of a reference.
• Spell and capitalize the publisher name exactly as it appears in the cited work, except for designations of business structure (e.g., Inc., Ltd., LLC), which should be omitted. If the publisher is an imprint or division of a larger publishing company, provide only the specific imprint/division. If two or more publishers are listed on the copyright page, include them all, separated by semicolons.

Burgess, R. (2019). Rethinking global health: Frameworks of power . Routledge.

• In a situation where the publisher of a book is the same as the author, omit the publisher from the publishing element.

World Health Organization. (2019). International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems (11th ed.). https://icd.who.int/

Electronic Retrieval Information

Provide the digital object identifier (DOI) number for articles and books that have them. For articles and books without DOI numbers retrieved from common academic research databases, there is no need to provide any additional electronic retrieval information (the reference list entry looks like the entry for a print copy of the source). For articles and books without DOI number retrieved on the open web, include the URL.

• In APA 7, standardize DOIs in URL form with "https://doi.org/" before the number.
• In almost all cases, the name of the library or institution should not be in the DOI.
• In APA 7, active hyperlinks for DOIs and URLs should be used for documents meant for screen reading. Present these hyperlinks in blue and underlined text (the default formatting in Microsoft Word), although plain black text is also acceptable. Be consistent in your formatting choice for DOIs and URLs throughout your reference list.

Please see the Quick Guide to Electronic Resources for more guidance on how to format DOI numbers, URLs, and other electronically accessed information.

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This page gives basic guidelines for formatting the reference list at the end of a standard APA research paper. Most sources follow fairly straightforward rules. However, because  sources obtained from academic journals  carry special weight in research writing, these sources  are subject to special rules . Thus, this page presents basic guidelines for citing academic journals separate from its "ordinary" basic guidelines. This distinction is made clear below.

Formatting a Reference list using APA

Your reference list should be included at the end of your paper. The whole point of the reference list is to provide the information necessary for any reader to locate and retrieve any source you cite in the body of the paper. Each source you cite in the paper must appear in your reference list; likewise, each entry in the reference list must be cited in your text.

Your references should begin on a new page separate from the text of the essay; label this page "References" in bold, centered at the top of the page (do NOT underline or use quotation marks for the title). All text should be double-spaced just like the rest of your essay.

The Basics for Most Sources

• All lines after the first line of each entry in your reference list should be indented one-half inch from the left margin. This is called hanging indentation. (This is a key attribute of APA format)
• All authors' names should be inverted (i.e., last names should be provided first).
• For example, the reference entry for a source written by Jane Marie Smith would begin with "Smith, J. M."
• If a middle name isn't available, just initialize the author's first name: "Smith, J."
• Give the last name and first/middle initials for all authors of a particular work up to and including 20 authors ( this is a new rule, as APA 6 only required the first six authors ). Separate each author’s initials from the next author in the list with a comma. Use an ampersand (&) before the last author’s name. If there are 21 or more authors, use an ellipsis (but no ampersand) after the 19th author, and then add the final author’s name.
• Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last name of the first author of each work.
• For multiple articles by the same author, or authors listed in the same order, list the entries in chronological order, from earliest to most recent.
• Note again that the titles of academic journals are subject to special rules. See that section below.
• Italicize titles of longer works (e.g., books, edited collections, names of newspapers, and so on).
• Do not italicize, underline, or put quotes around the titles of shorter works such as chapters in books or essays in edited collections.

The Basics for Academic Journal Citations using APA

• Include journal titles in full, such as " Hawai'i Journal of Medicine & Public Health " instead of an abbreviation.
• Italicize journal titles.
• For example, you should use  Past & Present  instead of  Past and Present.
• This distinction is based on the type of source being cited. Academic journal titles have all major words capitalized, while other sources' titles do not.
• Capitalize  the first word of the titles and subtitles of   journal articles , as well as the  first word after a colon or a dash  in the title, and  any proper nouns .
• Do not italicize or underline the article title.
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AMA Style (11th ed): Citing Your Sources

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Basic rules for all AMA citations

Anonymous works:

If there is no named author, follow the citation style for the item, and omit the author name field.  If the item is really authored by a person going by the name Anonymous, use the word "Anonymous" as if it were a complete name of the author, and then use the appropriate style.

Author names in all references:

For materials with 1-6 authors or editors, list all author or editor names.

For materials with 7 or more authors or editors, list the first three, then abbreviate with et al. 

Capitalization of titles in reference list:

For journal article titles and book chapters: capitalize the first letter of the first word, proper names, names of trials or study groups, and abbreviations. For titles of books and government documents, capitalize the first letter of each major word, but not articles, prepositions of less than 3 letters, conjunctions, or infinitives.

(note: No guidance is provided regarding capitalization for titles of conference materials, titles of journals, or other titles used in AMA citations.)

Titles of journals :

Use PubMed journal abbreviations. You can find these by using the citing tool within PubMed, or search the NLM Catalog for journal titles to locate the preferred abbreviation. If no abbreviation is found in PubMed or the NLM Catalog, consult section 13.10 of the AMA Manual of Style for standard abbreviations for individual words used in a title.

Non-scholarly or non-peer-reviewed materials appearing in journals (editorials, letters to the editor, comments, interviews, etc.):

Unlike prior editions of AMA style, the 11th edition has removed the suggestion to indicate special types of materials within journals. Cite all materials published in journals using the article style.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.):

"Nonhuman artificial intelligence, language models, machine learning, or similar technologies cannot be listed as authors because these technologies do not qualify for authorship." (quotation from AMA Manual, section 5.1.12). According to a strict reading of the Manual, AI programs should never appear in a reference list as an author or creator of content. Instead, AMA suggest that writers place an acknowledgement into the acknowledgement section of the manuscript or describe how AI was used in the Methods section of the manuscript. The primary goal of the AMA Manual of Style is to share the official JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) guidance for formatting manuscripts for JAMA, so this is helpful in this context. However, it is difficult to put into place in coursework, where assignments typically do not include either an acknowledgements or Methods section. When writing for a class, review  the syllabus or  speak with the faculty member to determine if you are allowed to use AI tools, then use the guidance on this page to appropriately describe use of AI in your written assignments.

How to cite information when there is no guidance on this website:

This website attempts to summarize over 500 pages of content from the AMA Manual and cannot cover all. Read the AMA Manual of Style, section 3, to find guidance for citing many other types of publications. If there is no guidance in the Manual on your specific type of publication-- which there may be, the Manual does not include everything-- adapt an existing AMA citation style.

General format: Author AA, Author BB, Author CC. Title of article. Abbreviated Title of Journal. Year of publication;volume(issue):complete page numbers or e-locator. DOI (if not provided, omit and replace with an accessed date and a URL)

Note that there is no period at the end of the DOI or URL in online journal article citations.

Print journal article:

Towfighi A, Markovic D, Ovbiagele B. Utility of Framingham coronary disease risk score for predicting cardiac risk after stroke.  Stroke. 2012;43(11):2942-2947.

Journal article viewed online with DOI available:

Towfighi A, Markovic D, Ovbiagele B. Utility of Framingham coronary disease risk score for predicting cardiac risk after stroke. Stroke . 2012;43(11):2942-2947. doi: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.112.668319

Journal article viewed online, but the journal does not use DOI:

Ng L, Karunasinghe N, Benjamin CS, Ferguson LR. Beyond PSA: are new prostate cancer biomarkers of potential value to New Zealand doctors? N Z Med J. 2012;125(1353). Accessed April 15, 2020. https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal-articles/beyond-psa-are-new-prostate-cancer-biomarkers-of-potential-value-to-new-zealand-doctors/

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

"Nonhuman artificial intelligence, language models, machine learning, or similar technologies cannot be listed as authors because these technologies do not qualify for authorship." (quotation from AMA Manual, section 5.1.12). No AI programs should ever appear in the numbered reference list. AMA suggests that writers place an acknowledgement into the acknowledgement section of the manuscript or describe how AI was used in the Methods section of the manuscript. This advice is difficult to put into place in coursework, where assignments typically do not include either an acknowledgements or Methods section. When writing for a class, review  the syllabus or  speak with the faculty member to determine if you are allowed to use AI tools, then use this guide to get ideas for how to acknowledge the source.

"Section 5.2.1.1 Acknowledgment of Use of Artificial Intelligence and Language Models in Writing and Editing

Authors should report the use of artificial intelligence, language models, machine learning, or similar technologies to create content or assist with writing or editing of manuscripts in the Acknowledgment section or the Methods section if this is part of formal research design or methods. This should include a description of the content that was created or edited and the name of the language model or tool, version and extension numbers, and manufacturer. (Note: this does not include basic tools for checking grammar, spelling, references, etc.)."

Strict interpretation of this for publication in a journal:

In 1-5 sentences, describe what you used AI to do in the manuscript, with enough information to explain the actual model used. Place this in the Methods section if the AI content was important to the methods. Otherwise, place in the Acknowledgements section. The AMA Manual does not provide any examples. Here are two examples created by a USC librarian that attempt to fulfill the AMA rules:

"On August 3, 2023, I used AI to summarize five research papers, to help me determine which idea was least studied and focus my topics for this essay. I used ChatGPT, model 3.5, made by OpenAI, hosted at https://chat.openai.com/."

"I used Bard, release 2023.07.13, made by Google and hosted at https://bard.google.com/, to edit my manuscript. I uploaded my original writing and asked Bard to reduce the word count and make the language more formal. I also used Bard to determine which of the data points I had collected would be the most useful for including as figures, and used its advice to create figure 1 and table 2."

Potential ways to acknowledge use of AI tools in a written document for a course:

There is no guidance on this from the AMA Manual. As typical with this style, when no guidance exists, try to follow the basic rules of the style while respecting the underlying goal of any citation system: to acknowledge the use of other's ideas, thoughts, and opinions. While AI might not be a person, it’s still not you, so its ideas and work needs to be acknowledged. Based  on this, here are some options that might work:

- While your assignment may not require you to include a formal Methods section, you could decide to include one anyway. You could describe all the methods used to create this assignment: searching for literature, using modeling software, collaboratively editing with a colleague, etc., alongside how you used AI, and which model you used.

- Add a few sentences about your use of AI and the model (as recommended by AMA) into another section of the assignment. If you used AI to generate ideas, perhaps this acknowledge would fit into the introduction. If you used AI to edit the paper, this might be acknowledged in the conclusion. 

- AMA style requires a numbered reference list. You could add an unnumbered bullet point to the start or end of your reference list that acknowledges the use(s) of AI in your assignment and provides the model number as instructed by AMA.

Books and chapters

General format: Author AA, Author BB, Author CC. Title of book . Edition number (if beyond first). Publisher name; year of publication. To indicate online access, add the word Accessed and the date you accessed the item, then the URL.

While some books and book chapters may have assigned DOIs, book citations do not include DOIs, only URLs and accessed dates. If a book has editors instead of or in addition to authors, their names are indicated with "eds." after the author field names.

Print book:

Wasserman K, Hansen JE, Sue DY, et al . Principles of Exercise Testing and Interpretation: Including Pathophysiology and Clinical Applications . 5th ed. Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott William and Wilkins; 2012. 

Entire edited print book:

Alldredge BK, Corelli RL, Ernst ME, et al., eds. Koda-Kimble and Young’s Applied Therapeutics: The Clinical Use of Drugs. 10th ed. Lippincott Williams and Wilkins; 2013.

Chapter within an edited book in print:

Relling MV, Giacomini KM. Pharmacogenomics. In: Brunton LL, Chabner BA, Knollmann BC, eds. Goodman and Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics . 12th ed.  McGraw-Hill; 2011: 145-168.

Book viewed online:

Suchmacher M, Geller M. Practical Biostatistics. Elsevier; 2012. Accessed November 5, 2012. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/book/9780124157941

Edited book viewed online :

Brunton LL, Blumenthal DK, Murri N, Hilal-Danden R, Knollmann BC, eds. Goodman and Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics . 12th ed. McGraw-Hill; 2011. Accessed November 4, 2012. https://www.accesspharmacy.com/resourceToc.aspx?resourceID=28

Chapter within an edited book viewed online:

Relling MV, Giacomini KM. Chapter 7. Pharmacogenomics. In : Brunton LL, Blumenthal DK, Murri N, Hilal-Danden R, Knollmann BC, eds. Goodman and Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics . 12th ed. McGraw-Hill; 2011. Accessed October 4, 2012. https://www.accesspharmacy.com/content.aspx?aID=16659580

Conference presentations

If materials presented at a conference are published elsewhere as a book, issue of a journal, or other medium, AMA instructs you to cite them using that reference style. Only use this style for materials not formally published as part of another publication.

General format: Author AA, Author BB, Author CC. Title of poster.  Poster presented at: Name of conference; Month, Day Year; City, State abbreviation.

Pasternak B. Carvedilol vs metoprolol succinate and risk of mortality in patients with heart failure: national cohort study. Paper presented at: European Society of Cardiology Congress; August 31, 2014; Barcelona, Spain. Morales M, Zhou X. Health practices of immigrant women: indigenous knowledge in an urban environment. Paper presented at: 78th Association for Information Science and Technology Annual Meeting; November 6-10, 2015; St Louis, MO. Accessed March 15, 2016. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2857070.2857108

• If the conference is held outside the US, replace "City, State" with City, Country.
• The manual instructs you to use this to cite any type of presentation occurring at a conference, using any special name the conference chose to use. To cite a poster, a presentation, a keynote address, a panel, a lecture, etc., replace the word 'paper' in the phrase  "Paper presented at."
• Add the Accessed date and the DOI (preferred) or the accessed date and URL (if DOI not available) for materials you viewed online.

Government or agency reports

3.13.2 Special Materials: Government or Agency Reports provides this format for citing reports issued by a department or agency of a government.

(1) name of author (if given); (2) title of bulletin in italics; (3) name of issuing bureau, agency, department, or other governmental division; (4) date of publication; (5) page numbers (if specified); (6) publication number (if any); (7) series number (if given); (8) online accessed date (if applicable); and (9) web address (if applicable).

3.15.5 Electronic References:Government/Organization Reports provides this guidance for citing Government/Organization reports: "These reports are treated much like electronic journal and book references: use journal style for articles and book style for monographs."

• There is no guidance provided in the Manual for how to differentiate between "reports issued by a department or agency of a government" or a "government/organization report," and so there is no way to determine which of these is "more correct." Be consistent in your choices for citation in your document and within content: if you cite two articles from MMWR, use the same style for each.
• While some online-issued government reports include DOIs, AMA style requires the accessed date and URL.
• The example in the Manual for Government or Agency Reports includes semicolons between each field; the worked examples in the Manual show semicolons, colons, periods, and commas between fields, and there is no explanation for how or why to use each diacritical mark.. In creating examples, the diacritical marks used in the Manual were used as guides.

MMRW is a journal that publishes reports from the US CDC. Based on the rules of AMA Style, you could choose to cite reports from MMWR as a Government Report or a Journal Article. Here is the same report in both styles:

Selik RM, Mokotoff ED, Branson B, Owen SM, Whitmore S, Hall HI. Revised Surveillance Case Definition for HIV Infection- United States, 2014 . Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2014;1-11: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Accessed January 5, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/rr/rr6303.pdf

Selik RM, Mokotoff ED, Branson B, Owen SM, Whitmore S, Hall HI. Revised Surveillance Case Definition for HIV Infection- United States, 2014. MMWR. 2014;63(3):1-11. Accessed January 5, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/rr/rr6303.pdf

The Government Accountability Office is a federal office charged with assessing the function of federal government. They publish reports in the form of monographs. Based on the rules of AMA Style, you could choose to cite reports from this office as a Government Report or Monograph style:

Covid-19:Federal Efforts Could be Strengthened by Timely and Concerted Actions . United States Government Accountability Office. September 21, 2020. GAO-20-701. Accessed January 5, 2021. https://www.gao.gov/assets/710/709934.pdf

United States Government Accountability Office. Covid-19:Federal Efforts Could be Strengthened by Timely and Concerted Actions. Government Publication Office; 2020. Accessed January 5, 2021. https://www.gao.gov/assets/710/709934.pdf

In citing data from a website, include the following elements, if available, in the order shown:

■ Authors’ surnames and initials, if given, or name of the group who made the site

■ Title of the specific item cited. If none is given, use the name of the organization responsible for the site.

■ Name of the website

■ [Date published]

■ Updated [date]

■ Accessed [date]

■ URL (verify that the link still works as close as possible to publication)

There is no guidance in the Manual on how to separate elements (using periods, commas, semicolons, etc.); the example above is directly copied from the Manual. The examples below use the diacritical marks as shown in one example in the Manual, separating each field with a period.

Warfarin. Drug Information Online: Drugs.com. September 1, 2012. Updated January 23, 2020. Accessed April 15, 2020. https://www.drugs.com/cons/warfarin.html

DrugBank Online. Acetaminophen. DrugBank Online. June 13, 2005. Updated January 5, 2021. Accessed January 5, 2021. https://go.drugbank.com/drugs/DB00316

Additional citation types

Package insert s and prescribing information

Name of drug. Type of material. Company Name; year of publication. To indicate online access, add the accessed date and URL.

Lamasil. Package insert. Sandoz Pharmaceutics Corporation; 1993.

Lovenox. Prescribing information. s anofi - aventis U.S. LLC. Accessed April 15, 2020. https://products.sanofi.us/Lovenox/Lovenox.pdf

Drug Monographs . AMA style does not provide rules for citing drug monographs. These are suggested by the Norris Library and were created by adapting the book and website styles, as these contain similar pieces of information.

Print drug monographs

Author AA. Title of monograph being cited . Editor AA, ed. Title of book . Edition (if beyond first). Publisher name; year of publication.

Online drug monographs

Title of monograph. Title of book of monographs . Title of compendia where book is found (only include if different than book title). Pub lished date. Updated date. Accessed date. URL

Lisinopril. McEvoy GK, ed. AHFS Drug I nformation 2014 . American Society of Health - System Pharmacists, Inc.; 2014.

Lisinopril. AHFS DI (Adult and Pediatric) . Lexicomp. Updated March 11, 2016. Accessed May 11, 2016. https://online.lexi.com/lco/action/doc/retrieve/docid /complete_ashp /414040

Inventor names, inventor; assignee company, assignee. Title of patent. Patent issued agency and number. Date patent was grant ed.

Abram AZ, Fuchsuber L, inventors; Stiefel Research Australia, assignee. Foamable suspension gel. US Patent 8,158,109. April 17, 2012.

Note: this example is for a patent that was granted by the US Patent Office. To cite a patent issued by a different patent office, use this same style but replace the words "US Patent" with the issuing body: WIPO Patent.   You may instead need to cite a patent application. Use the same style, but replace the words "US Patent" with "US Patent Application."

Personal communications:

AMA Style states that personal communications such as phone calls, emails, conversations, etc. are not included in the reference list. However, you should cite these materials parenthetically within the text. Provide the name and highest academic degree of the author, type of communication, and date sent. If this would compromise patient anonymity, replace the name with a title and remove the day of communication.

Individuals on this new experimental drug should not take aspirin. (Sara P. Norris, M.D., email communication, November 3, 2012.)

For all five patients I have seen with this rare disorder, I have prescribed Interferon. (Physician at LAC + USC Healthcare Network, phone call, October 2012).

Common questions about AMA

What is a DOI?:

A DOI is a Digital Object Identifier. It is a series of letters and numbers that identifies a specific online item. Depending on the publisher, DOIs may be registered through international clearinghouses and function as web links or may not. AMA style allows you to choose to display DOIs in references in two ways, with or without the https://.  doi:10.1001/jama.2017.13737 and  https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2017.13737 are both acceptable, and used interchangeably throughout the Manual when a DOI is included in a reference. When you discuss a DOI in writing, capital letters are used to denote that this is an abbreviation. When using a DOI in a citation, AMA Style requires all lowercase: doi.

Including words/phrases like "Paper presented at", "Date Accessed," "Date Updated," etc. in the citations: AMA Style sometimes requires the use of these "helper phrases" in the reference; in other cases, they are used in examples to show you where to place the information and will be deleted in your final completed citation. AMA Style is not particularly consistent nor logical in its choices to include or exclude "helper phrases" in citations. Examine both the example citation format and the worked examples citing a specific item to determine what to include.

Use Online or Print style?

AMA Style requires you to cite the version of an item you read. An article might be available online and in a print journal. If you read the online copy, cite it using the online citation format. If you read the print item, use the print format.

The URL is incredibly long-- do I need to include the whole thing? AMA Style's main preference is for you to include the entire and functional URL. However, if a URL is very long and breaks across lines, you may remove portions of the lengthy URL as long as the reader would reasonably be able to access the item from the short URL and information from the citation itself.

Here is an example of when and how to edit URLs:

is a citation to a drug monograph appearing in the book AHFS DI (Adult and Pediatric) available on the online database Lexicomp. The URL provided by Lexicomp for this monograph is actually much longer (it is https://online-lexi-com.libproxy1.usc.edu/lco/action/doc/retrieve/docid/complete_ashp/414040?cesid=aNQswQkZlPy&searchUrl=%2Flco%2Faction%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dlisinopril%26t%3Dname%26va%3Dlisinopril). If you paste the short URL provided in this citation into your browser, you will arrive at the table of contents of the book AHFS DI (Adult and Pediatric) and can then look for the monograph described in this citation (Lisinopril).

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APA Style, 7th edition - Citing Sources

• Getting Started
• Formatting the Paper
• Dissertation & SPP Formatting
• Student vs. Professional
• Writing Style

Reference List Rules

Apa style scaffolded reference elements worksheet, using ebsco cite tool, how to create a hanging indent.

• All about the DOI
• OVERVIEW - READ FIRST!
• Dictionary Entry
• Government Report
• Journal Article
• Lecture Notes
• Legal Resources
• Lexicomp via UpToDate
• Magazine Article
• Newsletter Article
• Newspaper Article
• Online Course or MOOC
• Organization Report
• Social Media
• Tables & Figures
• Video: Films on Demand
• Video: Online
• Video: Psychotherapy.net
• Video: YouTube
• APA Paper Review (Regis Students Only)

Your paper ends with a list of all the sources cited in the text of the paper. Follow these rules for the reference list.

• Start a new page for your reference list. Place the label References  at the top center of the page.  Place it in bold format but do not capitalize or italicize it.
• Double-space the list. Do not add any extra spaces between references.
• Start the first line of each reference at the left margin; indent each subsequent line five spaces (a hanging indent).  TIP: Use MS Word function under the  Paragraph tab to create this.  
• Put your list in alphabetical order. Alphabetize the list by the first word in the reference, which will typically be the author’s last name. When the author is unknown, alphabetize by the first word in the title, ignoring the words a, an, the .
• For each author, provide the last name followed by a comma and the first (and middle, if listed) initials followed by periods.
• Italicize the titles of individual works: books, films, reports, newspapers, and the title and volume number of journals and magazines.
• Do not italicize titles of articles from newspapers, magazines, or journals, chapter titles from a book, or chapters or sections of an Internet document.
• For article, book, report,  and chapter titles: Capitalize only the first letter of the first word of a title and subtitle, and all proper nouns (names of people, places, organizations).
• Every in-text citation should have a corresponding entry in the reference list (except for personal communication).
• Do not include personal communication (such as interviews, emails) in the reference list.  Simply include an in-text citation.
• Journal articles should include DOIs.  
• Do not place a period after a DOI or a URL.
• Include the header on your references page.
• See the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.), starting on p. 281 for more information.
• APA Scaffolded Reference Elements Worksheet Use this worksheet to help you formulate your References list based on the different elements of the citation.

Use the Cite Tools in databases such as EBSCO’s CINAHL with caution!

While the citations created can be a good “starting point,” they often have errors.  Make sure you proofread and correct!  Pay particular attention to capitalization, punctuation, and italicization. Look for missing information, such as the DOI.  EBSCO posts this at the top of each set of citations created by the tool:

...Make any necessary corrections before using. Pay special attention to personal names, capitalization, and dates. Always consult your library resources for the exact formatting and punctuation guidelines.

See the document below for an example and more information. 

• Example of corrected EBSCO citation in APA 7th style.

APA style requires you to use a hanging indent for your sources. These are instructions for creating a hanging indent in Word documents.

• Place your cursor at the beginning of your second line, before any text.
• Right click your mouse.
• Select Paragraph from the resulting pop up menu.
• Under Indentation, use the Special pull-down menu to select Hanging .

Right click your mouse to open the Paragraph tab, or choose it from the ribbon bar.

Under "Special," select "Hanging."

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Elements of Reference List Entries

Reference list entries include the four elements of the author, date, title, and source.

This page describes each element in detail:

• the author element , including the format of individual author names and of group author names
• the date element , including the format of the date and how to include retrieval dates
• the title element , including the format of the title and how to include bracketed descriptions
• the source element , including the format of the source and how to include database information

View the reference examples to see the elements of reference list entries in action.

A summary of this guidance is presented on the page about the basic principles of reference list entries . Additional information and examples are available in Chapters 9 and 10 of the Publication Manual .

If a work does not have an author, date, title, or source, visit the page on how to adjust reference list entries when reference information is missing .

The elements of reference list entries are covered in the seventh edition APA Style manuals in the Publication Manual Sections 9.7 to 9.37 and the Concise Guide Sections 9.7 to 9.37

Related handouts

• Common Reference Examples Guide (PDF, 147KB)
• Creating an APA Style Reference List (PDF, 179KB)
• Scaffolded Reference Elements Worksheet (PDF, 150KB)

The author refers broadly to the person(s) or group(s) responsible for a work. An author may be

• an individual,
• multiple people,
• a group (institution, government agency, organization, etc.), or
• a combination of people and groups.

This element includes not only authors of articles, books, reports, and other works but also others who played primary roles in the creation of a work, such as editors of books, directors of films, principal investigators of grants, podcast hosts, and so on.

When you cannot determine who the author is, treat the work as having no author.

Format of individual author names

Follow these guidelines to format the author element. Additional guidelines for less common cases are provided in the Publication Manual .

• Invert all individual authors’ names, providing the surname first, followed by a comma and the author’s initials.

Author, A. A.

• Use a comma to separate an author’s initials from additional author names, even when there are only two authors. Use an ampersand (&) before the final author’s name.

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B.

• Provide surnames and initials for up to and including 20 authors. When there are two to 20 authors, use an ampersand before the final author’s name.

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C.

• When there are 21 or more authors, include the first 19 authors’ names, insert an ellipsis (but no ampersand), and then add the final author’s name.

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., Author, C. C., Author, D. D., Author, E. E., Author, F. F., Author, G. G., Author, H. H., Author, I. I., Author, J. J., Author, K. K., Author, L. L., Author, M. M., Author, N. N., Author, O. O., Author, P. P., Author, Q. Q., Author, R. R., Author, S. S., . . . Author, Z. Z.

• Use one space between initials.
• Write the author’s name exactly as it appears on the published work, including hyphenated surnames and two-part surnames.

Santos-García, S., & Velasco Rodríguez, M. L.

• Retain the author’s preferred capitalization.

van der Waal, P. N.

Format of group author names

Group authors are often government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and task forces. Follow these guidelines to format the names of group authors in the reference list.

• If the names of individuals are presented on the title page or cover, treat the work as having individual authors.
• If only the name of the group is presented on the title page or cover, treat the work as having a group author, even if individuals are credited elsewhere in the work (e.g., in an acknowledgments section).
• Spell out the full name of a group author in the reference list entry, followed by a period.

National Institute of Mental Health.

• On a page from an organizational or government agency website, the organization or government agency itself is considered the author, unless otherwise specified. The author of a webpage or website may also be located on an “about us” or acknowledgments page.
• An abbreviation for the group author can be used in the text (e.g., NIMH for National Institute of Mental Health); however, do not include an abbreviation for a group author in a reference list entry.

Correct: National Institute of Mental Health.

Incorrect: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

Incorrect: NIMH.

• When numerous layers of government agencies are listed as the author of a work, use the most specific agency as the author in the reference (e.g., use “National Institute of Nursing Research” rather than “U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Nursing Research”). The names of parent agencies not present in the group author name appear in the source element as the publisher.

National Institute of Nursing Research. (2015). A family’s perspective: Pediatric palliative care stories (NIH Publication No. 15-NR-8018). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.ninr.nih.gov/sites/files/docs/NINR_508c_FamilyStories_0.pdf

The date refers to the date of publication of the work. The date will take one of the following forms:

• year, month, and day (i.e., an exact date);
• year and month;
• year and season; or
• range of dates (e.g., range of years, range of exact dates).

When you cannot determine the date of publication, treat the work as having no date .

Format of the date

Follow the date format for the reference type as shown in the Publication Manual . Most references use only the year. Additional guidelines for less common cases are provided in the Publication Manual .

• Enclose the date of publication in parentheses, followed by a period
• For works from a reference category that includes the month, day, and/or season along with the year, put the year first, followed by a comma, and then the month and date or season.

(2020, August 26).

(2018, July).

(2019, Winter).

• For unpublished, informally published, or in-progress works, provide the year the work was produced. Do not use “in progress” or “submitted for publication” in the date element of a reference.
• If a work has been accepted for publication but is not yet published, use the term “in press” instead of a year.

(in press).

• If a work is an advance online publication, use the year of the advance online publication in the reference.
• When the date of original publication is approximate, use the abbreviation “ca.” (which stands for “circa”).

(ca. 1999).

If a date of last update is available (such as for a webpage), use it in the reference. Do not include a date of last review in a reference because content that has been reviewed has not necessarily been changed.

Retrieval dates

Include a retrieval date only if the work is unarchived and designed to change over time. Most references do not include retrieval dates. Examples of some that do are in Chapter 10 of the Publication Manual and on the reference examples page.

When a retrieval date is needed, use the following format for it.

Retrieved September 30, 2020, from https://xxxxx

The title refers to the title of the work being cited. Titles fall into two broad categories:

• works that stand alone (e.g., whole books, reports, gray literature, dissertations and theses, informally published works, data sets, videos, films, TV series, albums, podcasts, social media, and works on websites) and
• works that are part of a greater whole (e.g., periodical articles, edited book chapters, TV and podcast episodes, and songs).

When a work stands alone (e.g., a report), the title of that work appears in the title element of the reference. When a work is part of a greater whole (e.g., a journal article or edited book chapter), the title of the article or chapter appears in the title element of the reference and the title of the greater whole (the journal or edited book) appears in the source element.

When the title of the work cannot be determined, treat the work as having no title .

Format of the title

Follow these guidelines to format the title element. Additional guidelines for less common cases are provided in the Publication Manual .

• For works that are part of a greater whole (e.g., journal articles, edited book chapters), capitalize the title using sentence case . Do not italicize the title or use quotation marks around it.

Happy fish in little ponds: Testing a reference group model of achievement and emotion.

• For works that stand alone (e.g., books, reports, webpages), italicize the title, and capitalize it using sentence case .

Becoming brilliant: What science tells us about raising successful children .

• For book and report references, enclose edition information, report numbers, and volume numbers in parentheses after the title. Do not add a period between the title and the parenthetical information. Do not italicize the parenthetical information. If both edition and volume information are included, separate these elements with a comma, placing the edition number first.

The psychology of music (3rd ed.).

Nursing: A concept-based approach to learning (2nd ed., Vol. 1).

• If a numbered volume has its own title, the volume number and title are included as part of the main title, rather than in parentheses.

APA handbook of industrial and organizational psychology: Vol. 1. Building and developing the organization .

• Finish the title element with a period. However, if the title ends with a question mark or exclamation point, that punctuation mark replaces the period.

Late-onset unexplained epilepsy: What are we missing?

Bracketed descriptions

To help identify works outside the peer-reviewed academic literature (i.e., works other than articles, books, reports, etc.), provide a description of the work in square brackets after the title and before the period. Capitalize the first letter of the description, but do not italicize the description.

Comprehensive meta-analysis (Version 3.3.070) [Computer software].

Examples of works that include bracketed descriptions are some audiobooks, gray literature (e.g., press releases), audiovisual works (e.g., films, YouTube videos , photographs), software and mobile apps, data sets, manuscripts in preparation, and dissertations and theses. Bracketed descriptions are also used in social media references to indicate attached links or images.

The examples in the Publication Manual and on the reference examples page include bracketed descriptions where they are needed. When in doubt, include a description. Consistency of wording is helpful, but you may alter the wording shown in the examples to best convey the information readers need to understand the nature of the work.

The source indicates where readers can retrieve the cited work. As with titles, sources fall into two broad categories: works that are part of a greater whole and works that stand alone.

• The source for a work that is part of a greater whole (e.g., journal article, edited book chapter) is that greater whole (i.e., the journal or edited book), plus any applicable DOI or URL.
• The source for a work that stands alone (e.g., whole book, report, dissertation, thesis, film, TV series, podcast, data set, informally published work, social media, webpage) is the publisher of the work, database or archive, social media site, or website, plus any applicable DOI or URL.
• A location is not required in the source element for most works (e.g., do not include the publisher location for book references).
• Works associated with a specific location (e.g., artwork in a museum, conference presentations) include location information in the source and, depending on the work, may also include a DOI or URL.

If a work is not recoverable, treat it as having no source .

Format of the source

The format of the source varies depending on the reference type. The most common cases are presented next. Additional guidelines for less common cases are provided in the Publication Manual.

Database information in the source

Database and archive information is seldom needed in reference list entries. For example, if you retrieved a work from an academic research database, the reference very rarely includes the name of the database or the URL of the work on the database.

Visit the page on database information in references to learn when and how to include database information in references.

Visit the page on DOIs or URLs to learn how to include DOIs and URLs in references.

• MJC Library & Learning Center
• Research Guides

Ready, Set, Cite (APA, 7th)

• Reference List
• Formatting Your Paper
• How to Avoid Plagiarism

Elements of a Reference

What to cite and where (chapter 9), reference list format (9.43), reference examples (chapter 10), dois and urls (9.34-9.36).

• In-Text Citations

NoodleTools

Use noodletools to help you create your citations ..

It's easy; it's a form you fill out with the information about your source; it helps you catch mistakes.

• NoodleTools Express Use NoodleTools Express to create citations on the fly in MLA, APA, or Chicago style.
• NoodleTools (Login Full Database) This link opens in a new window Create and organize your research notes, share and collaborate on research projects, compose and error check citations, and complete your list of works cited in MLA, APA, or Chicago style using the full version of NoodleTools. You'll need to Create a Personal ID and password the first time you use NoodleTools.

NoodleTools Help:

• NoodleTools Help Desk Look up questions and answers on the NoodleTools Web site
• NoodleTools for Researchers Research guide created for MJC students

Elements of Reference List Entries: (Chapter 9)

References generally have four elements, each of which has a corresponding question for you to answer:

• Author:   Who is responsible for this work? (9.7-9.12)
• Date:   When was this work published? (9.13-9.17)
• Title:   What is this work called? (9.18-9.22)
• Source:   Where can I retrieve this work? (9.23-9.37)

By using these four elements and answering these four questions, you should be able to create a citation for any type of source.

For complete information on all of these elements, checkout the APA Style website.

This infographic shows the first page of a journal article. The locations of the reference elements are highlighted with different colors and callouts, and the same colors are used in the reference list entry to show how the entry corresponds to the source.

To create your references, you'll simple look for these elements in your source and put them together in your reference list entry.

American Psychological Association.  Example of where to find reference information for a journal article  [Infographic]. APA Style Center. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/basic-principles

What Do You Cite:

The purpose of your reference list is to provide a reliable way for readers to identify and locate the works you cited in your paper. 

In general, each work you cite in the text must appear in the reference list, and each work in the reference list must be cited in your text. Check your work carefully before submitting your manuscript or course assignment to ensure no works cited in the text are missing from the reference list and vice versa, with only the following exceptions.

Cite all outside sources whose ideas, theories, or research influenced your research paper. Specifically you site those sources that you:

• Quote  word-for-word
• Paraphrase   - rewrite using your own words
• Summarize   - restate the main idea of the source in your own words

What Don't You Cite:

There are a few kinds of works that are not included in a reference list. Usually a work is not included because readers cannot recover it or because the mention is so broad that readers do not need a reference list entry to understand the use.  

• Your original ideas and conclusions.
• Personal communications such as emails, phone calls, or text messages are cited in the text only, not in the reference list, because readers cannot retrieve personal communications.
• General mentions of whole websites, whole periodicals, and common software and apps in the text do not require in-text citations or reference list entries because the use is broad and the source is familiar.
• The source of an epigraph does not usually appear in the reference list unless the work is a scholarly book or journal. For example, if you open the paper with an inspirational quotation by a famous person, the source of the quotation does not appear in the reference list because the quotation is meant to set the stage for the work, not substantiate a key point.
• Quotations from research participants in a study you conducted can be presented and discussed in the text but do not need citations or reference list entries. Citations and reference list entries are not necessary because the quotations are part of your original research. They could also compromise participants’ confidentiality, which is an ethical violation.
• References included in a statistical meta-analysis, which are marked with an asterisk in the reference list, may be cited in the text (or not) at the author’s discretion. This exception is relevant only to authors who are conducting a meta-analysis.

Where to Cite:

You need to cite your sources in two places:

• Within your work at the place where you are incorporating the information, and 
• In a comprehensive list of all sources you’ve cited throughout the paper. This list is called References.

Placement:  The reference list  appears at the end of the paper, on its own page(s). If your research paper ends on page 8, your References begin on page 9.

Heading:  Place the section label References  in bold at the top of the page, centered.

Arrangement:  Alphabetize entries by author's last name. If source has no named author, alphabetize by the title, ignoring A, An, or The. (9.44-9.48)

Spacing:  Like the rest of the APA paper, the reference list is double-spaced throughout. Be sure NOT to add extra spaces between citations.

Indentation:  To make citations easier to scan, add a  hanging indent  of 0.5 in. to any citation that runs more than one line. Use the paragraph-formatting function of your word processing program to create your hanging indent.  

See Sample References Page (from APA Sample Student Paper):

Below you'll find two printable handouts showing APA citation examples. The first is an abbreviated list created by MJC Librarians. The second, which is more comprehensive, is from the APA Style website. Feel free to print these for your convenience or use the links to reference examples below:

• APA Citation Examples Created by MJC Librarians for you.
• Common References Examples (APA Handout) Printable handout from the American Psychological Association.
• Journal Article
• Magazine Article
• Newspaper Article
• Edited Book Chapter
• Webpage on a Website
• Classroom or Intranet Sources
• Classroom Course Pack Materials
• How to Cite ChatGPT
• Dictionary Entry
• Government Report
• Legal References (Laws & Cases)
• TED Talk References
• Religious Works
• Open Educational Resources (OER)
• Archival Documents and Collections

You can view the entire Reference Examples website below and view a helpful guide to finding useful APA style topics easily:

• APA Style: Reference Examples
• Navigating the not-so-hidden treasures of the APA Style website
• Missing Reference Information

Sometimes you won't be able to find all the elements required for your reference. In that case, see the  instructions in Table 9.1 of the APA style manual in section 9.4 or the APA Style website below:

• Direct Quotation of Material Without Page Numbers

The DOI or URL is the final component of a reference list entry. Because so much scholarship is available and/or retrieved online, most reference list entries end with either a DOI or a URL.

• A  DOI  is a unique alphanumeric string that identifies content and provides a persistent link to its location on the internet. DOIs can be found in database records and the reference lists of published works.
• A  URL  specifies the location of digital information on the internet and can be found in the address bar of your internet browser. URLs in references should link directly to the cited work when possible.

When to Include DOIs and URLs:

• Include a DOI for all works that have a DOI, regardless of whether you used the online version or the print version.
• If an online work has both a DOI and a URL, include only the DOI.
• For works without DOIs from websites (not including academic research databases), provide a URL in the reference (as long as the URL will work for readers).
• For works without DOIs from most academic research databases, do not include a URL or database information in the reference because these works are widely available. The reference should be the same as the reference for a print version of the work.
• For works from databases that publish original, proprietary material available only in that database (such as the UpToDate database) or for works of limited circulation in databases (such as monographs in the ERIC database), include the name of the database or archive and the URL of the work. If the URL requires a login or is session-specific (meaning it will not resolve for readers), provide the URL of the database or archive home page or login page instead of the URL for the work. (See APA Section 9.30 for more information). 
• If the URL is no longer working or no longer provides readers access to the content you intend to cite, try to find an archived version using the Internet Archive , then use the archived URL. If there is no archived URL, do not use that resource.

Format of DOIs and URLs:

Your DOI should look like this: 

https://doi.org/10.1037/a0040251

Follow these guidelines from the APA Style website.

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A publication of the harvard college writing program.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources 

• The Honor Code
• Reference List Format

What is a Reference list?

APA style requires you to provide, at the end of your paper, a list of the sources you have cited. The list should be double-spaced, and each line after the first one in each entry should be indented. The title of the list should be "References" and should be centered at the top of the page. You can see a sample References list here .

Each source on your reference list should include the following four elements:

Author: Who is responsible for creating the source?

The author should be listed first in each reference list entry, and the list should be alphabetical by last name. If there is more than one author, you should list each one last name first, and separate them by ampersands.

Date: When was the source published?

For books, you should include the date of publication. For journal articles, you should include the year of the volume listed. For websites and webpages, you should not use the copyright date on the website footer, which may not apply to the content on individual pages. Instead, look for a “last updated” date or a date at the top of a web article. If you are citing a website that may change, you should also include a retrieval date (the date you found and read the source). If you can’t find a publication date, list “n.d.” for no date in parentheses where the date would be listed.

Title: What is the title of the source?

In an APA reference list, titles are listed in sentence case, which means you only capitalize the first word of the title, the first word of the subtitle, and any word that appears after a colon, dash, period, or question mark. You should always capitalize proper nouns.

Sources that stand alone, like books or websites, should be listed in italics like this:

Follow the new way: American refugee resettlement policy and Hmong religious change

If you are citing a source that is contained in another source, such as an article in a book or a page on a website, you should include both titles. Sources that are part of other sources should not be listed in italics or in quotation marks like this:

Pandemics have long created labor shortages. Here’s why. Washington Post

Source: Where can the source be found by your readers?

• Citation Management Tools
• In-Text Citations
• Examples of Commonly Cited Sources
• Frequently Asked Questions About Cite Sources in APA Format
• Sample Reference List

PDFs for This Section

• Citing Sources
• Online Library and Citation Tools

APA 7: Reference List

• Paper Sections
• Quote & Paraphrase
• Format in Word
• In-Text Citations

Reference List

• Sample Paper

Format the Reference List

The reference page provides information about the resources used in your paper. Except for a few exceptions (classical works and personal communications, etc.), any source cited in your paper must have an entry in the reference list. 

To format the reference page of the paper:

Center the word References at the top of the page.

Place your references in alphabetical order

Select all of the references and set them to be double spaced and have a hanging indent.

• APA Style Reference Examples More than 100 reference examples and their corresponding in-text citations. Look for the type of work (e.g., journal article, webpage) to determine the format.
• Journal Article
• Social Media
• Videos & Films
• Government Resources

Journal Articles

General format.

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Article title. Journal Title, volume number (issue number), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy

Freeman, R., Doughty, J., Macdonald, M. E., & Muirhead, V. (2020). Inclusion oral health: Advancing a theoretical framework for policy, research and practice. Community Dentistry & Oral Epidemiology, 48 (1), 1 – 6. https://doi-org.suscorp.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/cdoe.12500

Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8 (3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185

Note: If the journal article does not have a DOI and is from an academic research database, end the reference after the page range. Do not include database information in the reference unless the journal article comes from a database that publishes works of limited circulation or original, proprietary content, such as UpToDate.

• Journal Article References: APA Style

Newspaper Articles

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year, Month Day). Title of article.  Title of Newspaper , pages.

Carey, B. (2019, March 22). Can we get better at forgetting? The New York Times . https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/health/memory-forgetting-psychology.html

Rodell, B. (2020, January 15). Looking toward a new era of Australian cuisine. New York Times . https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/dining/australian-food-restaurants.html

• Newspaper Article References: APA Style

Webpage with Author

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year, Month Day). Title of page . Site Name. URL

National Institute of Mental Health. (2018, July). Anxiety disorders . U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders/index.shtml

Woodyatt, A. (2019, September 10). Daytime naps once or twice a week may be linked to a healthy heart, researchers say . CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/10/health/nap-heart-health-wellness-intl-scli/index.html

Website: No Author Listed

Title of page . (Year, Month Day). Site name. URL

Programming language . (2020, February 15). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language

Webpage with an organization group author

Organization Name. (Year, Month Day). Title of page . URL

World Health Organization. (2018, May 24) . The top 10 causes of death . https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death

• Website References: APA Style
• Online Media References: APA Style

Magazine Articles

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year, Month Day). Article title. Magazine Title, volume number (issue number), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy

Lyons, D. (2009, June 15). Don’t ‘iTune’ us: It’s geeks versus writers. Guess who’s winning. Newsweek , 153 (24), 27.

Schaefer, N. K., & Shapiro, B. (2019, September 6). New middle chapter in the story of human evolution. Science , 365 (6457), 981–982. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aay3550

Schulman, M. (2019, September 9). Superfans: A love story. The New Yorker . https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/16/superfans-a-love-story

• Magazine Article References: APA Style

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle . Publisher Name.

• Use the same format for both print books and ebooks.
• Use the copyright date shown on the book’s copyright page as the year of publication in the reference, even if the copyright date is different than the release date.
• Include any edition information in parentheses after the title, without italics.
• If the book includes a DOI, include the DOI in the reference after the publisher name.

Rabinowitz, F. E. (2019). Deepening group psychotherapy with men: Stories and insights for the journey . American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000132-000

Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst . Penguin Books.

Edited Book Chapter

Aron, L., Botella, M., & Lubart, T. (2019). Culinary arts: Talent and their development. In R. F. Subotnik, P. Olszewski-Kubilius, & F. C. Worrell (Eds.), The psychology of high performance: Developing human potential into domain-specific talent (pp. 345–359). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000120-016

Torino, G. C., Rivera, D. P., Capodilupo, C. M., Nadal, K. L., & Sue, D. W. (Eds.). (2019). Microaggression theory: Influence and implications . John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119466642

• Book/Ebook References: APA Style

Creator. (Year). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle [Type of work, e.g, Painting, Photograph, Sculpture, etc.]. Source name (usually the name of the website). URL.

Image with no attribution required

If the license associated with clip art or a stock image states “no attribution required,” then do not provide an APA Style reference, in-text citation, or copyright attribution. For example, an image from Pixabay might have a license that says the image is free to reproduce with no attribution required. To use the image as a figure in an APA Style paper, provide a figure number and title and then the image. If desired, describe the image in a figure note. In a presentation (such as a PowerPoint presentation), the figure number, title, and note are optional.

Note. The study took place on an island in the Pacific Ocean.

Image requiring attribution

Dog in the snow

Note . From Lava [Photograph], by Denali National Park and Preserve, 2013, Flickr ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/denalinps/8639280606/ ). CC BY 2.0.

In reference section:

Denali National Park and Preserve. (2013). Lava [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/denalinps/8639280606/

van Gogh, V. (1889). The starry night [Painting]. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, United States. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/vincent-van-gogh-the-starry-night-1889/

• Artwork References: APA Style
• Stock Image References: APA Style

See the APA Style Guide website for details on how to cite using popular social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, and Twitter.

• Facebook References: APA Style
• Instagram References: APA Style
• LinkedIn References: APA Style
• Online Forum (e.g., Reddit) References: APA Style
• TikTok References: APA Style
• Twitter References: APA Style

Director Last name, First initial. (Director).(Year). Film title [Film]. Production company or companies separated by a semicolon.

Fleming, V. (Director). (1939). Gone with the wind [Film]. Selznick International Pictures; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

TED Talk Video

Speaker Last name, First initial. (Year, Month Day). Talk title [Video]. TED Conferences. URL

Cuddy, A. (2012, June). Your body language may shape who you are [Video]. Ted Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_may_shape_who_you_are

Executive producer Last name, First initial. (Executive Producer).(Years aired). Series title [TV Series]. Production company or companies separated by a semicolon.

Serling, R. (Executive Producer). (1959–1964). The twilight zone [TV series]. Cayuga Productions; CBS Productions.

YouTube Video

Name of the account. (Upload date Year, Month Day). Video title [Video]. YouTube. URL

Harvard University. (2019, August 28). Soft robotic gripper for jellyfish [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guRoWTYfxMs

• Film and Television References: APA Style
• TED Talk References: APA Style
• YouTube References: APA Style

Report by a Government Agency

Agency responsible for the report. (Year, Month Day). Report title . Parent agencies. URL

National Cancer Institute. (2019). Taking time: Support for people with cancer (NIH Publication No. 18-2059). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.cancer.gov/publications/patient-education/takingtime.pdf

• Parenthetical citation: (National Cancer Institute, 2019)
• Narrative citation: National Cancer Institute (2019)
• Report by a Government Agency References: APA Style
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Citing Sources

• Citation Guide for AMA Style This link opens in a new window
• Vancouver Style/NLM Style
• Citation Tools

Suggested Online Resources

• APA Style Examples from Saskatchewan Health Authority Various examples of citations in APA format
• APA Style and Grammar Guidelines This resource, from the APA, provides a concise reference guide to using APA 7th edition for citations and writing.
• APA Style Introduction and Sample Resources This introduction to APA Style 7th edition, from the Purdue OWL, provides guidance on citations as well as sample papers, presentations, and posters prepared according to APA Style.
• APA Style Tutorials and Webinars From the APA, this site includes a free tutorial on use of APA 7th edition (Academic Writer Tutorial) as well as recorded webinars to reference.
• In-Text Citation Checklist From the APA, this is a link to a PDF of the 7th edition In-Text Citation Checklist.
• Quick Reference Guide to APA 7th Edition From the APA, this links to a PDF of a quick reference guide to APA 7th edition, providing sample citations for a variety of common sources.
• Student Paper Checklist, APA 7th From the APA, this is a link to the PDF of the Student Paper Checklist in APA 7th format. Includes references to the official publication manual.
• APA Style Information from Waggoner Library Includes information about DOIs, citing course resources, annotated bibliographies, and other resources to help learn about APA Style

Publication Manual

In-Text Citations

General information.

• Can be used for a variety of content including text, figures, boxes, and table
• Organizations can be authors

When using direct quotes

• Surname of author and publication year of work
• Direct quotes of 40+ words require a block quote. Block quotes should be indented 5 spaces rather than utilizing quotation marks.

When paraphrasing

• Place the publication year in parentheses after the author's name. Example: Smith (2020) argues...

When using citing  multiple references  at once

• Separate each author with a semi colon, with surnames in alphabetical order. Example: (Jones, 2019; Smith, 2020)

For more special circumstances regarding authors and in-text citations, consult the Purdue OWL linked below.

• Purdue OWL - In-Text Citations/APA 7th

Reference List

Basic Format: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date). Title of the work.  Source   where you can retrieve the work . URL or DOI if available

• The word "References" should be bolded and centered at the top of the page in Title Case.
• Place all references in alphabetical order by the last name (surname) of the first author of the work.
• Both an annotated bibliography and a reference list can be included in one document.
• Double space entries in a reference list.

Annotated Bibliography

• All sources that you do not cite, but that inspired, informed, or influenced your work should be listed in an Annotated Bibliography.
• This may include items like suggested readings.
• Entries in a bibliography should be formatted like entries in a reference list.
• Annotated Bibliography looks like a Reference List but contains an annotation after each source cited.
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Citing Sources: Sample Reference List Citations

• Style Links & Samples
• Sample Reference List Citations
• Sample Notes and Bibliography Citations
• Sample Author Date Citations
• Citing Nontraditional Sources in Chicago
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• Major Changes to the New MLA
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• Ancient Texts
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When formatting a citation in APA style, pay particular attention to italics, punctuation, indentation, and capitalization.

Many more samples of citations presented in the APA style can be found in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association . Please consult this book or a librarian for help with unusual resources.

All of the following samples are taken from:

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

(In the above sample, the name of the organization is the author. Note that only proper names are capitalized in the title, and the edition number follows the title.)

Book: (This sample from Purdue OWL )

Calfee, R. C., & Valencia, R. R. (1991).  APA guide to preparing manuscripts for journal publication . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Book with an Editor:

Robinson, D. N. (Ed.). (1992). Social discourse and moral judgment . San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Note: italicize the title of the book and do not capitalize any words in titles except the first word, proper names, and after a colon. Use the author's or editor's initials only for first and middle names.

Chapter from an Edited Volume or Anthology :

Haybron, D. M. (2008). Philosophy and the science of subjective well-being. In M. Eid & R. J. Larsen (Eds.),  The science of subjective well-being  (pp. 17-43). New York, NY: Guilford Press. 

Scholarly Article:

Fuentes, A. (2016). Contemporary evolutionary theory in biological anthropology: Insight into human evolution,  genomics  and challenges to  racialized  pseudo-science.   Revista   Cuicuilco , 23 (65), 293-304. 

Note: Do not set off the title of the article with quotes, italics, underlines, or capital letters (except for the first word, proper names or after a colon). Italicize the title of the journal and capitalize all words in the title of the journal. This sample includes the volume number (23) which is italicized to set it off from the other numbers. The issue number (65) appears in parentheses and is not italicized. You will also notice that there is no space left between the volume number and the first parenthesis for the issue number.

Scholarly Article (with multiple authors):

Calvo, M. G., & Lang, P. J. (2004). Gaze patterns when looking at emotional pictures: Motivationally biased attention. Motivation and Emotion, 28 , 221-243. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:MOEM.0000040153.26156.ed

Note: This sample includes the volume number (28), which is italicized to set it off from the page numbers. There is no issue number in this example because the journal is paginated by volume. Provide the DOI when available for electronic documents. If a DOI is not available for a scholarly article retrieved online, you should supply the URL of the journal's homepage (NOT the URL from the database). Note authors' names, indentations, spare use of capital letters, page numbers, and use of periods and commas.

Popular Article (with two authors):

Kandel, E. R., & Squire, L. R. (2000, November 10). Neuroscience: Breaking down scientific barriers to the study of brain and mind. Science, 290, 1113-1120.

Note: Do not set off the title of the article with quotes, italics, underlines, or capital letters (except for the first word, proper names, or after a colon). Italicize the title of the magazine and capitalize all keywords in the title. Italicize the volume number to set it off from the page numbers.

Newspaper Article:

Scwartz, J. (1993, September 30). Obesity affects economic, social status. The Washington Post , pp. A1, A4.

Note: Do not set off the title of the article with quotes, italics, underlines, or capital letters (except for the first word, proper names or after a colon). Italicize the title of the newspaper and capitalize all keywords in the title of the newspaper.

Webpage Examples:  (These samples from  Purdue OWL )

Author, A. A. & Author B. B. (Date of publication ,  or  n. d. if no date ). Title of page [Format description when necessary]. Retrieved from https://www.someaddress.com/full/url/

Eco, U. (2015). How to write a thesis [PDF file]. (Farina C. M. & Farina F., Trans.) Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/...How_to_write_a_thesis/.../Umberto+Eco-How+to+Write+... (Original work published 1977).

If the page's author is not listed, start with the title. If the date of publication is not listed, use the abbreviation (n.d.):

Spotlight Resources. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/about_the_owl/owl_information/spotlight_resources.html

Only include a date of access when page content is likely to change over time (ex: if you're citing a wiki):

Purdue University Writing Lab [Facebook page]. (n.d.). Retrieved January 22, 2019, from https://www.facebook.com/PurdueUniversityWritingLab/

Nonperiodical Web Document or Report (Examples: government data such as U.S. Census): (This sample from Purdue OWL )

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication, or n.d. if no date).  Title of document . Retrieved from https://Web address

Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderland, L., & Brizee, A. (2010, May 5).  General format.  Retrieved from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

Note: Italicize the title of the website but do not capitalize any words except the first, proper names, and the first word following a colon.

For citing company or industry reports from the library's MarketLine database, also see:

https://guides.library.ualberta.ca/apa-citation-style/business

Publication manual of the American Psychological Association 7.07

If map is within a book, cite as In Title of book after [Type of map].

Cite primary contributors in the Author's space followed by their contributing role in parentheses.

Other forms for [Type of map] include:

• [Demographic map]
• [Topographical map]

Use (n.d.) for No date.

Title of map. (Year). [Type of Map]. Publisher Location: Publisher.

Citation Examples:

Plattsburgh, Clinton County: Dannemora, Peru, Keeseville, Champlain, Rouses Point, New York State, 3rd ed.

(1999). [Road map]. Clifton Park, NY: Jimapco.

Topographical Map:

Berlin, N.Y. - Mass. - VT. (1988). [Topographical map]. reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey.

Online Map:

Follow the map citation guidelines as above, but also include a stable URL where the map is found.

Title of map. (Year). [Type of map]. Retrieved from http://xxx.xx

Manhattan sightseeing map. (2010). [City map]. Retrieved from http://www.ny.com/maps/shopmap.html

MTA Metro-North railroad. (2010). [Railroad map]. Retrieved from http://www.mta.info/mnr/html/mnrmap.htm

MTA New York City subway. (2010). [Subway map]. Retrieved from http://www.mta.info/nyct/maps/submap.htm

Charts and Graphs

Since the APA manual does not give direct information for citing every type of source, including charts or graphs, they instruct you to follow the example that is most like the source you are trying to cite. Be sure to provide enough information so your readers can locate the source on their own. When possible provide author or creator, year of publication, title, and publishing and/or retrieval data. When citing a chart, graph or map it may be best to follow the citation style for the format in which the information is presented.

All captions for charts should follow the guidelines below for captions for figures.

Captions for Figures (Charts, Graphs, and Maps): Publication manual of the American Psychological Association 5.20-5.25

All captions should be labeled as Figure followed by a number. The caption should begin with a descriptive phrase and include a citation to the original source and copyright information at the end.

Figure 1. Relations between trust beliefs and school adjustment at T1 and loneliness changes during development in early childhood. All paths attained significance at p> .05. Adapted from “The Relation Between Trust Beliefs and Loneliness During Early Childhood, Middle Childhood, and Adulthood,” by K. J. Rotenberg, N. Addis, L. R. Betts, A. Corrigan, C. Fox, Z. Hobson, & … and M. J. Boulton, 2010, Personality and social psychology bulletin , 36, p. 1090. Copyright 2010 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Documentaries or Feature Films:

David, L., Bender, L., Burns S.Z. (Producers), & Guggenheim, P.D. (Director). (2006). An inconvenient truth [Motion picture]. United States: Paramount Pictures.

Note : If a film is not available in wide distribution, add the following to the citation after the country of origin: (Available from Distributor name, full address and zip code).

Online Resources

More examples and samples of papers written using the APA style can be found at the following websites:

• APA Style.Org The APA Citation Style's official website, as excerpted from the 6th edition.
• Excelsior College OWL APA style guide from Excelsior College's Online Writing Lab.
• Slate Citation Machine Excellent tool for citing sources in MLA and APA style. Simple fill in the form for the type of source you are citing, i.e. a book, journal article, website, etc., and this tool will show you the way to cite the reference. Be careful of your capitalization.
• Cornell University Library Guide to APA Citation Style

Additional Information for Citing Special Sources

• Ohio Wesleyan University - Citing Maps
• Map Citation Guide from the University of North Carolina
• Citation Fox (citation generator)
• Knight Cite from Calvin College (citation generator)
• Last Updated: May 22, 2024 1:38 PM
• URL: https://libguides.dickinson.edu/citing

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Answered By: Paul Lai Last Updated: Jul 17, 2023     Views: 54852

A reference list is a list of the publication information for the sources you’ve cited in your paper and is intended to give your readers all the information they need to find those sources. In other publication styles, this list may be called a bibliography or a works cited page, but APA uses the term reference list. Here are a few things to keep in mind about reference lists:

• Only list sources you cite in your text . Do not include sources you read but did not cite.
• Double-space your list and use a hanging indent for each reference. ( View resources on creating hanging indents and double-spacing your work on the Academic Skills Center's website .)
• Organize your references alphabetically by the author's last name.
• Include a reference list in every paper in which you cite outside material.
• Do note bold the title of the list.

Additional Resources:

• Check out more reference list tips  on the Writing Center's website. 
• Note that there are specific reference entry formatting requirements for different source types .
• You can also download the  Course Paper template  and scroll down to the bottom for a correctly formatted sample reference list.

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Other questions about your doctoral capstone or the Form & Style review? E-mail the Dissertation Editors at  [email protected] .

Want to peruse other writing resources?  Go to the Writing Center’s homepage . 

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• Harvard Referencing Generator

Free Harvard Referencing Generator

Generate accurate Harvard reference lists quickly and for FREE, with MyBib!

🤔 What is a Harvard Referencing Generator?

A Harvard Referencing Generator is a tool that automatically generates formatted academic references in the Harvard style.

It takes in relevant details about a source -- usually critical information like author names, article titles, publish dates, and URLs -- and adds the correct punctuation and formatting required by the Harvard referencing style.

The generated references can be copied into a reference list or bibliography, and then collectively appended to the end of an academic assignment. This is the standard way to give credit to sources used in the main body of an assignment.

👩‍🎓 Who uses a Harvard Referencing Generator?

Harvard is the main referencing style at colleges and universities in the United Kingdom and Australia. It is also very popular in other English-speaking countries such as South Africa, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. University-level students in these countries are most likely to use a Harvard generator to aid them with their undergraduate assignments (and often post-graduate too).

🙌 Why should I use a Harvard Referencing Generator?

A Harvard Referencing Generator solves two problems:

• It provides a way to organise and keep track of the sources referenced in the content of an academic paper.
• It ensures that references are formatted correctly -- inline with the Harvard referencing style -- and it does so considerably faster than writing them out manually.

A well-formatted and broad bibliography can account for up to 20% of the total grade for an undergraduate-level project, and using a generator tool can contribute significantly towards earning them.

⚙️ How do I use MyBib's Harvard Referencing Generator?

Here's how to use our reference generator:

• If citing a book, website, journal, or video: enter the URL or title into the search bar at the top of the page and press the search button.
• Choose the most relevant results from the list of search results.
• Our generator will automatically locate the source details and format them in the correct Harvard format. You can make further changes if required.
• Then either copy the formatted reference directly into your reference list by clicking the 'copy' button, or save it to your MyBib account for later.

MyBib supports the following for Harvard style:

🍏 What other versions of Harvard referencing exist?

There isn't "one true way" to do Harvard referencing, and many universities have their own slightly different guidelines for the style. Our generator can adapt to handle the following list of different Harvard styles:

• Cite Them Right
• Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU)
• University of the West of England (UWE)

Daniel is a qualified librarian, former teacher, and citation expert. He has been contributing to MyBib since 2018.

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Finding and Reading Journal Articles

• Subject Databases: Organizing Research Conversations
• Journal Articles: Why You Use Them

What are Databases for?

Decoding databases: what should you look for.

• Databases We Recommend For You
• Sources in the Disciplines
• Reading in the Disciplines

Research projects here at Harvard will often require you to look close up at a body of inquiry produced by scholars in a particular academic field. We call these subject databases -- or by the shorthand "library databases."

Essentially, any library database is a collection of information that's been brought together,  described and codified in some way, and then made searchable by a user like you.

Decisions are deliberately made about what to include and exclude (you're never searching "everything") but you can always be sure there's some  principle of similarity among the information a database contains. 

Whatever your concentration turns out to be, you can expect to use at least one subject database that's considered the disciplinary gold standard : a reliable, (relatively) comprehensive, and accurate record of the books that scholars are publishing, and the ideas they're debating and discussing in important and influential journals.

Librarians and course instructors will always know the premier research database in a field, so ask them for recommendations when you're not sure.

Subject databases function like lenses: they can change what you see in research and how you see it -- and they offer you easy and efficient ways to bring your questions into sharper focus.

Databases can have radically different interfaces or radical differences in what they cover. More and more, however, research databases, follow certain design conventions. A lot of searching is about pattern recognition.

Expect to see features like these:

Two types of search screens: basic and advanced.

• Advanced search screens are typically a set of stacked search boxes, joined by a default AND. They're great when you already know the parameters of a search and want to optimize your result lists from the start. 

TWO TYPES OF SEARCH LANGUAGE: KEYWORDS AND SUBJECTS

• Keywords  are the concepts  you think up  to describe your topic or information need.
• Subject terms,  by contrast, come from a  standardized vocabulary list  and are chosen by catalogers or database creators to describe the intellectual content or emphasis of an item in precise and commonly understood ways. 

Subject terms  add value to a search by helping you find additional items that are related in emphasis, that cover similar content, or that have the same purpose.

Subject terms  are what ensure that you get to all the relevant information on a given topic, regardless of the keywords with which you start. You might see them called  descriptors   in certain databases.  In science literature, and in a database like PubMed, you'll encounter a version of them called   MESH (medical subject headings). 

Whatever the nomenclature, their usefulness is in helping  you get around the fact that we have multiple words for things, that language is slippery and that without someway to get around this reality, we might miss important research if their words and ours don't match.

SEARCH CONVENTIONS TO HELP YOU STRUCTURE AND DEFINE YOUR SEARCHES

OPTIONS TO FILTER, MODIFY, REFINE, AND RE-SORT RESULTS

Always ask yourself; "Why am i seeing these results this way?" and then, "Can i see them other ways?"

Limiting to English (or another  language ), by  resource type , to  peer reviewed/academic  journals, or to a range of  dates  are pretty standard ways of customizing your search results. Sometimes, there are really robust filters (see image, right). 

Most databases will  rank results algorithmically by relevance,  as Google does.

If you prefer to see the results in chronological order, you should be able to resort your results by  earliest date  or have them display in  reverse chronological order . You can also choose to rank by relevance if that's not the default.

LINKS TO INFORMATION ABOUT ONLINE (OR PRINT) AVAILABILITY

Many journal databases now provide complete full-text of the materials they contain.  But just as many offer full-text more selectively. 

Clicking on it will initiate a search through Harvard's other library databases in search of full-text.

If full-text isn't available, the software will prompt  you to put in a  Scan and Deliver  request. That's a free service. Set up your profile, if you're not in the system yet,  and then follow the directions that follow.

We'll get you a PDF of the article quickly, sometimes within a few hours of the request, and usually, no more than 4 days after you ask us for it.  We'll notify you that it's ready by email. 

LINKS TO RELATED RESOURCES

Good researchers develop the habit of looking around a page, for embedded clues to what else, where else, and how else to push your searching forward.  Bibliographies and footnotes are the most obvious ways you can do so.  

But screen real estate is super important and these days, you're smart to focus not just on what's directly in front of you on the computer screen, but also on what's hiding in plain sight -- off to one side.

Lots of subject databases serve up  related research  automatically -- algorithmically-generated suggestion lists. They can be hit or miss or dead on -- it all depends on the algorithm, and what you yourself are really after. 

Some even offer you options to browse what other users  also read  after they landed on the article you've found.That's like the suggestive sell made famous by Amazon: it's designed to add some serendipity to the discovery process and sometimes, you might find something useful that way. 

At times, databases will also point you toward   foundational research  related to a topic, or even  primary sources  (e.g., newspaper articles that might . 

• << Previous: Journal Articles: Why You Use Them
• Next: Databases We Recommend For You >>

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Reference List: Books

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Note:  This page reflects the latest version of the APA Publication Manual (i.e., APA 7), which released in October 2019. The equivalent resource for the older APA 6 style  can be found here .

The following contains a list of the most commonly cited print book sources. E-books are described on our "Electronic Sources" page . For a complete list of how to cite print sources, please refer to the 7 th edition of the APA Publication Manual. 

Note: If available, APA 7 requires a DOI for all works that have one — whether print or digital. If a print work does not have a DOI do not include it in the reference citation.

Basic Format for Books

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle . Publisher Name. DOI (if available)

Stoneman, R. (2008). Alexander the Great: A life in legend . Yale University Press.

Edited Book, No Author

Editor, E. E. (Ed.). (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle . Publisher. DOI (if available)

Leitch, M. G., & Rushton, C. J. (Eds.). (2019).  A new companion to Malory . D. S. Brewer.

Edited Book with an Author or Authors

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle (E. Editor, Ed.). Publisher. DOI (if available)

Malory, T. (2017). Le morte darthur (P. J. C. Field, Ed.). D. S. Brewer. (Original work published 1469-70)

A Translation

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle (T. Translator, Trans.). Publisher. (Original work published YEAR) DOI (if available)

Plato (1989). Symposium (A. Nehamas & P. Woodruff, Trans.). Hackett Publishing Company. (Original work published ca. 385-378 BCE)

Note : When you cite a republished work, like the one above, in your text, it should appear with both dates: Plato (385-378/1989)

Edition Other Than the First

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle (# edition). Publisher. DOI (if available)

Belcher, W. (2019). Writing your journal article in twelve weeks: A guide to academic publishing success (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.

Article or Chapter in an Edited Book

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of chapter. In E. E. Editor & F. F. Editor (Eds.), Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle (pp. pages of chapter). Publisher. DOI (if available)

Note : When you list the pages of the chapter or essay in parentheses after the book title, use "pp." before the numbers: (pp. 1-21). This abbreviation, however, does not appear before the page numbers in periodical references. List any edition number in the same set of parentheses as the page numbers, separated by a comma: (2nd ed., pp. 66-72).

Armstrong, D. (2019). Malory and character. In M. G. Leitch & C. J. Rushton (Eds.), A new companion to Malory  (pp. 144-163). D. S. Brewer.

Multivolume Work

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle (Vol. #) . Publisher. DOI (if available)

David, A., & Simpson, J. (Eds.). (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature: The Middle Ages (8 th ed.,Vol. A). W. W. Norton and Company.

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