Citing Sources in APA
According to APA 7th Edition guidelines you need to find out as much information as you can about who created and published a source and when. You communicate this to your audience through in-text and Reference List citations which your readers can look up themselves.
APA Guides
Recommended sources for help with APA style guidelines:
- APAstyle.orgFree online help directly from the American Psychological Association. Scroll down to "Quick Answers" section for help with references and formatting.
- Purdue OWL APA Formatting & Style GuideFree APA help online from Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL). Provides examples and instructions for commonly cited materials, as well as a sample APA paper and tips for avoiding plagiarism. The left-hand menu has guidance for both in-text citations and the references list at the end of your paper.
Citing Sources in APA
Below are a just a few examples of APA citations. There are many situations which you might run into that don't fit the formats listed below - for more help visit the APA website to learn about specific rules and tips!
Articles
Format (Multiple Authors)
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of the article.
Name of the Periodical, volume(issue), #–#. https://doi.org/xxxx
Example
Albert, R., McKnight, A. G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Thoughts in literature: A review
of literature that presents ethnic and racial representation in groups across Oregon.
Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(4), 210–217.
https://doi.org/10.8909/ppm0000345
Books
Format
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Copyright Year). Title of the book (6th ed.).
Publisher. DOI or URL
Example
Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst.
Penguin Books.
Webpage on a Website
Format
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date Published). Title of the webpage.
Publisher of the Website. URL
Example
Kuzmich, F. D. (2019, April 1). Nursing mental health. OER Commons.
https://www.oercommonly.edu/authors/89037-nursing-mental-health/view
Newspaper Articles
Format
Author, A. A., & Author B, B,. (Date Published). Title of news article.
Newspaper Publisher. URL
Example
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
Automatically Creating Citations in Library Article Collections
Many databases and article collections, plus many e-books, will automatically create citations for whichever article or chapter you are viewing.
Look for a “Cite,” “CiteNow,” or “Cite This Item” button on the database record for the specific article or chapter.
(Not all databases have this feature)
Examples of citation buttons:
EBSCOhost databases (e.g., CINAHL)
Library Help
DOI
APA style requires that a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) be included in your citation, if available. To see if a journal article has been assigned a DOI, you can look it up on CrossRef or Ask a Librarian.
For more information about the DOI system, see http://www.doi.org.
