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Homework answers / question archive / This page gives basic guidelines for formatting the reference list at the end of a standard APA research paper

This page gives basic guidelines for formatting the reference list at the end of a standard APA research paper

Psychology

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.

Note: Because the information on this page pertains to virtually all citations, we've highlighted one important difference between APA 6 and APA 7 with an underlined note written in red.

Formatting a Reference List

Your reference list should appear at the end of your paper. It provides the information necessary for a 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.

Basic Rules 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.

· All authors' names should be inverted (i.e., last names should be provided first).

· Authors' first and middle names should be written as initials.

· 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.

· When referring to the titles of books, chapters, articles, reports, webpages, or other sources, capitalize only the first letter of the first word of the title and subtitle, the first word after a colon or a dash in the title, and proper nouns.

· Note again that the titles of academic journals are subject to special rules. See 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.

Basic Rules for Articles in Academic Journals

· Present journal titles in full.

· Italicize journal titles.

· Maintain any nonstandard punctuation and capitalization that is used by the journal in its title.

· For example, you should use  PhiloSOPHIA  instead of Philosophia, or Past & Present instead of Past and Present.

· Capitalize all major words in the titles of journals. Note that this differs from the rule for titling other common sources (like books, reports, webpages, and so on) described above.

· 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.

· Do not enclose the article title in quotes. 

· So, for example, if you need to cite an article titled "Deep Blue: The Mysteries of the Marianas Trench" that was published in the journal Oceanographic Study: A Peer-Reviewed Publication, you would write the article title as follows:

· Deep blue: The mysteries of the Marianas Trench.

· ...but you would write the journal title as follows:

· Oceanographic Study: A Peer-Reviewed Publication

SINGLE AUTHOR

Last name first, followed by author initials.

Ahmed, S. (2012). On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. Duke University Press.

TWO AUTHORS

List by their last names and initials. Separate author names with a comma. Use the ampersand instead of "and."

Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017). The next big five inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(1), 117-143.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000096

THREE TO TWENTY AUTHORS

List by last names and initials; commas separate author names, while the last author name is preceded again by ampersand. This is a departure from APA 6, which only required listing the first six authors before an ellipsis and the final author's name.

Nguyen, T., Carnevale, J. J., Scholer, A. A., Miele, D. B., & Fujita, K. (2019). Metamotivational knowledge of the role of high-level and low-level construal in goal-relevant task performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(5), 879-899.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000166

MORE THAN TWENTY AUTHORS

List by last names and initials; commas separate author names. After the first 19 authors’ names, use an ellipsis in place of the remaining author names. Then, end with the final author's name (do not place an ampersand before it). There should be no more than twenty names in the citation in total.

Pegion, K., Kirtman, B. P., Becker, E., Collins, D. C., LaJoie, E., Burgman, R., Bell, R., DelSole, R., Min, D., Zhu, Y., Li, W., Sinsky, E., Guan, H., Gottschalck, J., Metzger, E. J., Barton, N. P., Achuthavarier, D., Marshak, J., Koster, R., . . .  Kim, H. (2019). The subseasonal experiment (SubX): A multimodel subseasonal prediction experiment. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 100(10), 2043-2061.  https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-18-0270.1

GROUP AUTHOR

Group authors can include corporations, government agencies, organizations, etc; and a group may publish in coordination with individuals. Here, you simply treat the publishing organization the same way you'd treat the author's name and format the rest of the citation as normal. Be sure to give the full name of the group author in your reference list, although abbreviations may be used in your text.

Entries in reference works ( e.g. dictionaries, thesauruses, and encyclopedias) without credited authors are also considered works with group authors.

Merriam-Webster. (2008). Braggadocio. In Merriam-Webster’s Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary. Merriam-Webster.

When a work has multiple layers of group authorship (e.g. The Office of the Historian, which is a part of the Department of State, publishes something), list the most specific agency as the author and the parent agency as the publisher.

Bureau of International Organization Affairs. (2018). U.S. contributions to international organizations, 2017 [Annual report]. U.S. Department of State.  https://www.state.gov/u-s-contributions-to-international-organizations/

UNKNOWN AUTHOR

When the work does not have an author move the title of the work to the beginning of the references and follow with the date of publication. Only use “Anonymous ” if the author is the work is signed “Anonymous.” This is a new addition to APA 7.

Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary (11th ed.). (2003). Merriam-Webster.

NOTE: When your essay includes parenthetical citations of sources with no author named, use a shortened version of the source's title instead of an author's name. Use quotation marks and italics as appropriate. For example, parenthetical citations of the source above would appear as follows: (Merriam-Webster's, 2003).

TWO OR MORE WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Use the author's name for all entries and list the entries by the year (earliest comes first). List references with no dates before references with dates.

Urcuioli, P. J. (n.d.).

Urcuioli, P. J. (2011). 

Urcuioli, P. J.  (2015).

When an author appears both as a sole author and, in another citation, as the first author of a group, list the one-author entries first.

Agnew, C. R. (Ed.). (2014). Social influences on romantic relationships: Beyond the dyad. Cambridge University Press.

Agnew, C. R., & South, S. C. (Eds.). (2014). Interpersonal relationships and health: Social and clinical psychological mechanisms. Oxford University Press.

References that have the same first author and different second and/or third authors are arranged alphabetically by the last name of the second author, or the last name of the third if the first and second authors are the same.

Arriaga, X. B., Capezza, N. M., Reed, J. T., Wesselman, E. D., & Williams, K. D. (2014). With partners like you, who needs strangers?: Ostracism involving a romantic partner. Personal Relationships, 21(4), 557-569.

Arriaga, X. B., Kumashiro, M., Finkel, E. J., VanderDrift, L. E., & Luchies, L. B. (2014). Filling the void: Bolstering attachment security in committed relationships. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(4), 398-405.

TWO OR MORE WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR IN THE SAME YEAR

If you are using more than one reference by the same author—or the same group of authors listed in the same order—published in the same year, first check to see if they have more specific dates (this recommendation is new to APA 7). Works with only a year should be listed before those with a more specific date. List specific dates chronologically.  If two works have the same publication date, organize them in the reference list alphabetically by the title of the article or chapter. If references with the same date are identified as parts of a series (e.g. Part 1 and Part 2), list them in order of their place in the series. Then assign letter suffixes to the year. Refer to these sources in your essay as they appear in your reference list, e.g.: "Berndt (2004a) makes similar claims..."

Berndt, T. J. (2004a).  Children’s friendships: Shifts over a half-century in perspectives on their development and their effects.  Merrill Palmer Quarterly, 50(3), 206-223.

Berndt, T. J. (2004b).  Friendship and three A’s (aggression, adjustment, and attachment).  Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 88(1), 1-4.

INTRODUCTIONS, PREFACES, FOREWORDS, AND AFTERWORDS

Cite the publishing information about a book as usual, but cite Introduction, Preface, Foreword, or Afterword (whatever title is applicable) as the chapter of the book.

 

BASIC FORM

APA style dictates that authors are named with their last name followed by their initials; publication year goes between parentheses, followed by a period. The title of the article is in sentence-case, meaning only the first word and proper nouns in the title are capitalized. The periodical title is run in title case, and is followed by the volume number which, with the title, is also italicized. If a DOI has been assigned to the article that you are using, you should include this after the page numbers for the article. If no DOI has been assigned and you are accessing the periodical online, use the URL of the website from which you are retrieving the periodical.

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy

ARTICLE IN PRINT JOURNAL

Scruton, R. (1996). The eclipse of listening. The New Criterion, 15(3), 5–13.

Note: APA 7 advises writers to include a DOI (if available), even when using the print source. The example above assumes no DOI is available.

ARTICLE IN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL

As noted above, when citing an article in an electronic journal, include a DOI if one is associated with the article.

Baniya, S., & Weech, S. (2019). Data and experience design: Negotiating community-oriented digital research with service-learning. Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement, 6(1), 11–16.  https://doi.org/10.5703/1288284316979

DOIs may not always be available. In these cases, use a URL. Many academic journals provide stable URLs that function similarly to DOIs. These are preferable to ordinary URLs copied and pasted from the browser's address bar.

Denny, H., Nordlof, J., & Salem, L. (2018). "Tell me exactly what it was that I was doing that was so bad": Understanding the needs and expectations of working-class students in writing centers. Writing Center Journal, 37(1), 67–98.  https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537363

Note that, in the example above, there is a quotation in the title of the article. Ordinary titles lack quotation marks.

ARTICLE IN A MAGAZINE

Peterzell, J. (1990, April). Better late than never. Time, 135(17), 20–21.

ARTICLE IN A NEWSPAPER

Schultz, S. (2005, December). Calls made to strengthen state energy policies. The Country Today, 1A, 2A.

REVIEW

Baumeister, R. F. (1993). Exposing the self-knowledge myth [Review of the book The self-knower: A hero under control, by R. A. Wicklund & M. Eckert]. Contemporary Psychology, 38(5), 466–467.

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