Writing

Introduction to Reference Lists

• The reference list appears on its own page, with the title References at the top, centered and in bold type.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

• Include 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.

• When multiple layers of government agencies are listed as authors in a work, use only the most specific author in the reference. For example, 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 an 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.).

• 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

• 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 a 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 

  
  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).

• For sources with the same author and publication date, add a lowercase letter to the publication year:
   

  Yob, I. M. (1995a). Religious emotion in the arts. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 29(4), 23–38.  https://doi.org/10.2307/3333289

  Yob, I. M. (1995b). Religious music and multicultural education. Philosophy of Music Education Review, 3(2), 69–82.

  Yob, I. M. (1995c). Spiritual education: A public school dialogue with religious interpretations. Religious Education, 90(1), 103–117.

  
  When you cite these sources in your text, include the letter with the date so that readers can match that citation to the appropriate reference entry.
   

  Yob (1995b)

  (Yob, 1995c)

  
  If multiple sources have the same author but no publication date, use “n.d.” for “no date.” Then list the sources in alphabetical order by title and add a hyphen and lowercase letter after the year for each one. This allows you to distinguish them from each other in your citations, for example, “According to OASIS (n.d.-b), APA references follow specific formatting rules….”
   

  OASIS. (n.d.-a). Citations: Variations. Walden University.  https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/apa/citations/variations

  OASIS. (n.d.-b). Common reference list examples. Walden University.  https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/apa/references/examples

• Include the title of the document that you are referencing. Depending on the source’s type, you may need to include more than one title (for an article and the journal it appeared in, for instance). Do not add quotation marks around titles unless they appear in 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 a source published in another language, provide the original title in your reference as well as the English translation of the title in square brackets.
   

  Vergauwen, J., Neels, K., & Wood, J. (2016). Impact de la situation économique sur la mise en couple en France (1993-2008) [Educational differentials in the impact of micro- and macro-level economic conditions on union formation in France (1993-2008)]. Population, 71(4), 593-617.  https://doi.org/10.3917/pope.1604.0593

For Articles

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 Books

• 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 or 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.
• Other alphanumeric identifiers such as the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) are not included in APA style references.

For Websites

• List the organization or website name after the webpage title in plain text. If the webpage does not have a specific author, use the organization name in place of the author at the start of the reference entry and leave it out in this place.
• Provide the URL for the specific page and not the organization’s home page. For webpages that include content that is meant to be regularly updated or change over time, include a retrieval date before the URL. Otherwise, include just the URL.
   

  Vartan, S. (2018, January 30). Why vacations matter for your health. CNN.  https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/why-vacations-matter/index.html

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 numbers retrieved on the open web, include the URL.

• Present 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.

Hyperlinks

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.