LibGuides: APA 7th Edition: Journals & Periodicals

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Reference List / Full Citation

Reference List / Full Citations

NOTE: These full citations should include the hanging indent on your paper. Due to differences in screen sizes and viewing devices, the hanging indent is not being used in these examples.

Journal Article - General

Last name, first and middle initials. (Year). Title of the article is in sentence case expect for pronouns. Title of Journal, Volume number, (issue number), page numbers.

Dunlop, K., & Tsantefski, M. (2018). A space of safety: Children’s experience of equine‐assisted group therapy. Child & Family Social Work, 23(1), 16–24.

Multiple Authors

APA requires you to list all authors up to 20.

For two authors:

Yates, B. A. & Krueger, S. T. (2013). Article title ...

Three to 20 authors, list all authors with an & before the last author's name:

Hansen, H., Smythe, R. T, & Nelson, O. L. (2014). Article title ...

For articles with more than 20 authors, list the first 20 (surname, initials), then use ellipsis (...) after the 20th author followed by the ampersand (&) and the last author's surname and initials.

Harland, K. K., Choi, M., Angeli, L. L., Harmond, Y. T., Stamos, J., Ackles, J. J., Cortese, G., Singer, R. B., Cornell, D. P., Berry, A., Thomas, S. K., Rubin, S. L., Kernis, M. H., Sun, C. R., Watts, J., Arenas, R., Goodman, J. M., Summers, B. P., Giles, R., Harris, Z. ... & Owens, J. (2015). Article title ...

Article with DOI

Many digital articles include a Digital Object Identifier. Think of it as the permanent internet address for the article. It's usually included with other citation information (authors, title, volume, etc.) or, if your article is a PDF, in the header or footer. Not every article includes a DOI. If the article contains a DOI, add it to the reference like this:

Dunlop, K., & Tsantefski, M. (2018). A space of safety: Children’s experience of equine‐assisted group therapy. Child & Family Social Work, 23(1), 16–24. https://doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12378

Article Without DOI

If an article does not contain a DOI, include a link to the publication - when possible. If this is not possible, then your citation is complete after the page numbers.

McDaniel Peters, B., & Wood, W. (2017). Autism and equine-assisted interventions: A systematic mapping review. Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, 47(10), 3220–3242. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-017-3219-9

Common Mistakes

The most common mistakes students make is just copying and pasting a citation from a database or online citation generator. This often results in the article title being completely capitalized - and that's incorrect. Remember: the technology is only as good as the information it's given. If the user or database has entered the information incorrectly, then the end result will be incorrect.

Citation copied from EBSCO database:

DiMarco, C., Davies, L., Hargett, C., Kimberly, H., Odle, A., Takeno, E., Jelenek, A., Karros, J., Wilson, J., Lishia, D., Scuderi, A. & Murphy, L. (2015). The Effects of an Equine-Assisted Occupational Therapy Program on Adaptive Behaviors in Children and Youths. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 69(2), 1295–1297. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2015.69S1-PO1103

Corrected capitalization:

DiMarco, C., Davies, L., Hargett, C., Kimberly, H., Odle, A., Takeno, E., Jelenek, A., Karros, J., Wilson, J., Lishia, D., Scuderi, A. & Murphy, L. (2015). The effects of an equine-assisted occupational therapy program on adaptive behaviors in children and youths. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 69(2), 1295–1297. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2015.69S1-PO1103

DOI or link error

EBSCO has placed a junk link in its auto-generated citation. It's neither a permalink or DOI, but the DOI is hidden in the link:

https://doi-org.methodistlibrary.idm.oclc.org/10.5014/ajot.2015.69S1-PO1103

Corrected DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2015.69S1-PO1103

Why Use Editorials?

Editorials, opinion pieces, and commentaries appear in newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals such as the Journal of Transcultural Nursing. An assignment may require you to analyze an author's argument. Or, you may find a commentary or response to a research study you are using and want to include it in your own analysis.

The most important thing to remember is:

indicate in the body of your work that this is an opinion, even if it's an expert's opinion
include a descriptor in brackets in your reference, e.g. [Editorial]

Editorial Reference

Roberts, D. (2018). The debate continues: The value of student publication [Editorial]. MEDSURG Nursing, 27(1), 7. https://methodistlibrary.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=128049899&site=ehost-live&scope=site

When citing an editorial, use the format for the publication in which the content is published (newspaper, magazine, journal, book, etc.).

Newspaper Editorial

Newspaper editorials and opinion pieces may be written by a specific author or by an "editorial board" or "body."

With author: Pryor, L. (2019, March 15). Mental illness isn't all in your head [Opinion]. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/opinion/preventing-mental-illness.html

Group author: Editorial Board. (2019, Novembver 30). Who will tell the truth about the free press? [Opinion]. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/30/opinion/editorials/fake-news.html

Anonymous author: Only list the author as anonymous if the editorial is signed Anonymous. If no author is listed, then begin your citation with the article title:

Who will tell the truth about the free press? [Opinion]. (2019, November 30). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/30/opinion/editorials/fake-news.html

In-Text Citations

Citing Periodicals/Journal Articles in the Text

Cite articles using the author's last name and publication date and include page or paragraph number. APA allows for some flexibility in how you work the citation into your sentence flow, as long as you use the author-date order.

Parenthetical citation: (Smith, 2018) or (Smith, 2018, p. 32)

Narrative citation: Mason (2015) described ... (p. 45).

In 2015, Mason described a similar situation ...

Multiple Authors

For two authors, separate the last names with an ampersand (&):

(Smith & Kavan, 2016)

Smith and Kavan (2016) studied the effects of caffeine ...

According to Smith and Kavan (2016),adolescents consuming high levels of caffeine ...

For three or more authors, list the first author's surname followed by et al. So, an article written by Jones, Narubi, and Esposito would be referenced like this:

Jones et al. (2018) studied the effects ...

(Jones et al., 2018, p. 12).

Quoting & References

In-Text Citations

In-text citations are road signs. They tell the reader where to go in to reference list/works cited page to get the full citation to then look up the complete source. There are several ways to cite your source, but you must have these basic components: who, when, and where - or - author, year, and page number*.

When to Cite

Any time you use specific information from a source, whether it's a direct quote or paraphrased in your own words, you need to cite the source. The citation can be complete or spread throughout the sentence to help with flow and sentence structure. As you look at the example below, you will notice a pattern: author - year - page number*.

*Page number when applicable.

Type

Examples

Short Quotation

According to Shurley (2009), "writing is hard, you guys" (p. 42).

Even bestselling authors will declare "writing is hard, you guys" (Shurley, 2009, p. 42).

The study found that most students would rather watch old episodes of Sesame Street than write papers because "APA formatting is the my least favorite thing" (Smith & Corker, 2014, p. 231).

Long Quotation: Direct quotations 40 words or longer.

Indent as a freestanding block quote.

Westley (2009) found the following:

Students are often frustrated when transitioning from MLA to APA. The differences between citation styles may seem arbitrary and capricious. Instructors should illuminate students understanding by demonstrating how a designated method serves its particular discipline, such as MLA to literature and APA to the sciences. (p. 25).

Note that the page number is in parenthesis separate from the sentence, unlike in a short quotation.

Paraphrase

Page number not required but is encouraged

A study by Norton (2015) found that citation formatting was a significant source of writing-related anxiety in freshmen and sophomore students.

Students ranked citation formatting as a primary source of their writing-related anxiety (Norton, 2015, p. 12).

Multiple Authors

Three or more authors

Works created by three or more authors use the first author's last name followed by "et al."

(Bennington et al., 2018, p. 13)

Bennington et al. (2018) concluded that Twitter is now intertwined ...