Citations and bibliographies

Frequently Asked Questions

  • A.The 7th edition of APA specifies the information to be cited and ordering conventions as follows.

    Name of author(s) and/or organization Date of publication Title of the article and/or page, name of website URL

  • A.The 7th edition of APA specifies the information to be cited and ordering conventions as follows.

    Name [@username] (date of posting) First 20 words of tweet [Tweet] Twitter URL
    Include the date and time of the search when citing Twitter profiles whose content may change.

  • The 7th edition of APA specifies the information to be cited and ordering conventions as follows.
    Name of contributor (date of post), video title [Video] Name of publisher URL

  • A.According to the APA FAQ, if your paper has a DOI (an ID number attached to the paper), this should be included regardless of whether it is an electronic source or not.
    If the paper is from an electronic journal and does not have a DOI, provide the URL where you obtained the paper.

  • A.Example:
    In this example, the paper is published in volume 10, so you should include the volume information and leave the page number blank.

    Kataoka, Y., Yaju, Y., Eto, H. et al.(2010). Self-administered questionnaire versus interview as a screening method for intimate partner violence in the prenatal setting in Japan: A randomised controlled trial. BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth, 10. DOI:10.1186/1471-2393-10-84

    If you are citing an article that has been published on a journal's website but has not yet been assigned a volume, such as an article listed as Epub on PubMed (typically annotated as "epub ahead of print," Advance Online Publication or Published Online Before Print), you should add the words "Advance online publication" before the DOI or URL.

    Shi, J., Zhang, H., Dowell, R.D. et al.(2012)sizzled function and secreted factor network dynamics.Biology Open, Advance online publication. doi: 10.1242/bio.2012019
  • A.According to the 6th edition of APA, if there is no author name for an entry in a dictionary or encyclopedia, it will be listed as
    Name of entry. (Year of publication) In Editor (Ed.), Name of dictionary/encyclopedia (edition information, pp. page of publication), Location, Publisher.
    According to the student handbook, "In" should be included when the editor is a European. In all other cases it should be omitted.


    The 6th edition of APA specifies that when citing from an electronic or online dictionary, the DOI/URL is listed in place of the location and publisher.
    For more information on citing Wikipedia, refer to the APA Style Blog.
  • A.The 7th edition of APA specifies that materials are listed in order of year of publication.
    The order is: Year of publication unknown (n.d.), year of publication (in order), currently in press.

    Where there are multiple materials with the same year of publication, they should be listed by alphabetical order of the title (omitting The, A, etc.) with the year followed by a lowercase letter.
    Materials for which only the year is known should be listed first, followed by materials for which the date of publication is known, in order of the month and day of publication.