How to Create or Generate APA Reference Entries (7th edition)

This article reflects the 7th edition guidelines of the APA Publication Manual.

APA reference entries provide detailed information about a source. They’re listed on the reference page at the end of your paper and correspond to APA in-text citations in the body text.

You can easily generate APA references (and in-text citations) with Scribbr’s APA Citation Generator, but it’s helpful to have a general understanding of the composition of an APA reference. It enables you to review your own work and that of any tool you might be using.

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The four components of an APA reference

Although the reference format differs depending on the type of source (e.g., a book, webpage, or video), they’re built from the same four components:

  1. Author: who is responsible for creating the work?
  2. Date: when was the work published?
  3. Title: what is the work called?
  4. Source: where can the work be retrieved?

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Author

The author is responsible for creating the work. This can be an individual, multiple people, an organization (such as a company, government agency, or workgroup), or a combination of them. The author can be the writer of a text, but also the host of a podcast or the director of a movie.

Basic format

In an APA reference, the author’s name is inverted: start with the last name, followed by a comma and the initials, separated by a period and space.

Treat infixes, such as “Van” or “De”, as part of the last name. Don’t include personal titles such as Ph.D. or Dr., but do include suffixes.

  • Smith, T. H. J.
  • Van der Molen, R.
  • Brown, A. T. W., Jr.
  • Lee, B.-K.

Multiple authors

Separate the names of multiple authors with commas. Before the last author’s name, you should also insert an ampersand (&).

A reference entry may contain up to 20 authors. If there are more than 20, list the first 19 authors, followed by an ellipsis (. . .) and the last author’s name.

  • Andreff, W., & Staudohar, P. D.
  • Andreff, W., Staudohar, P. D., & LaBrode, M.
  • Miller, T. C., Brown, M. J., Wilson, G. L., Evans, B. B., Kelly, R. S., Turner, S. T., Lewis, F., Nelson, T. P., Cox, G., Harris, H. L., Martin, P., Gonzalez, W. L., Hughes, W., Carter, D., Campbell, C., Baker, A. B., Flores, T., Gray, W. E., Green, G., . . . Lee, L. H.

Organizations or groups as author

When an organization or group is listed as the author of a source (e.g., a report or brochure), list the name in full—don’t use abbreviations. If multiple organizations or groups are responsible for creating the work, include them all in the reference entry. Do not use a comma to separate two group authors.

  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (not CDC)
  • Microsoft & Apple

Usernames

An author’s name can also be a username (for example, a Twitter handle). If you don’t know the author’s real name, you only provide the username. If you do know the author’s real name, include the username in brackets after the author’s real name. Retain the @ symbol.

  • @pewdiepie
  • Trump, D. J. [@RealDonaldTrump].

Indication of roles

If contributors have a different role than “author”, a description of their role is sometimes (but not always) included in parentheses. Check the table below to learn when to provide a role description.

Author roles in APA references
Source type Role In the reference entry
Book Author
Editor*
Last name, A. A.
Last name, A. A. (Ed.)
Film Director Last name, A. A. (Director)
TV series Executive producer Last name, A. A. (Executive producer)
Podcast Host Last name, A. A. (Host)
Webinar Instructor Last name, A. A.
Artwork Artist Last name, A. A.
Photograph Photographer Last name, A. A.

* Abbreviate the editor role to “Ed.” (one editor) or “Eds.” (multiple editors).

Unknown author

The author may not always be mentioned explicitly, but you can often infer it from the context. For example, an “About us” page on a website is usually written by the organization behind the website.

When you really cannot determine the author, you may omit the “author” component from the reference. The reference then begins with the source title, as in this Bible citation.

Blog post (unknown author)
King James Bible. (2017). King James Bible Online. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/

Note that legal citations (e.g. court cases, laws) generally don’t have an author element.

Date

The “date” component appears after the “author” component. Use the following guidelines to determine the publication date:

  • For books, always take the copyright date.
  • For journal articles, take the year in which the volume was published.
  • For web pages, you may use the “Last updated” date if it applies to the content you’re citing. Don’t take the copyright date from the footer of a website.

Basic format

The date of publication appears in parentheses and can take the following forms:

  • (2020)
  • (2020, January)
  • (2020, January 15)
  • (1997–1999)

In most cases, you only include the year of publication in the reference entry. Sources published more frequently (e.g., newspapers, blogs, YouTube videos) or events taking place on specific dates (e.g., conferences, speeches) usually include the full date.

Retrieval date

Only provide the retrieval date (i.e., the date you consulted the information) if a work is designed to change over time. Examples include:

The retrieval date appears after the source title and before the URL. Write the word “Retrieved” followed by the month, day, and year.

Webpage (changing over time)
Worldometer. (n.d.). World population clock. Retrieved October 20, 2020, from https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

You do not need to include a retrieval date for an online newspaper article or blog post (like this one), even though the content might change a little over time. A retrieval date is also not needed if versions are archived, as is the case with Wikipedia articles.

Same author, same date

When citing multiple works from the same author, published in the same year, you need to add a lowercase letter after the year to distinguish between them. These lowercase letters are also included in the APA in-text citation.

  • Cole, A. J. (2016a). Adoption of contactless payment solutions.
  • Cole, A. J. (2016b). Trust differences between payment providers.

Assign the letters using the following rules:

  • References with only a year precede those with more specific dates.
  • References with specific dates are ordered chronologically.
  • References with identical dates are ordered by their titles (disregard “A”, “An”, and “The”).

Unknown publication date

If the publication date is unknown, write “n.d.” for “no date” in place of the publication date.

Blog post (unknown publication date)
Scribbr. (n.d.). An introduction to research methods. https://www.scribbr.com/category/methodology/

Title

In the “title” component, you write the name of the work that you’re citing. This can be the title of a journal or a book (i.e., a stand-alone work) or a specific article or chapter from that journal or book (i.e., a work that is part of a greater whole). In the latter case, you need to include two titles.

Basic format

When citing a stand-alone work, its title appears in the “title” component, in italics and sentence case.

Book (stand-alone work)
Voss, C., & Raz, T. (2017). Never split the difference: Negotiating as if your life depended on it. Harper Business.

When citing a work that is part of a larger whole, the title of the work appears in the “title” component (sentence case, no styling) and the title of the larger whole appears in the “source” component (italicized).

Journal article (part of a larger whole)
Lou, C., & Yuan, S. (2019). Influencer marketing: How message value and credibility affect consumer trust of branded content on social media. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 19(1), 58–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/15252019.2018.1533501

Bracketed source descriptions

Descriptions help identify sources. You include them for pretty much every source type, except for books, journal articles, reports, websites and newspaper articles.

Place the description in square brackets after the source title but before the period. Capitalize the first letter of the description, but don’t italicize it. Try to keep the descriptions short and consistent.

YouTube video
Bloomberg QuickTake. (2020, July 1). How to build a city around bikes, fast [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/h-I6HFQXquU

Unknown title

If a work does not have a title, provide a description of it in square brackets in the place of the title.

Painting
Van Gogh, V. (1878–1882). [Portrait of a woman] [Painting]. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

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Source

In the “source” component, you include information about where the work can be retrieved.

When citing a stand-alone work (e.g., a book or webpage), you include the name of the publisher, database, platform, or website (whichever is relevant to your source), and a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) or URL.

When citing a work that is part of a greater whole (e.g., an article in a journal), you include information about this greater whole, like its title, relevant edition, volume or issue information, relevant contributors (like editors), the page range and the publisher, as well as a DOI or URL of the work.

Title of the greater whole

The inclusion of titles is explained in the “title” component section. The title of the greater whole (e.g., a journal, newspaper, or edited book) is usually the first element in the “source” component and is italicized.

Edition information and volume and issue numbers

Books can have different editions, while periodicals (such as journals and magazines) usually have volume and issue numbers. This information appears after the title.

Put edition information in parentheses, but unlike the title, don’t italicize it.

Book
Coghlan, D. (2019). Doing action research in your own organization (5th ed.). SAGE Publications.

Italicize the volume number and place it after the periodical title. The issue number appears after the volume number in parentheses (not italicized). Do not add a space between the volume and issue number.

Journal article
Evans, N. J., Phua, J., Lim, J., & Jun, H. (2017). Disclosing Instagram influencer advertising: The effects of disclosure language on advertising recognition, attitudes, and behavioral intent. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 17(2), 138–149. https://doi.org/10.1080/15252019.2017.1366885

Contributors

If there are relevant contributors other than the author of the work you’re citing, you need to credit them as well. The most common examples are editors of collections and translators of books in a foreign language.

Unlike the author component, the names of the contributors are not inverted. You introduce contributors with the word “In” right after the “title” component. Don’t forget to include a role description in parentheses.

Chapter in an edited book
Gaffney, D., & Puschmann, C. (2014). Data collection on Twitter. In K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, & C. Puschmann (Eds.), Twitter and society (pp. 55–67). Peter Lang Publishing.

Page range of the work

When citing a work that is part of a greater whole, you need to provide the page number or page range of that work. This makes retrieving it easier. Depending on the type of source, the page numbers are preceded by “p.” or “pp.” and placed in parentheses or not.

Journal article
Plantin, J.-C., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P. N., & Sandvig, C. (2016). Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook. New Media & Society, 20(1), 293–310. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816661553
Chapter in an edited book
Belsey, C. (2006). Poststructuralism. In S. Malpas & P. Wake (Reds.), The Routledge companion to critical theory (3rd ed., pp. 51–61). Routledge.

Publisher, database, platform, or website name

Depending on the type of source, you should include the name of the publisher, database, platform, or website responsible for distributing the work. When the author of a work is the same as the publisher or website name, you may omit this information.

Blog post (website)
McCombes, S. (2020, June 19). How to write a problem statement. Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/research-process/problem-statement/
Book (publisher)
Hetherington, M. J., & Weiler, J. D. (2009). Authoritarianism and polarization in American politics. Cambridge University Press.
YouTube video (platform)
Vox. (2018, October 17). How IKEA gets you to impulsively buy more [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYKUJgMRQ7A

Physical location

Some works are associated with a specific location—for example, an artwork in a museum or a conference presentation. In these cases, you include city and state/country in the reference.

Artwork in a museum
Dali, S. (1931). The persistence of memory [Painting]. Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.

DOI or URL

Works that can be accessed online usually have a URL or DOI (digital object identifier). A DOI is often used for scientific publications and books, while a URL is more common for other online publications.

Use the following guidelines:

  • If available, always add a DOI
  • A DOI is preferred over a URL (because it never changes)
  • Include the protocol (http:// or https://) for both DOIs and URLs
  • Do not add a period after the DOI or URL
Online newspaper article
Wakabayashi, D. (2020, October 21). Google antitrust fight thrusts low-key C.E.O. into the line of fire. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/technology/google-antitrust-sundar-pichai.html.
Journal article
Cheung, C. M. K., & Thadani, D. R. (2012). The impact of electronic word-of-mouth communication: A literature analysis and integrative model. Decision Support Systems, 54(1), 461–470. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2012.06.008

Unknown source

If the source is unknown or not publicly available, the work that you’re citing cannot be retrieved by readers. In this case, you cannot include it as a reference entry. Instead, you should cite it as if it is personal communication.

Abbreviations in APA references

To save space in the reference entry, some common parts of works are abbreviated. Pay attention to the differences in capitalization and punctuation.

Abbreviations in APA references
Word Abbreviation
Revised edition Rev. ed.
Second edition 2nd ed.
Editor(s) Ed. / Eds.
Translator(s) Trans.
Narrator(s) Narr. / Narrs.
No date n.d.
Page(s) p. / pp.
Paragraph para.
Volume(s) Vol. / Vols.
(Issue) number No.
Supplement Suppl.

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Streefkerk, R. (2022, December 05). How to Create or Generate APA Reference Entries (7th edition). Scribbr. Retrieved November 3, 2023, from https://www.scribbr.com/apa-style/reference-entry/

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Raimo Streefkerk

Raimo has been writing articles for Scribbr since 2017. His areas of expertise are plagiarism and citation. Besides writing articles, Raimo works tirelessly on improving Scribbr's Citation Generator and Plagiarism Checker tools.