APA Citation is most commonly used in Psychology, Education & Social Sciences such as Communication.
A print copy of the APA manual is available at the Research Help Desk in the Academic Commons:
American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Zotero is a free citation management software available for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. It is open source, and allows users to collect, manage, and cite their sources for any kind of project.
Consult our Zotero Guide for additional help.
Format: Author's last name, Initial(s). (Year of publication). Title of the article. Journal Title, volume number (issue number), pages. DOI or URL
Example: Ke, F., & Hoadley, C. (2009). Evaluating online learning communities. Educational Technology Research & Development, 57(4), 487-510. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-009-9120-2
Without a DOI (Hardcopy)
Format: Author's last name, Initial(s). (Year of publication). Title of the article. Journal Title, volume number (issue number), pages.
Example: Carter, K. (1995). Teaching stories and local understandings. Journal of Educational Research, 88(6), 326-330.
Without a DOI (Database or Website)
Format: Author's last name, Initial(s). (Year of publication). Title of the article. Journal Title, volume number (issue number), pages. URL
Example: Goral, T. (2009). The sustainable learning community. University Business, 12(7), 18. https://www.universitybusiness.com/
ARTICLE FROM A MAGAZINE
Format: Author's last name, Initial(s). (Year, Month Day of publication). Title of the article. Magazine Title, volume number(issue), pages.
Example: Zimmer, C. (2009, July/August). The brain. Discover, 30(7), 24-25.
ARTICLE FROM A NEWSPAPER
Format: Author's last name, Initial(s). (Year, Month Day of publication). Title of the article. Newspaper Title, pages. Discontinuous pages are separated by commas
Example: Poirot, C. (2004, March 17). HIV prevention pill goes beyond 'morning after'. The Hartford Courant, pp. F1, F6.
BOOK BY A SINGLE AUTHOR
Format: Author's last name, Initial(s). (Year of publication). Title of the book. Publisher name.
Example: Staff, F.E. (1969). The valentine & its origins. Frederick A. Praeger.
WEBSITE
Format: Author's last name, Initial(s). (Year, Month Day of publication or date of last revision, if known). Title of work. Site name. URL.
Example: Burka, L. P. (1993). A hypertext history of multi-user dimensions. California State University. http://www.csun.edu/~hceng028/m-hist.txt
VIDEO
Format: Author's last name, Initial(s). [Screen name]. (Year, Month Day of publication).Title of video [Video file]. URL
Example: BBC News. (2015, February 23). Astronomers discover 7 Earth-sized planets [Video file]. https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=YouTube.be&v=xLxrCRfBdi0
In-Text (Paraphrase or Quote): (Author Surname OR Screen name, Year)
DOI: Digital Object Identifier
The DOI is a set of numbers and/or letters given to individual journal articles.
You should include the DOI URL for articles retrieved online or from hardcopy
The database might give the DOI in the citation section. If not, then you may find it at the top or bottom of the first page
When you have a DOI URL, you do not need to include the web address
When you do not have a DOI, you must include the URL of the journal's homepage from the publisher's website. If this URL is too long, you may use the publisher's
homepage. You may have to search for this website online.
Do not use the direct URL of the article and do not use the database name or URL
(exceptions; a dissertation, an ERIC document or older JSTOR article)
Older hardcopy journals will not have a DOI, so you will cite it without one