UC Referencing Guide

The rules of APA Style are detailed in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: The Official Guide to APA Style. 7th edition. APA Style was first developed 80 years ago by a group of social scientists who wished to establish sound standards of communication. Since that time, it has been adopted by leaders in many fields and has been used by writers around the world.

APA Style is based on an author-date system with in-text referencing and a reference list.

Format

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work. Publisher.

Editor, A. A. (Ed.). (Year of publication). Title of work. Publisher.

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume(issue), pages. DOI or URL

Guidelines

• References must be entered with a hanging indent

Berno, T. (2017). Social enterprise, sustainability and community in post-earthquake Christchurch: Exploring the role of local food systems in building resilience. Journal of Enterprising Communities, 11(1), 149.

• Authors: Give authors in the format Author, A. A.

Smith, J. P., & Tindale, F.

• Date
  • For books use the copyright date shown on the work's copyright page.
  • No date can be determined - write n.d.
  • For a journal use the year of the volume, even if different from the copyright year.

• Titles: Are written in italics. Capitalise the first word of the title and subtitle and any proper nouns.

This is my life: Collection of photos by Andrew Snowden

• Titles: If there is no title on an item, e.g. photo from the web, create a title and enter it in square brackets in place of the title.

[Photo of a child playing with dog]

• Articles: Article titles are not italicised. All major words in journal titles are capitalised and the title is italicised.

How we use mobile phones. Social Science Quarterly

• Publishers: Write the publishers name as shown on the work.  If two or more publishers are shown on the copyright page include all of them in the order they are listed.

Merklein, H. A. (1972). Macroeconomics. Wadsworth.

Gumby, T. F. (1972). The brain specialist. Python; Basic Books.

• DOI or URL
  URLs and DOI's in references should link directly to the cited work when possible.

​Include the DOI in the reference if it is available. 

Effective March 2017, the recommended DOI display format looks like this: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016372.  

However, older formats such as doi:10.1037/arc0000014 or http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/arc0000014 are also acceptable.   

Pick one format to use consistently throughout a reference list.​

You need to provide an in-text reference if you:

• paraphrase
• direct quote
• refer to data or data sets
• reprint or adapt a table or figure
• reprint a long text passage

In-text references typically contain the following information, in this order:

• the surname (family name) of the author(s) or the name of the group author(s)
• the year of publication of the text
• the page number/s of the text or other means for finding the passage if there are no page numbers (usually for direct quotations, particular ideas and concepts).

The reference list is a list of works that has been cited in your paper.  The information provided allows the work to be identified and retrieved. (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association 7th ed, p.281). 

Reference list entries are created using the APA style referencing guidelines.

At the beginning of your list label the reference list "References," capitalized, in bold, and centred. References must be double spaced and appear with a hanging indent.

References

Berno, T. (2017). Social enterprise, sustainability and community in post-earthquake Christchurch: exploring the role of local food systems in building resilience. Journal of Enterprising Communities, 11(1), 149.

The reference list displays in alphabetical order.  If same authors name is cited for another work, arrange by year of publication, the earliest first.

Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (2018). The Sage handbook of qualitative research. Sage.

Jacobsen, K. H. (2012). Introduction to health research methods: A practical guide. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Jacobsen, K. H. (2019). Introduction to global health. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Restouin, A., Aresta, S., Prebet, T., Borg, J., Badache, A., & Collette, Y. (2009). A Simplified, 96-well-adapted, ATP luminescence-based motility assay. BioTechniques, 47, 871-875. http://www.biotechniques.com/BiotechniquesJournal/