LibGuides: MONT 199G-F01: Asian Migration to the U.S. (Lin): APA Citation

Why Cite Sources?

Citing sources is about more than avoiding plagiarism. You should also cite sources to make sure people reading your work know where you find information and what sources you are building on. Research and scholarship is one big conversation - you are building your research with the support of another researcher who built their research with the support of another researcher who built their research with the support of another researcher... And so on. By citing sources, you are putting your work into that legacy and conversation. And who knows, maybe in the future someone will be citing your work in their research.

By citing sources, you're acknowledging the time, effort, and labor that went into creating the information you're using. Think of how much time you spend researching and writing your class assignments. The time you put into it and the information you create has value! Scholars and writers often spend years researching and studying in their field before publishing information. Citing your sources recognizes everything that went into creating them.

In addition, citation helps you:

Give a road map to other sources. Your professor or others who read your work can see where you found your information and can review those sources themselves.
Give credit to the hard work of other researchers. Research and publication take a lot of time and effort. Citing your sources helps other researchers continue to do their work and shows respect for the time they put into their research.
Boost your own credibility. When you are evaluating how credible or accurate a source is, you may check the source’s citations to see if they are using scholarly sources and using them effectively. The same is true for your work - citing your sources makes you more credible and helps you build a stronger argument.
Demonstrate academic integrity. Education at Holy Cross is a cooperative process. Using information honestly and ethically is one way to contribute to that cooperation and create a strong academic standard across campus. Everyone at Holy Cross is part of this educational conversation and has a responsibility to uphold academic integrity.
Follow school policy. The College takes issues of academic integrity seriously. Violating the Academic Integrity Policy can result in a failing grade and disciplinary action. So make sure to cite your sources and present your own original work!

APA Citation Elements

Elements to Include

In general, entries in an APA reference list include four key elements: Author(s), date of publication, title, and source (meaning where the item came from - a specific journal, book, publisher, etc.). Depending on the type of source, the information you need to include for each element may be different. Some standard guidelines are as follows:

Author: Authors' names are listed with the last name first, then the first (and middle, if available) initials. For example: Yang, C. When a source has two authors, separate their names with a comma and ampersand (&): Yang, C., & Grey, M. Names are listed in the order they appear on a publication. When a source has 20 authors or fewer, list every author, separated by commas with an ampersand before the final author. When a source has 21 authors or more, list the first 19 authors, then an ellipsis (...), and then the final author.

Maintain capitalization as the author uses it: hooks, b.
If the source is authored by an organization, company, or group, write out the full name of the organization in your reference list: Centers for Disease Control. You may use abbreviations in the narrative of your paper and in your in-text citations as long as you have written out the full name first with the abbreviation in parenthesis to make it clear what you're talking about: Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Date: This refers to the date a source was published, not the date it was accessed. Generally, APA only requires the year of publication, though certain types of sources will include the month and/or date. Check the format for your specific source to see what is required.

Title: Include the title of the work you are citing. This may be the title of a complete book, literature, video, or film, or the title of a smaller piece of a larger work, like a journal article, a chapter in a book, or an episode of a television series. The format of the title will depend on whether it is a complete work or a smaller piece of a work. Check the format for your source to see what is required.

Source: This is a broad category that includes all of the information that points a reader to where to find your cited work. This may be the journal where an article was published, the entire book for a cited chapter, or the website that hosts a specific page you are citing. In APA, you generally do not need to cite the database where you found a source.

What Are In-Text Citations?

In-text citations are used within the body of your writing to point to longer entries in your reference list. APA style uses parenthetical references, where you put your citation at the end of a sentence by providing the author's last name, the year of publication, and (when applicable) the page number in parentheses. The period at the end of the sentence comes after the citation. Your in-text citations should lead to the full entry in your reference list.

You must include a citation any time you are paraphrasing, referencing, or directly quoting from another source in your text.

In-Text Citation Examples

These examples are for in-text citations that correspond with this reference list entry:

Hughes, E., & Scheyvens, R. (2021). Tourism partnerships: Harnessing tourist compassion to 'do good' through community development in Fiji. World Development, 145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105529

Parenthetical Citation

When paraphrasing or referencing a text without a direct quote and without introducing the text in your narrative:

Efforts to encourage tourists to volunteer in the communities they visit are complicated by lack of accountability, minimal community input, and inequitable social dynamics between tourists and the people who live in the community (Hughes & Scheyvens, 2021).

When directly quoting from a source:

Making structural changes to volunteer tourism "is likely to be too uncomfortable and difficult for tourists" (Hughes & Scheyvens, 2021, p. 8).

Narrative Citation

Sometimes you may introduce a source in your text by writing the author's name and/or the date of the source. Here are two ways you may cite a source in your written narrative:

Hughes & Scheyvens (2021) explored two tourist partnership programs in Fiji to evaluate their effectiveness.

Here, the authors are introduced in the text with the date of the article in parenthesis right after their names.

In 2021, Hughes & Scheyvens published their study of two tourist partnership programs in Fiji.

When both the date and the author are introduced in the next, you do not need to include a parenthetical citation.

According to Hughes & Scheyvens (2021), "the very real power differentials that exist between various institutions working in the development field can suggest that partnership is a misnomer" (p. 3).

Because this is direct quote, the page number is needed. The date goes after the authors' names and before the quote, while the page number is given after the quote.

Multiple Authors

One author: Use their last name in your in-text citations.

Two authors: Both authors' names are included in your citation. Use an ampersand (&) to separate their names in your parenthetical reference and the word "and" in a narrative reference.

Three or more authors: Use the first author's last name followed by "et al." For example: (Grey et al., 2015).

No Date

Use the abbreviation n.d. for a source without a date: (Brown, n.d.).

Multiple Works by the Same Author

If you have multiple works by the same author, using the date should be enough to differentiate your sources.

If the sources were published in the same year, assign each one a letter after the year and include that in both your in-text citations and your reference list: (King, 1983a) (King, 1983b).

Multiple Sources in One Citation

If you have one sentence that includes information from multiple sources, you should cite each source in the same parenthetical reference. Use the same LastName, Date format and separate the individual citations with a semicolon (;). Arrange them in alphabetical order within the parentheses: (Banner & Stark, 2012; Rogers, 1941; Wayne, 1939).

APA Reference List Examples

Article in a Scholarly Journal

Author, A. (Year of Publication). Title in sentence case: Only capitalize the first word, proper nouns, and the word after a semi-colon or other punctuation. Journal Title, volume #(issue number), pp-pp. DOI for electronic journal.

In this example, the word Harnessing in the title is capitalized because it comes after a semi-colon, meaning it is the first word of a subtitle. Fiji is also capitalized because it is a proper noun. This article does not have an issue number or page numbers, so you see the journal title is followed by the volume number and then the DOI. Some articles that are only published electronically do not have page numbers.

Kock, F., Assaf, A. G., Tsionas, M., Josiassen, A., & Karl, M. (2024). Do tourists stand by the tourism industry? Examining solidarity during and after a pandemic. Journal of Travel Research, 63(3), 696–712. https://doi.org/10.1177/00472875231164975

This example has more than three authors. The authors' names are listed in the order they appear on the article, separated by commas, with an ampersand (&) before the final author. This example also has an issue number and page numbers. Notice that these aren't labeled with things like "vol." or "pp." The location and format in the citation tells the reader which part of the journal number it is - the volume number is in italics, then the issue number in regular case and parenthesis, then a comma, then the page number range.

Article in a Print Journal

Follow the same format as above, but do not include a DOI. A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is assigned to online sources. If a source was originally published in print, it may not have a DOI. If you can find one, you can include it, but not all sources will have one.

Armstrong, J. S. (1998). Are student ratings of instruction useful? American Psychologist, 53(11), 1223–1224.

Print Book

Author, A. (Year of publication). Title of book in italics: Only capitalize the first letter, subtitle, and proper nouns. Publisher.

Butler, O. E. (2016). Parable of the sower. Seven Stories Press.

Cite the year and publisher of the specific edition you use. This book was originally published in 1993, but here I am citing an edition published by Seven Stories Press in 2016. You want your citation to match the source you actually used in case of any discrepancies or changes between editions. Page numbers may also differ across editions, so if you are quoting from a book and citing the page number, you want your reader to be able to find the quote in the right edition of the book.

E-Book

Cite an e-book the same way you cite a print book. You do not need to include the e-book platform or device, like Kindle or ProQuest. If it has a DOI, include that at the end of the citation (after the publisher). APA requires that a DOI is included whenever one is available.

Edited Book

Editor, E. (Ed.). (Year of publication). Title of work: Capitalize the subtitle and proper nouns. Publisher.

Japtok, M., & Jenkins, R. (Eds.). (2020). Human contradictions in Octavia E. Butler's work. Palgrave Macmillan.

Use (Ed.) in parentheses after the editor's name to indicate it is an edited work. When there is more than one editor, use the plural (Eds.). There should be a period inside the parentheses and after them.

Chapter in an Edited Book

When using an edited book as a source, the best practice is to cite the specific chapter(s) you are referring to. In an edited book, chapters are usually written by different authors on different topics. By citing the specific chapter, you are not only making it easier for your reader to find the exact piece of the book you used, but you are also giving credit to the individual author(s) who put the work into the chapter, while also acknowledging the editors of the book (as you will see in the example).

ChapterAuthor, A. (Year of publication). Title of chapter: Not in italics. In E. Editor & F. Editor (Eds.), Title of book in italics (pp. pages of chapter). Publisher.

Humann, H. D. (2020). Beyond science fiction: Genre in Kindred and Butler’s short stories. In M. Japtok & J. R. Jenkins (Eds.), Human contradictions in Octavia E. Butler’s work (pp. 91-106). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46625-1_6

Notice the editors' names are formatted with the first initial and then the last name, not inverted like they would be if they were at the start of the citation. In this example, you can also see proper nouns (Kindred, which is a book title, and Octavia Butler's name) are capitalized. This is also from an ebook that has a DOI, so the DOI is included at the end of the citation.

Article in a Magazine or Newspaper

Author, A. (Year, Month Day). Article title in sentence case. Title of Magazine/Newspaper. Link if online

Marshall, A. (2024, February 5). To make blockbuster shows, museums are turning to focus groups. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/arts/design/british-museum-legion-focus-groups.html

Include the full date of publication with the year, month, and day. Some magazines may only have a month of publication listed, in which case only include the month. In general, you will be able to find the complete date for these types of sources. Your in-text citation will only include the year. The name of the magazine or newspaper should be in italics and capitalized in Headline Case. Include a direct link for an article published online. If you found an article in a database and it has a DOI, include the DOI instead of another URL.

Sargeant, W. (1951, February 12). New life at the old Met. Time, 30(7), 75-88.

Some magazines and newspapers will have volume and issue numbers. Include these if they are available in the same order as you do for a journal article. In this example, the article was in Time, volume 30, issue 7, pages 75-88. Newspapers generally do not have volume and issue numbers, but will have page numbers for print editions. Always include the page numbers for articles consulted in print.

About Online Sources

Online sources can be difficult to cite because the information you need for a citation is not always readily available. For these citations, keep in mind that the purpose of a citation is to make it possible for your reader to find your sources on their own. Include as much information as you can to point them in the right direction, but know that sometimes you won't find all of the information and that's okay.

When talking about citations for websites or web pages, this is referring to sources that only exist online. For online sources that have a corresponding print publication, like the New York Times or Vogue, use the citation guide for citing magazine and newspaper articles. For online sources that do not have a print counterpart, like HuffPost or CNN, use the citation guide for pages on a website.

Page on a Website

It is very rare that you will need to cite an entire website. You should always cite the specific page where you get your information, using the guidelines listed here.

Author, A. (Year, Month Day). Title of webpage in sentence case. Website. URL

Skinner, P. (2024, January 16). Snow and ice cancel hundreds of flights across U.S. HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/canceled-flights-weather-snow_l_65a6ab83e4b003e9d4c3babd

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, May 18). Protect yourself from wildfire smoke. https://www.cdc.gov/air/wildfire-smoke/default.htm

If you cannot identify an author by name, use the name of the organization that created the page as the author. Provide the full organization name, not an abbreviation or an acronym. In the example above, you'll see "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention" is listed as the author, not CDC. In the text, you can use abbreviations after introducing the full text once, but your references list should have the full name.
If the organization name is the same as the website name, you do not need to list it twice in your citation. As you can see in the example above, the name of the organization is only listed as the author, and not as the website.

College of the Holy Cross. (2024). Outcomes after Holy Cross. https://www.holycross.edu/outcomes-after-holy-cross

If you can't find an exact date of publication, look for a copyright date (often found at the very bottom of a webpage). If you absolutely can't find a date anywhere on the page, enter the date as (n.d.). This stands for "no date."

What About Retrieval Dates?

Some citation styles ask you to include the date you accessed an online source. These may be called access dates or retrieval dates. In most cases, APA does not include retrieval dates in its citations. APA only requires a retrieval date if the contents on the page will change over time without being archived. This is fairly rare - if you aren't sure if you need to include a retrieval date, ask a librarian!

Social Media

Author [@username when applicable]. (Year, Month Day). First twenty words of the post/caption as the title. [Post type i.e., Photograph, Video, Post]. Platform Name. URL

Dremali, A. [@advil]. (2022, April 22). Happy Earth Day! Tonight marks the beginning of International Dark Sky week. We are losing the night sky at an. [Photograph]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/CcqaAtQpxPa/?igsh=dTNpeWZ4MTZsNmRs

Macy. [@macekarp]. (2023, December 14). They love us #librariansoftiktok #librarytok #librarytiktok. [Video]. TikTok. https://www.tiktok.com/@macekarp/video/7312503994306432302?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7325457149286303274

Merriam-Webster. [@MerriamWebster]. 2024, February 6. For all intensive purposes, what idioms or colloquialisms do people seem to constantly get wrong? [Post]. X. https://x.com/MerriamWebster/status/1754956801034842488?s=20

Emojis and Hashtags

Include emojis and hashtags if they are within the first twenty words of the caption or post. Each emoji or hashtag counts as one word. Emojis are not italicized. If you can't type emojis, use brackets to describe it: [book emoji].

Artwork in a Museum

Artist, A. (Year). Title of work [Description or Medium]. Museum Name, Museum Location. URL if available

Bailey, R. (2007). Storm at sea [Sculpture]. Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA, United States.

da Vinci, L. (1490-1497). Portrait of a lady from the Court of Milan, known as La Belle Ferronnière [Oil Painting]. Louvre, Paris, France. https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010062372

Include the type of work in brackets after the title. This can be a general description of the medium, like [Sculpture] or can have more detail like [Oil Painting] or [Paper Collage on Wood].
If the artwork does not have a title, give a description of the work in brackets where the title would go.
Include the URL if you viewed the artwork on a museum's website. If you saw the artwork in person, you do not need a URL.

Images

Photographer. (Year). Title or description of image if no title [Image]. Source. URL

Shearman, Alan. (2018). Frampton Marsh goldfinch 24th February 2018 [Image]. Flickr. https://flickr.com/photos/alanshearman001/52160952801/in/album-72177720299314759/

In this example, the artist included the date as part of the title, which is why you see the date 24th February 2018 in the title. You do not need to add a date to a title if it is not included by the artist. The year should be included in parentheses after the artist's name.

*Note: When using images in public-facing works, you should also be aware of copyright and licensing restrictions. Not all images are permitted for reuse. See our Guide to Copyright, Fair Use, and Licensing for more information. Some images will state "no attribution required." For these images, you do not need to include a citation. All other images must be reused according to their license and cited appropriately.

Online Videos

Account Name. (Year, Month Day). Video title [Video]. Video Platform. URL

CSUDH Library. (2019, October 29). Introduction to citation styles: APA 7th ed. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/_fVv2Jt0o18?feature=shared

In this example, the video title has a period at the end after the abbreviation "ed." Typically, there is not a period at the end of a title in APA. The period goes after the brackets for [Video].

Fagan, K. (2022, May). Why people love watching sports [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_fagan_why_people_love_watching_sports

Online Dictionary Entry

Oxford. (n.d.) Curiosity. In Oxford English dictionary. Retrieved April 10, 2024, from https://www.oed.com/dictionary/curiosity_n?tab=meaning_and_use#7543278

Print Dictionary Entry

Merriam-Webster. (2003). Litmus test. In Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary (11th ed., p. 727).

APA Style: Dictionary Entry References

Generative AI (such as ChatGPT)

The use of generative AI in academic research is constantly evolving. One thing that is certain is that the use of these tools should be cited, just as you would cite a book or article you consulted. APA has released guidelines for citing ChatGPT and other AI models that you can find at the link below.

Keep in mind that while the College does not have a specific policy in place about the use of generative AI, your professor may have policies regarding the use of AI for their class and assignments. Always refer to your syllabus and your professor before using these tools.

Learn more about AI in scholarship with our Guide to AI.

APA Style: How to cite ChatGPT