Referencing Styles
New Edition
This information applies to the 6th Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. A 7th edition of the manual is now published. ONLY USE THE INFORMATION HERE IF YOU KNOW YOU NEED TO USE THE 6TH EDITION AND NOT THE 7TH.
What you need to include:
Print journal article references include:
- Author(s) of article
- Year of publication
- Title of article
- Title of Journal (italicised)
- Volume number
- (Issue number, only when each issue starts with page 1)
- Page numbers
Online journal article references include:
- Author(s) of the article
- Year of Publication
- Title of article
- Title of Journal (italicised)
- Volume number
- (Issue number, only when each issue starts with page 1)
- Page numbers
- doi OR
- Retrieved from AND
- URL of the article
Fields marked in blue are only included where the source contains that information.
Where the reference takes up multiple lines, indent the reference from the second line, see examples in the tabs above.
The basic in-text citation format is:
(Author surname, year)
The Basic Reference format is:
Author, A.A. (Year). Article title. Journal title, volume number (issue number), xx-xxii.
NB: Issue number is only given when each issue of a journal starts with new pagination, where issues use sequential pagination no issue number is given.
In-text citation entry:
(Black & Barnes, 2015, p. 425)
Reference list entry:
Black, J. & Barnes, J.L. (2015). Fiction and social cognition: The effect of viewing award-winning television dramas on the theory of mind. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, 9, 423-429.
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In-text citation entry:
(Kemp, Tiggerman, Orr, & Grear, 2014, p. 100)
Reference list entry:
Kemp, E., Tiggerman, M., Orr, J. & Grear, J. (2014) Attentional retraining can reduce chocolate consumption. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 20, 94-102. doi: 10.1037/xap0000005
In-text citation entry:
(Balfour, 2006, p. 747)
Reference list entry:
Balfour, G. (2006). Re-imagining a feminist criminology. Canadian Journal of Crime and Criminology, 48, 735-752. Retrieved from http://heinonline.org.ezproxy.st-andrews.ac.uk/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/cjccj48&id=1
Ensure you include all the punctuation required in your reference.
- In-text citations are within parenthesis, and contain the author(s) surname(s) and year of publication. The page number is given if you are referring to a specific page/section, always give page numbers if you are quoting. If you refer to the authors within your text, only the date is needed in your in-text citation. If you refer to the year in your text, only the author(s) is required in your in-text citation.
- Ensure you include all the punctuation required in your reference.
- For multiple authors follow the advice in the Author Rules tab, paying attention to the use of commas, ampersand, and ellipses. Surname is followed with a comma, a space, then the initials. No space is given between initials when more than one is needed for an author's forename.
- (Date) is always within parenthesis, and followed with a "."
- Journal article references include the title of the article and the title of the journal in which the is published.
- Article titles are not italicised, and are followed by a full-stop.
- Journal publication title is always italicised and followed with a comma.
- The volume number and pages of the article are included.
- Where each issue of a journal starts with fresh pagination, include the issue number in parenthesis after the volume number.
- For print resources a full-stop is given at the end of the reference.
- For articles accessed online include the doi (digital object identifier) when available. When no doi can be found, append the reference with Retrieved from followed by the article URL. No full stop is given.
- The second and subsequent lines of each reference should be indented.
- The reference list should be double line spaced.