Referencing Styles

A guide to the reference styles used at the University of St Andrews

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:

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association gives a number of examples of references to online materials on pages 214-215.

In general, you are advised to include the same components, in the same order as you would for a print resource, and append the reference with the key elements needed to find the resource online, e.g. web address.  

Date Accessed should only be added to the end of the reference if the resource you are referring to is likely to change over time.

In-text citation:

(Government Office for Science, 2016)

Reference list entry:

Government Office for Science. (2016). Future of cities: The science of cities and future research priorities. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/516407/gs-16-6-future-cities-science-of-cities.pdf​

Example of Government report title page

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.
  • ​If you can identify the author include this information.
  • For multiple authors follow the advice in the Author Rules tab, paying attention to the use of commas, ampersand, and ellipses.
  • (Date) is always within parenthesis, and followed with a "."
  • Provide the title of the webpage to which you are referring.
  • Provide a URL to the specific page you are referring to at the end of the reference.
  • No full stop is given.
  • The second and subsequent lines of each reference should be indented.
  • The reference list should be double line spaced.

 

Examples of references for a range of online materials can be found in the Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association, pp.214-215.  The Manual is available in the Library