Skip to Main Content

APA 7th Edition Referencing Guide

Introduction to Journals

Most of the journal articles you will encounter will be electronic (eJournals).  The examples below concentrate on this format.   The final box shows how you would deal with a journal article available only in print format.

One basic rule:

If a DOI  has been assigned to the article that you are using, you should include this after the page numbers for the article. If no DOI has been assigned use the URL of the website where you have found the article.

What is a DOI:

A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) appears as string of numbers and is unique to the article.  You should be able to find the article by its DOI alone with no other details.

Example DOI:

 https://doi.org/10.1080/08927936.2018.1406201

Try it and see!

One Author

Structure:

journal one author

 

Example:

journal one author example

 

In Text:

... (Wells, 2007)

or

Wells (2007).....

Two Authors

Structure:

Include both authors.  In your text link them with "and", but with brackets you can use "&"

 

Example:

journal tow authors example

In Text:

Dell and Poole (2015)....

or

..... (Dell & Poole, 2015).

Three to 20 Authors

Structure:

Journal 3-20 authors example

 

Example:

3 authors  journal

 

In text:

....( McEvedy et al., 2018)

or

....McEvedy et al. (2018)

More than 20 Authors

It is unlikely that you will encounter this - so unlikely, this example is from mathematics! If you find one from psychology, we'll upload it instead.  

 

Structure: 

List by last names and initials; commas separate author names as with other examples for your first 19 authors.

Then use ellipsis (dots) to represent the the rest of authors (so if there are 24 authors you would need 4 dots) then add final author's name and initials.  

You should have no more than 20 authors in your list.    

The current record for the most authors is over 5000!

 

Example:

21 authors

In Text:

...(Wiskunde et al., 2019)

Or

Wiskunde et al. (2019)

Print Only Journal

Structure:

Author, Initial. (Date). Title of article. Title of journal, volume(issue), pages

 

Example:

print only journal

In Text:

... (Cushen et al., 2019)

Or

Cushen et al. (2019).....

 

Journal with no DOI

Structure:

Not every article has a DOI, in these cases use a URL.  Try and find a stable URL (or permalink) from the journal itself, rather than one taken from a database (eResource) or a webpage.  

 

Example:

undefined

In Text:

.. (Soni & Soni, 2016)

Or 

Soni and Soni (2016)...

Newspapers

Online News Article

Note: The format for this type of source depends on whether your source comes from a site with an associated newspaper.

If the source does come from a site with an associated newspaper, leave the title of the article unformatted, but italicize the title of the newspaper.

Structure:

Lastname, F. M. (Year, Month Date). Title of article. Title of Publication. URL

Example:

Okri, B. (2020, March, 26). Fear of Covid-19 is a mental contagion - and that's something we can fight. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/26/fear-of-covid-19-is-a-mental-contagion-ben-okri

In Text:

....(Okri, 2020)

Okri (2020)...

If there is no print version (as with the BBC)  put the title of the article in italics and not the source/website.

Structure:

 Lastname, F. M. (Year, Month Date). Title of article. Name of publishing website. URL

Example:

undefined

In Text:

...(Cuddy, 2020)

or

Cuddy (2020)...