What Is APA 7th Edition?
APA style is published by the American Psychological Association and is now in its 7th edition (2020). While it originated in psychology and social sciences, APA has become one of the most widely used citation styles across academic disciplines — including biological sciences, health sciences, education, data science, and many interdisciplinary STEM fields.
APA uses an author-date system: you cite sources in the text using the author's surname and year of publication — (Smith, 2022) — and provide full reference details at the end of your paper in a "References" list, sorted alphabetically. This makes it easy for readers to gauge the recency of evidence at a glance, which is particularly valuable in fast-moving STEM fields.
The 7th edition (released September 2020) introduced several meaningful changes from the 6th edition, including simplified DOI formatting, updated rules for citing online sources, new guidance on group authors, and expanded coverage of modern source types such as social media posts and datasets.
What Changed in the 7th Edition?
If you have previously learned APA 6th edition, pay attention to these key updates in the 7th:
- DOIs: now formatted as hyperlinks — https://doi.org/xxx — not as "doi: xxx"
- Up to 20 authors: list all authors up to 20 before using an ellipsis (…). The 6th edition used "et al." after 6 authors
- Running head: no longer required for student papers (only professional manuscripts)
- Publisher location: no longer needed for books — just the publisher name
- URLs for websites: always include the URL; "Retrieved from" is no longer needed unless a retrieval date is required
- Group authors: clearer rules for citing organisations, government bodies, and institutions
- Paper format: two templates — one for students, one for professional manuscripts
In-Text Citation Rules
Every claim, paraphrase, or quote that comes from another source needs an in-text citation. In APA 7th, this is the author's last name + year, placed in parentheses. For a direct quote, add the page number.
| Scenario | Format | Example |
|---|
| One author | (Surname, Year) | (Smith, 2022) |
| Two authors | (Surname & Surname, Year) | (Smith & Jones, 2022) |
| Three or more authors | (First Author et al., Year) | (Smith et al., 2022) |
| Organisation as author | (Organisation, Year) | (NASA, 2023) |
| No author | ("Title," Year) | ("Deep Learning," 2023) |
| Direct quote | (Surname, Year, p. #) | (Smith, 2022, p. 45) |
| Multiple sources | (Author A, Year; Author B, Year) | (Chen, 2022; Patel, 2023) |
| Same author, same year | (Surname, Yeara; Surname, Yearb) | (Smith, 2022a, 2022b) |
Narrative vs parenthetical citations
You can integrate the author's name into the sentence (narrative) or put the whole citation in parentheses at the end (parenthetical). Both are acceptable:
Narrative: Chen et al. (2023) demonstrated that the algorithm achieves 94.3% accuracy.
Parenthetical: The algorithm achieves 94.3% accuracy on standard benchmarks (Chen et al., 2023).
Journal Articles
Journal articles are the most common source type in academic STEM writing. In APA 7th, the volume number is italicised but the issue number is not.
Format
Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article in sentence case. Journal Name in Title Case, Volume(Issue), pages. https://doi.org/xxxxx
Example — three authors, with DOI
Chen, J. K., Patel, R. M., & Torres, L. D. (2023). Deep learning approaches for structural fault detection in civil infrastructure. Nature Machine Intelligence, 5(3), 221–234. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-023-00614-2
Example — twenty-one authors (use ellipsis after 19th, then last author)
Smith, A., Jones, B., Brown, C., Wilson, D., Taylor, E., Johnson, F., Davies, G., Evans, H., Thomas, I., Roberts, J., Walker, K., Hall, L., Allen, M., Young, N., Hernandez, O., King, P., Wright, Q., Lopez, R., Hill, S., … Green, T. (2023). Genome-wide association study of metabolic syndrome. Science, 382(6670), 890–901. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc1234
Example — no DOI available (include URL)
Rahman, A., & Park, S. (2021). Convolutional approaches for plant disease detection. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 190, 106435. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168169921005678
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Books
Whole book — one or more authors
Format
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of book in sentence case (Edition ed.). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxxx
Examples
Goodfellow, I., Bengio, Y., & Courville, A. (2016). Deep learning. MIT Press.
Haykin, S., & Van Veen, B. (2003). Signals and systems (2nd ed.). Wiley.
Edited book
Brown, A. B., & Wilson, C. D. (Eds.). (2022). Advanced robotics systems. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12345-6
Chapter in an edited book
Format
Author, A. A. (Year). Chapter title. In A. B. Editor & C. D. Editor (Eds.), Book title (pp. xx–xx). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxxx
Example
Nguyen, T. H. (2022). Machine vision in industrial robotics. In A. B. Brown & C. D. Wilson (Eds.), Advanced robotics systems (pp. 145–178). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12345-6_7
Websites and Webpages
In APA 7th, always include the URL for websites. A retrieval date is only needed if the content is likely to change over time (e.g., a Wikipedia article or a live database). For institutional or government pages that are stable, no retrieval date is needed.
Format — individual author
Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of webpage. Website Name. URL
Format — organisation as author
Organisation Name. (Year, Month Day). Title of webpage. URL
Examples
NASA. (2023, September 12). James Webb Space Telescope: New images of distant galaxies. https://science.nasa.gov/webb/
World Health Organization. (2023). Global tuberculosis report 2023. https://www.who.int/teams/global-tuberculosis-programme/tb-reports
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024, January 10). COVID-19: Vaccine effectiveness. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/effectiveness/ (Retrieved February 1, 2024)
Theses and Dissertations
Published thesis (ProQuest or institutional repository)
Almeida, S. M. (2022). Machine learning approaches in real-time urban traffic prediction [Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Unpublished thesis
Park, J. Y. (2023). Computational methods for protein folding prediction [Master's thesis, University of Cambridge]. University of Cambridge Repository.
Technical Reports
Format
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of report (Report No. xxx). Publisher/Organisation. https://doi.org/xxxxx
Examples
National Institute of Standards and Technology. (2023). Cybersecurity framework v2.0 (NIST Technical Report NISTIR 8374). U.S. Department of Commerce. https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.CSWP.29
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2023). Climate change 2023: Synthesis report. IPCC. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/
Datasets
Citing datasets is increasingly expected in data science and research papers. In APA 7th, treat the dataset as a work with an author, year, title, and repository.
Format
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of dataset (Version #) [Data set]. Repository. https://doi.org/xxxxx
Example
Deng, J., Dong, W., Socher, R., Li, L.-J., Li, K., & Fei-Fei, L. (2009). ImageNet large scale visual recognition challenge dataset [Data set]. Stanford Vision Lab. http://image-net.org/
Smith, A. B. (2022). Structural health monitoring time-series data v2.0 [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.123456
Conference Papers and Proceedings
Published proceedings (with DOI)
Nguyen, D., Rahman, A., & Park, S. (2023). Optimising neural architecture search for edge deployment. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV 2023) (pp. 4501–4509). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCV48922.2023.00448
Unpublished/poster presentation
Torres, L. D. (2023, April 12–15). Real-time fault detection in civil structures using deep learning [Poster presentation]. IEEE International Symposium on Structural Health Monitoring, Pasadena, CA, United States.
Software and Code
Van Rossum, G., & Drake, F. L. (2009). Python 3 reference manual. Python Software Foundation. https://www.python.org/
Pedregosa, F., Varoquaux, G., Gramfort, A., Michel, V., Thirion, B., Grisel, O., Blondel, M., Prettenhofer, P., Weiss, R., Dubourg, V., Vanderplas, J., Passos, A., Cournapeau, D., Brucher, M., Perrot, M., & Duchesnay, E. (2011). Scikit-learn: Machine learning in Python. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 12, 2825–2830. https://jmlr.org/papers/v12/pedregosa11a.html
The Reference List — Formatting Rules
- Title: "References" — centred, bold, on a new page
- All references are alphabetical by first author's last name
- Same author, multiple works: chronological (earliest first)
- Same author, same year: add a, b, c after the year (Smith, 2022a)
- Hanging indent: first line flush left, subsequent lines indented 0.5 inch (1.27 cm)
- Double-spaced, no blank line between entries
- Italicise journal name and volume number — not the issue number
- DOIs formatted as clickable hyperlinks: https://doi.org/xxxxx
Reminder on et al.: In-text you use "et al." for 3+ authors from the very first citation. But in the reference list, you must list ALL authors up to 20. Only use an ellipsis after the 19th author if there are 21 or more total.
Common APA 7th Mistakes to Avoid
| Mistake | What to do instead |
|---|
| Writing "doi: 10.xxx" (old format) | Use the full URL: https://doi.org/10.xxx |
| Using "et al." after 2 authors in reference list | List all authors up to 20 |
| Writing "Retrieved from" before URLs | Just include the URL (no "Retrieved from" unless retrieval date needed) |
| Italicising the issue number in parentheses | Only the volume number is italicised: 5(3) |
| Including publisher location for books | APA 7th does not require location — just the publisher name |
| Using "&" inside the text narrative | Inside text: use "and" — only use "&" in parenthetical citations |
| Capitalising article and chapter titles in the reference list | Use sentence case: only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised |
| Leaving out the issue number | Always include both volume and issue: Volume(Issue) |
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I use "APA" or "APA 7th edition"?
If your institution or journal has specified APA style, always confirm whether they mean 6th or 7th edition. The formats differ in meaningful ways. When in doubt, use the 7th edition as it is the current version published in 2020.
How do I cite a secondary source (something cited within another paper)?
Try to find the original source. If you cannot, cite the secondary source and indicate where you found it: (Original Author, Year, as cited in Secondary Author, Year). Only the secondary source appears in your reference list. Use secondary citations sparingly — ideally no more than once or twice in a paper.
How do I cite a source with no author and no date?
In-text: ("Title of the Page," n.d.)
Reference: Title of the page. (n.d.). Website Name. URL
Can I use APA for a STEM paper?
Yes — if your department, journal, or instructor has specified APA, use it. Many biology, health science, and data science courses use APA. Engineering and CS courses typically prefer IEEE. Always check your assignment brief or journal submission guidelines.
How do I handle a paper with a very long title in the in-text citation?
Use the full title in the reference list. In the text, you can shorten it to the first few words if it is used as a stand-in for "no author" — e.g., ("Deep Learning Approaches," 2023). Keep enough words to identify it clearly in the reference list.