Journal Article Reference Checklist, APA Style, 7th Edition

7th Edition

Journal Article

Reference Checklist

The following are general guidelines for formatting reference list entries for jour

nal articles in APA Style.

Find examples of journal article references in Section 10.1 of both the Publication Manual of the American

Psychological Association (7th ed.) and the Concise Guide to APA Style (7th ed.) as well as on the

Journal Articles References page of the APA Style website.

Chapter 9 of the Publication Manual and the Concise Guide show these general guidelines for creating

references and reference lists plus exceptions and cases not addressed in this checklist. Examples of references

for other types of works are shown in Chapter 10 of the Publication Manual and the Concise Guide and on the

Reference Examples pages.

Author(s)

ist authors’ names in the same order as shown

on the first page of the article.

Write each author’s last name, followed by a

comma, and then their initials—no full first or

middle names.

Use a period and a space after each initial.

For works with two to 20 authors, put a comma

after the initials of the first author and before

the last name of the next author, and then do

the same for subsequent authors.

Use “&” before the final author’s last name.

For works with 21 or more authors, list the first

19 authors’ names; insert an ellipsis (. . .), but no

ampersand; and add the final author’s name.

Check that there is a period after the final

author’s initials.

ear

Place the year of publication in parentheses.

Use the year only (other periodicals [e.g., blog,

newspaper, magazine] may include a month,

day, or season).

Put a period after the closing parenthesis.

Article Title

Write the title in sentence case: Capitalize only

the rst word of the title, the rst word after

punctuation that separates a main title from a

subtitle (e.g., ending periods, question marks,

colons, and some dashes), and proper nouns;

lowercase all other words.

Do not use italics or other formatting for the

title.

Put a period at the end of the title.

Journal Name

Use the journal name shown on the work

(e.g., at the top of the article or on the cover

of the journal)—do not abbreviate it yourself.

Write the journal name in title case:

Capitalize most words; lowercase only words

of three letters or fewer with the exception of

the rst word in the title, the rst word after

punctuation that separates a main title from

a subtitle (e.g., ending periods, colons, and

some dashes), and proper nouns.

Italicize the journal name.

Put a comma after the journal name—do not

italicize the comma.

Volume Number and Issue Number

Italicize the volume number.

Include the issue number when available.

Put the issue number in parentheses directly

after the volume number—do not put a

space between the volume number and the

opening parenthesis.

Do not use italics or other formatting for the

issue number and its parentheses.

Put a comma after the closing parenthesis—

do not italicize the comma.

If no issue number is shown on the work,

omit it and place a comma directly after the

volume number—do not italicize the comma

after the volume number.

Page Number

Include the full page range of the article.

Do not use italics or other formatting.

Separate numbers in the page range using

an en dash (–).

Do not include page abbreviations, such as

“pp.” or “pg.”

Put a period after the second page number.

If the article has an article number or

eLocator instead of a page range, write the

word “Article” and then the article number

instead of a page range, followed by a

period.

DOI or URL

Include the DOI if available; use the Crossref

DOI search engine if you cannot nd the

DOI.

Include the URL if the article is retrieved

online (but not from a database) and has

no DOI.

If the article comes from an academic

research database and does not have a

DOI, do not include any electronic retrieval

information in the reference.

Copy and paste the DOI or URL directly

from your web browser.

Do not put a period at the end of the

DOI or URL.

Do not write “Retrieved from” or

“Accessed from” before the DOI or URL.

See the APA Style website for

more information on how to format

DOIs and URLs and when to include a URL

for articles retrieved from a database.

Examples of Journal Article References

Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of

storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture,

8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185

Jerrentrup, A., Mueller, T., Glowalla, U., Herder, M., Henrichs, N., Neubauer, A., & Schaefer, J. R. (2018).

Teaching medicine with the help of “Dr. House.” PLoS ONE, 13(3), Article e0193972.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193972

Sanchiz, M., Chevalier, A., & Amadieu, F. (2017). How do older and young adults start searching for information?

Impact of age, domain knowledge and problem complexity on the different steps of information searching.

Computers in Human Behavior, 72, 67–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.02.038

For help creating an en dash, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_make_dashes

More information on and examples of journal article references

can be found in Section 10.1 of the Publication Manual of the

American Psychological Association (7th ed.) and the Concise

Guide to APA Style (7th ed.).

SOURCE: American Psychological Association. (2020).

Publication manual of the American Psychological Association

(7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

CREDIT: JULIE HILL, LASALLE UNIVERSITY