How To Write References In APA Style

In academic work it is necessary that everything we write is justified. For this, citations and references are used. The citations serve to indicate, within the text, what ideas are supported by other works in a brief way. For their part, the references indicate exactly where we can find this information. Therefore, the references are longer. Accordingly, below you will find a guide to writing your references in APA style.

The style is the one that will indicate how the citations and references are written. Although there are several styles, the most used in psychology is the APA style. This style, provided by the American Psychological Association, is a set of rules on how to write an article; They range from the text format to the font. However, this article will only explain the references.

References in APA style

The references integrate all the bibliography used in a text and go at the end of the works. They serve to check which works are cited in the text. Therefore, the references should collect all the citations that appear in the work. In this way, citations and references complement each other to make reading more fluid.

References must be ordered alphabetically and their format is French indentation. Within the references, the author (s), the year, the title and any other information that helps the reader to know where the information was obtained must appear. In this way, the references will be different depending on the document that we want to reference.

Book references

In the case of book references, in addition to the name, year and title, the city where it was published and the name of the publisher must be included. Also, the name of the book is italicized. The format would be the following:

Surname, AA (Year). Title . City: Editorial

It may also be the case that instead of a book we want to reference a chapter of a book. In this case, the name of the book publishers, the title of the book and the pages where the chapter is found should be added. Also, the one in italics is the title of the book, not the chapter. The format is as follows:

Surname, AA, and Surname, BB (Year). Title of the chapter or entry. In AA Surname. (Ed.), Book Title (pp. Xx-xx). City, Country: Editorial.

Article references in scientific journals

For articles in scientific journals, the APA format indicates that in addition to the name of the author or authors, the year and the title of the article, it is necessary to indicate the name of the journal as well as the volume, the number and the pages in which it is Article. In this case, what is italicized is the name of the journal and the volume. The format is presented below:

Surname, AA, Surname, B. B, and Surname, CC (Year). Article title. Name of the journal , volume (number), pp-pp.

References of articles in newspapers in APA style

Newspapers are also an important source of information. To reference them, it is necessary to put at the end the name of the newspaper and the pages where the article is found. However, today digital newspapers have proliferated and they do not have pages. Therefore, it is necessary to include “Retrieved from http: // www …” and the web where the article is located. For  newspapers, it is the name of the newspaper that is italicized.

Last name AA (Year, day of the month). Article title. Name of the newspaper , pp-pp.

In cases where there is no author, the title precedes the first place.

Article title. (Year, day of the month). Name of the newspaper . Retrieved from http: // www…

Thesis references

In the case of theses, which also applies to final degree and master’s degree projects, it is necessary to include the name of the institution, usually a university, and the city where it is located. The title of the thesis will be placed in italics, as in the following example:

Author, A. (Year). Thesis title (undergraduate, master’s or doctoral thesis). Name of the institution, City.

References to web pages in APA style

Another common case is when we use information from jobs that we find on the internet and that are not magazine or newspaper articles. In this case you have to add the month of publication, the organization that publishes it and where it is published from. In addition, you must include the website where it is located. In some cases there are no authors, so the organization is placed in place of the author. The format is as follows:

Surname, AA (Year, month). Title of the page or job . Place of publication: Publishing house. Retrieved from http: // www…

As can be seen in some of the examples presented, sometimes there is data that needs to be referenced, but it does not exist. In those cases it is not necessary to include them. Finally, we leave you the citation of this article so that you do not forget how to cite the articles that you can find in La Mente es Maravillosa:

Don’t forget about DOI

The DOI, which stands for Digital Object Identifier, is a unique and permanent identifier for electronic publications. Its function is to provide information on the description of digital objects (magazines, articles, books…) and their location on the Internet, and it does so through metadata (author, title, publication data…).

Although we have not mentioned it previously, it is necessary to include this identifier at the end of the quotes as in the following example:

With this information, you are ready to reference your academic works. Do not forget the importance of the reader being able to go to your sources to learn more about the subject you have discussed.