Your Research Companion
The reference list should be considered an ‘appendix’ to your writing which contains the ‘full’, or more detailed, version of all your in-text references, in alphabetical order based on the author’s surname. In practice, when your reader is curious about a source that you’ve used, they will use the listed in-text citation to find the full reference in the reference list, which will then give them all the details they need to find this source. In other to communicate exactly what information you used where, your in-text referencing should be accompanied by a reference list.
Notably, even if you use the same source multiple times throughout your text, you only need to include the ‘full reference’ once, as each citation will connect to the same reference in your reference list.
As mentioned, the way in which you write a ‘full reference’ depends on {1} the referencing style you employ. However, it also depends on {2} the kind of source you are referring to. We will now focus on the three most commonly used academic sources; articles, books and webpages, in APA 7th Style. For other types of references, we recommend you visit this webpage by the creators of APA 7th Style.
Let’s stop right here! An important disclaimer before we go on…
Writing references can be a difficult skill to master. Hence, many students will choose to employ a reference generator. These generators however are highly prone to be outdated or faulty. Students that are unfamiliar with referencing will not spot any incorrect references that a generator creates, and will thus happily include wrong references in their work, thinking it’s correct. The ACRES Quick-Start Guide strongly recommends against using generators of any kind. Learning how to reference correctly will not only prevent generator mistakes, but it will also save you a lot of time in the long run by not needing to fill all the information into a generator first! You will become the generator instead.
[APA 7th BOOK TEMPLATE]
Surname, Initial(s). (Year). Title of book (edition, Volume). Name of publisher. DOI
(Note again the usage of italics and punctuation in this template!)
This one is maybe even a little easier. Note here mainly that the title of the book is italicized, whilst the name of the publisher is not. It may also be worth noticing that contrary to earlier editions of APA Style, 7th edition only includes the publisher name (and not their location). The DOI is not compulsory for books, but should be included when possible. Example:
Giddens, A. (1994). Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (3rd ed.). Polity Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781912453207
[APA 7th WEBPAGE TEMPLATE]
Surname, Initial(s). (Year, Month Day#). Webpage title. Website title. URL
(Note again the usage of italics and punctuation in this template!)
At first glance this might seem somewhat abstract, so let’s break it down with an example. Let’s say that you want to make a reference for the article Rethinking Information Literacy. On the first page you can already find some of the first elements in your reference. Namely, that the author’s name is James W. Marcum and that it was published in January of 2002. We also know the article’s title. So:
Marcum, J.W. (2002). Rethinking Information Literacy.
(Note especially the punctuation; the comma, dots, and brackets)
Next, we add the relevant journal information. On the top of the first page you can find that the article was published in The Library Quarterly, volume 72, number 1. On the bottom page (or by scrolling to the end of the document) you can find that its page numbers range 1-26. Hence:
Marcum, J.W. (2002). Rethinking Information Literacy. The Library Quarterly, 72(1)
(Note here especially the usage of italics. Journal title and volume# are italicized, article title and issue# aren’t)
Finally, we add the DOI – the Digital Object Identifier. This is a unique code or link which will refer your reader to the correct article online. Most modern articles include the DOI on the first page of the article, but older articles such as this one sometimes do not. In those cases, you should make use of the website crossref.org, which contains DOI’s for all articles available online. Searching Crossref for ‘Rethinking Information Literacy Marcum 2002’ grants us the DOI. Hence, the full reference:
Marcum, J.W. (2002). Rethinking Information Literacy. The Library Quarterly, 72(1), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1086/603335
Webpages include both the specific title of the webpage you are referring to as well as the name of the website this page is part of. Let’s say you want to refer to this article by ScreenRant. The webpage title is the name of the article, whilst the website title – the website the article is placed on – is ScreenRant. Notably, we add the month and the date as well here, whereas so far we’ve only included the year:
McCormick, C. (2022, April 19th). The 30 Best Movies of All Time (According to IMDb). ScreenRant. https://screenrant.com/best-movies-of-all-time-ranked-imdb/
(Note here especially the usage of italics. The name of the webpage is not italicized. The name of the website is.)