References in APA: how to format an APA 7 reference list

This is the pillar of our citation styles series. It covers APA in depth. If you need to compare APA with Vancouver, IEEE and Harvard, read how to format a reference list first. For in-text citations by number of authors, see how to cite two or three authors in APA.

What does an APA reference entry contain?

Every APA reference answers four questions in a fixed order: who (author), when (date), what (title) and where (source). Each part ends with a period [1][2].

Here is the house example, the 1953 paper that described the structure of DNA:

Watson, J. D., & Crick, F. H. C. (1953). Molecular structure of nucleic acids: A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature, 171(4356), 737–738. https://doi.org/10.1038/171737a0

How do you set up the APA reference page?

Put the references on a new page after the text, title it References in bold and centered, double-space everything, and use a 0.5-inch hanging indent [1][3].

• Title: "References", not "Bibliography" or "Works Cited". Bold, centered, at the top of a new page.
• Spacing: double-spaced within and between entries. No extra blank lines between entries.
• Hanging indent: the first line of each entry sits at the left margin; every following line is indented 0.5 inch (1.27 cm).
• Font: the same font as the rest of the paper.
• What goes in: only works you cited in the text. Personal communications (emails, interviews you did not record, private chats) are cited in the text only and do not appear in the list [1].

To set a hanging indent in Word, select the list, open Paragraph, choose Special: Hanging and set By: 0.5". In Google Docs, use Format > Align & indent > Indentation options > Special indent: Hanging. Never fake the indent with tabs or line breaks.

How do you order an APA reference list?

Alphabetize by the first author's surname, letter by letter, and remember that nothing comes before something: "Brown, J." precedes "Browning, A." [1][4]. The table shows each tie-breaking rule with real works.

The two Kahneman and Tversky papers are a common trap. They have the same two authors in a different order, so they are different author groups: "Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979)" files under K, and "Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974)" files under T.

If your list is long, the reference list sorter applies these rules and flags duplicates.

How many authors do you list in an APA reference?

List up to 20 authors; for 21 or more, list the first 19, an ellipsis, then the final author [1][2].

The 2016 paper on the FAIR data principles has 53 authors, so the entry shows the first 19 and the last:

Wilkinson, M. D., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, I. J., Appleton, G., Axton, M., Baak, A., Blomberg, N., Boiten, J.-W., da Silva Santos, L. B., Bourne, P. E., Bouwman, J., Brookes, A. J., Clark, T., Crosas, M., Dillo, I., Dumon, O., Edmunds, S., Evelo, C. T., Finkers, R., . . . Mons, B. (2016). The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific Data, 3, Article 160018. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18

Never write "et al." in an APA reference list. It belongs in the text only. Our et al. guide compares how other styles shorten long author lists.

APA reference examples by source type

Each example below is a real, checkable work. The general pattern is shown first.

Journal article

Pattern: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article. Journal Name, volume(issue), pages. https://doi.org/xxxx

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291. https://doi.org/10.2307/1914185

For an online journal that uses article numbers instead of pages, write "Article" and the number:

Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2005). Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Medicine, 2(8), Article e124. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

Book

Pattern: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of book (ed.). Publisher. DOI if it has one

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). SAGE.

APA 7 dropped the publisher's city. Give the edition in parentheses after the title, not italic. When the author and the publisher are the same organization, leave the publisher out:

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

Chapter in an edited book

Pattern: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of chapter. In E. E. Editor (Ed.), Title of book (pp. xx–xx). Publisher.

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole.

Editors' initials come before their surnames, the chapter title is not italic, and the book title is. Use "(Ed.)" for one editor and "(Eds.)" for two or more.

Report from an organization

Pattern: Organization. (Year). Title of report (Report No. if any). Publisher if different. URL or DOI

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2019). Reproducibility and replicability in science. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25303

The publisher appears here because it differs from the author's name.

Web page and blog post

Pattern for a web page: Author or Organization. (Year, Month Day). Title of page. Site Name. URL

Pattern for a blog post: Author, A. A. (Year, Month Day). Title of post. Blog Name. URL

APA treats a blog post like an article, so the post title is plain and the blog name is italic:

McAdoo, T., Denneny, S., & Lee, C. (2025, September 9). Citing generative AI in APA Style: Part 1—Reference formats. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/cite-generative-ai-references

For a web page, the page title is italic and the site name is plain. If the author and the site name are the same, drop the site name. Add a retrieval date only when the page is designed to change and is not archived, such as a dictionary entry: "Retrieved November 14, 2026, from https://..." [1].

YouTube video

Pattern: Uploader Name [Username]. (Year, Month Day). Title of video [Video]. YouTube. URL

Harvard University. (2019, August 28). Soft robotic gripper for jellyfish [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guRoWTYfxMs

The person or channel that uploaded the video is the author. Add the username in square brackets only when it differs from the real name. For a quote, give a timestamp in the text instead of a page: (Harvard University, 2019, 0:45).

ChatGPT and other generative AI

In September 2025 APA replaced its 2023 format: the company is the author, and the reference points to a specific chat with a shareable link [5].

Pattern: Company. (Year, Month Day). Title of chat [Generative AI chat]. Tool Name. URL

OpenAI. (2025, August 21). High school grammar concepts [Generative AI chat]. ChatGPT. https://chatgpt.com/share/68a77b60-0ee4-800c-9acc-cd3fd573c311

In the text: (OpenAI, 2025). Older guides still show the 2023 form "OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]." That format is now retired, so check which one your instructor expects. If you cannot share the chat, APA's guidance on unrecoverable sources applies; your course may ask you to paste the prompt and output in an appendix instead.

What if there is no author or no date?

Move the title into the author position when there is no author, and write (n.d.) when there is no date [1][6].

Three checks before you use these rules:

1. Look for a group author. A page on a government or university site with no person's name is usually authored by that organization. Use the organization as author.
2. Look for a date. A "last updated" date counts if it applies to the content you used. A copyright date in the site footer does not.
3. Use "Anonymous" only if the work is signed "Anonymous".

In the text, a title used in place of an author takes title case; it is italic if the title is italic in the reference, or in quotation marks if it is not.

How do you format DOIs and URLs in APA 7?

Write every DOI as https://doi.org/ followed by the DOI, with no period after it and no label in front [1].

Include a DOI whenever the work has one, even for print copies. If there is no DOI and you read the work online, add the URL, except for academic databases where a URL would not work for other readers. Live links or plain text are both acceptable; keep them consistent. To find a missing DOI, search the title on Crossref or paste it into the APA citation generator.

Common mistakes in APA references

• Title case article titles. Only the journal name takes title case. Article, book and chapter titles use sentence case.
• Missing italics on the volume number. Nature, 171(4356): volume italic, issue plain.
• "et al." in the list. List up to 20 authors.
• Publisher locations. "New York, NY: Penguin" was APA 6; APA 7 writes "Penguin".
• Entries for uncited works. The list must match the text. Run the citation coverage checker before you submit.
• Mixed DOI formats. Copying from databases gives you a mix of doi:, DOI: and http links.
• Reordered authors. The author order on the paper is fixed.
• Fake references. References written by a chatbot without a search can look perfect and not exist. Check that each DOI resolves to the paper you cite.

How to build an APA reference list with AI for Research

You can do most of this with free tools that run in the browser, with no account.

1. Create each entry. Paste a DOI or title into the APA citation generator and copy the reference and in-text citation. If your references are in a LaTeX project, paste the BibTeX into BibTeX to APA.
2. Sort and dedupe. Paste the whole list into the reference list sorter to put it in APA order and find duplicates.
3. Match text to list. Paste your paper into the citation coverage checker. It lists works cited but not listed, listed but never cited, and year mismatches.
4. Check the sources exist. Citation check confirms each reference resolves to a real record and flags retractions, at 0 credits.
5. Or let the editor do it. In the AI writing editor, citations you insert build the reference list as you write, in APA or any of 10,000+ styles. Bring existing references from Zotero or Mendeley with reference manager import.

Citations, search and the free tools cost nothing. The Free plan has 45 credits a month for AI features; see pricing. The tools format the data they find: if a source record has a wrong title or missing issue, the output will too, so read the finished list once against this guide.

FAQ

How do you format references in APA 7?

Start the list on a new page titled References, bold and centered. Double-space every entry and use a 0.5-inch hanging indent. Order entries alphabetically by the first author's surname. Each entry gives the author, the date in parentheses, the title and the source, such as the journal with its volume, issue and pages, followed by the DOI as an https://doi.org/ link when the work has one.

How many authors do you list in an APA reference?

APA 7 lists up to 20 authors in a reference entry. Use an ampersand before the last name. For 21 or more authors, list the first 19, then an ellipsis, then the final author's name, with no ampersand. This changed from APA 6, which listed up to seven. In the text, any work with three or more authors is cited with the first author and et al.

What do you do when an APA source has no author or no date?

With no author, move the title into the author position and alphabetize by its first significant word, ignoring A, An and The. With no date, write (n.d.) in place of the year. Before deciding a work has no author, check for a group author: most web pages without a person's name are written by the organization that publishes them, which then becomes the author.

Does APA 7 still use 'Retrieved from' before URLs?

No. In APA 7 the DOI or URL goes at the end of the entry with no label, and DOIs are written as https://doi.org/ links. "Retrieved from" is gone, except for pages that are designed to change, such as a dictionary entry or a live data page. For those, write "Retrieved Month Day, Year, from" followed by the URL.

How do you cite ChatGPT or another AI tool in an APA reference list?

APA updated its guidance in September 2025. The company that made the tool is the author, the date of the chat is the date, the chat's title is italicized with the label [Generative AI chat], then the tool name and a shareable link to the chat. Many instructors also want the prompt described in your text. Check your course rules, because some ban or limit AI use.

Next steps

• Cite one, two, three or 21+ authors in the text: how to cite two or three authors in APA.
• See a whole paper laid out, title page to references: APA essay sample.
• Learn when to shorten author lists in every style: et al. in citations.
• Writing in the humanities instead? See MLA works cited and MLA format.
• In engineering or chemistry: IEEE citation format, ACS citation format, CSE citation format.

Sources

1. American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000 (chapter 9, Reference list; chapter 10, Reference examples)
2. American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Reference examples. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples
3. American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Reference list: Format. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/reference-list
4. American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Order of works in the reference list. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/order-works
5. McAdoo, T., Denneny, S., & Lee, C. (2025, September 9). Citing generative AI in APA Style: Part 1—Reference formats. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/cite-generative-ai-references
6. American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Missing reference information. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/missing-information