An APA reference list is the alphabetically ordered set of full source entries placed at the end of a document, each formatted with a hanging indent and corresponding to an in-text citation. It follows the author–date conventions of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition). Every work cited in the text appears once in the list, and every entry in the list is cited at least once in the text — the two must match exactly.
The reference list is where APA’s four-element logic — author, date, title, source — becomes a precise, repeatable format. If you are new to the author–date system, start with our APA 7th edition essentials before building a full list.
The three formatting rules that govern every entry
Three mechanical rules apply to the whole list. First, alphabetical order by the first author’s surname; works by the same author are then ordered by year, earliest first. Second, a hanging indent: the first line of each entry sits at the left margin and every subsequent line is indented, so surnames are easy to scan. Third, the list is double-spaced with no extra blank lines between entries, and titled “References”, centred and bold, on a new page.
Worked examples by source type
The table below shows a correctly formatted entry for each major source type. Author names and years are illustrative placeholders, but the punctuation, italics and ordering are exactly as APA 7 requires.
| Source type | Worked example |
|---|---|
| Journal article | Smith, J. A. (2021). Open-access uptake in clinical trials. Journal of Research Standards, 14(3), 220–238. https://doi.org/10.1000/jrs.2021.0143 |
| Book | Brown, T. R. (2019). Foundations of research integrity. Academic Press. |
| Chapter in an edited book | Lee, S. (2020). Data-sharing norms. In R. Patel (Ed.), Open science in practice (pp. 45–67). University Press. |
| Website / web page | Jones, R. B. (2022, March 4). Metadata standards for research outputs. Research Standards Institute. https://example.org/metadata-standards |
| Dataset | Patel, A., & Khan, M. (2021). Citation-coverage survey 2021 [Data set]. Open Data Repository. https://doi.org/10.1000/odr.2021.0099 |
Reading the journal-article entry
Take the journal example apart. The author block inverts the name and uses initials. The year sits in brackets. The article title is in sentence case and not italicised — only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised. The journal name and volume number are italicised; the issue number, in brackets, is not. The page range and DOI close the entry, with no full stop after the DOI. This single pattern, with small variations, drives most of the references you will ever write.
Handling books, chapters and the publisher rule
Books reverse the italics: now the title is italicised in sentence case, and the publisher closes the entry. APA 7 dropped the publisher’s city, so “Academic Press” stands alone. For a chapter, you cite the chapter author and chapter title first, then “In”, the editor(s) with initials before the surname, the italicised book title, the page range in brackets, and the publisher. Knowing exactly who is credited at chapter versus volume level matters for fair attribution of credit.
Websites, datasets and DOI formatting
Web pages need a specific date where available — year, month and day — and the name of the hosting organisation as the “source”. Datasets are cited as first-class outputs: author, year, italicised title, a bracketed format description such as [Data set], the repository name and a DOI. Treating data this way reflects the modern research-outputs landscape, where datasets, software and protocols are citable on their own terms.
For DOIs, always use the full https://doi.org/ form, with no trailing punctuation. If an online source has no DOI but has a stable URL, give the URL; if the content is likely to change, add a retrieval date. A persistent identifier is what links your entry to the durable scholarly record.
Ordering edge cases
Two situations trip people up. When one author has several works in the same year, distinguish them with lowercase letters on the year — (2021a), (2021b) — ordered by title, and mirror those letters in the in-text citations. When alphabetising, treat “nothing before something”: Smith, J. comes before Smith, J. A. Single-author entries precede multi-author entries that begin with the same surname.
Frequently asked questions
Should every cited source appear in the reference list?
Yes — with one exception. Standard in-text-only items such as personal communications (emails, interviews not recoverable by a reader) are cited in the text but not listed, because there is nothing the reader can retrieve. Everything recoverable must appear.
How do I order two works by the same author?
By year, earliest first. If the years are identical, add lowercase letters to the year and order alphabetically by title. Single-author works always come before that author’s collaborative works.
Do I keep the hanging indent in a numbered or bulleted list?
The reference list is never numbered or bulleted in APA. It is a plain, double-spaced list with a hanging indent on each entry. Numbered referencing belongs to other styles, such as Vancouver.
Where can I confirm an unusual entry?
For conference papers, theses, software or grey literature, check your institution’s APA guide or the Publication Manual. CASRAI’s author guidance and standards dictionary can help you decide how to describe an output before you format it.
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