Citing Business Sources in APA Style: General Guidelines

General Guidelines

Provide an in-text citation when you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from another source, unless it's common knowledge. With some exceptions, every in-text citation corresponds to an entry in the References section of the paper. [APA sample paper]

Below are some general guidelines and quick suggestions on citing commonly used sources. For a comprehensive overview, check the APA Guides & Tutorials:

Database Information in References:

  • For articles, books, or book chapters you find in the Library Catalog or most academic article databases (e.g., EBSCO, Nexis Uni), DO NOT include database name or URL as they are widely available. Include a DOI if available, and if there is no DOI, cite them as if they were print sources. See examples under Business Source Premier -> Article. If the article is freely available on the Web, add URL at the end of the citation. 
  • For proprietary content (company profiles, industry/market reports, datasets) only available in specialized databases (e.g., IBISWorld, Mintel, Statista), provide the database name AND the URL. If the URL is session-specific, provide the URL of the database homepage. 
  • Include retrieval dates only when the content is expected to change over time AND unarchived (e.g., company profile in Business Insights). 

If there is no individual author(s), use corporate author (aka name of the group, e.g., company/agency/organization that produced the report). If the corporate author is the same as the publisher, use the publisher as the corporate author. 

If there is no publication date, use [n.d.] (for "no date") in both in-text citation and References.

When citing a publicly available webpage (i.e., not from a library subscription database), include the URL. 

Italicize title of books, reports, webpages, websites, and periodicals (journals, newspapers, magazines). Don't italicize title of article or book chapter.  

Capitalize only the first letter of the first word, the first letter of the first word after a colon or a dash, and any proper nouns in the titles of books, articles, webpages, and reports. Capitalize all major words in journal titles. 

When using direct quotes, include a page number. If there is no page number, use paragraph number. If neither is available, use heading or section and then paragraph number under that heading/section. For example: (Miller, 2020, p. 20), (Miller, 2020, pp. 20-30), (Miller, 2020,  para. 2), (Miller, 2020, paras. 2-3), (Miller, 2020, Part 3). 

Quick Access to Citation Examples