CFS 493: Professional Self Series: Avoid Plagiarism & Cite Sources

APA 7 Citation Basics for Journal Articles & Books

The primary point of a citation is to enable your reader to easily find your source. Every source referred to in the text of your paper should appear in the reference list. 

Journal Article

Author, A. & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article: The subtitle. Title of Journal, volume number(issue number), xx-xx.

Journal Article with DOI*

Author, A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. (Year). Title of article: The subtitle. Title of Journal, volume number(issue number), xx-xx. https://dx.doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyyy 

Book Chapter

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of chapter. In A. Editor & B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (pp xx-xx). Publisher.

*A DOI is a unique number assigned to an individual electronic item, such as an online journal article. 

Online help with APA Citations

Citation Generators in PsycINFO & Google Scholar

Tools like PsycINFO, Google Scholar, and other databases provide you with APA formatted references, but always remember to double-check them -- often there will be a couple details that need to be corrected. 

In PsycINFO, select the items you want citations for, then click "Cite" in the upper toolbar. In Google Scholar, click "Cite" for the individual article in the results list: 

Citing ChatGPT or Other AI in APA

If you’ve used ChatGPT or other AI tools in your research, describe how you used the tool in your Method section or in a comparable section of your paper. For literature reviews or other types of essays or response or reaction papers, you might describe how you used the tool in your introduction. In your text, provide the prompt you used and then any portion of the relevant text that was generated in response.

Unfortunately, the results of a ChatGPT “chat” are not retrievable by other readers, and although nonretrievable data or quotations in APA Style papers are usually cited as personal communications, with ChatGPT-generated text there is no person communicating. Quoting ChatGPT’s text from a chat session is therefore more like sharing an algorithm’s output; thus, credit the author of the algorithm with a reference list entry and the corresponding in-text citation.

American Psychological Association. How to Cite ChatGPT - APA Style. Retrieved July 31, 2023.

APA Publication Manual

Complete instructions on citing and useful information on writing style and content can be found in the latest edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Society. We have multiple copies in the Library in reference and on reserve; it's also worth considering buying your own if you are in the social sciences.