How do I cite in APA?
Answer
APA is the citation style of the American Psychological Association and is often used in social science papers. A full guide to using APA citations for different materials can be found at Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL).
Most of the time you'll be using in-text citations within your paper that refer to a list of references (or works cited) at the end of your paper. This can be done either in the form of placing the author's name and the year in parenthesis at the end of the sentence and quotation or the year after the name of the author in parenthesis depending on the structure of your sentence.
Honeybees do not have many genes associated with detoxification so they are vulnerable to pesticides (Gong and Diao, 2016).
Gong and Diao (2016) reported that the P450 gene in honeybees was important in detoxification of insecticides.
Your instructor may also want you to put in the page number within your citation.
The sources you are citing with your in-text citations are then listed at the end of your paper in a list of references. This list is composed of citations in a standard order and styled a certain way. In the below examples, I've highlighted the component of an APA citation and what it corresponds with in the example the same color.
Articles:
Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. http://dx.doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyyy
Gong, Y., & Diao, Q. (2017). Current knowledge of detoxification mechanisms of xenobiotic in honey bees. Ecotoxicology, 26(1), 1-12. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10646-016-1742-7
Books:
Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Location: Publisher.
Winston, Mark L. (2014). Bee time: Lessons from the hive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Please note there may be different requirements for articles from databases or electronic books.
For information on how to cite other kinds of sources, you can consult the Purdue OWL guide, The Research and Documentation Guide Online: Social Science or the APA Style Guide at the American Psychological Association.
There is a copy of the APA Publication Style guide that has been put on reserve if you want to consult it while adding your citations. You can ask for it at the circulation desk.