Communications Fundamentals of Communcation and Public Speaking: APA 6th Edition (2010)

Since scientific research must be timely, the article is a focus of the APA style manual. There are also rules for citing books, interviews, and all manner of other materials. Please check the style manual or ask your librarian if you need help citing your sources. Also, take a look at the rules for APA style to get a sense of how your paper should be formatted.

APA is the citation style designed and maintained by the American Psychological Association.  It is generally used by people in the social sciences including psychology, social work, and sociology.  APA style focuses on maintaining scientific rigor, and has numerous rules to limit plagiarism and to make scholarly communication concise and usable.  The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th ed. at the Library's Circulation Desk Reserves shelf for in-house use. If you need assistance, please ask your librarian.

Check out this video tutorial on the basics of APA style.

Most of our databases (including PsycARTICLES) allow you to click on the cite tool (see above) to create a citation formatted in your chosen style. After you create this citation for your reference list, be sure to check it with the APA style manual just to make sure it is correct.
 

When you are citing an author's ideas, you should credit the author both in the text with a brief author-date citation, and then at the end of your paper in the reference list. If you are citing multiple authors, the first in-text citation will be a little more thorough, followed by a simplified version for subsequent citations. The in-text reference might look like this

In their article, Li, Nguyen, Chunqing, Le, Shu, and Detels (2014) suggest that creating and emphasizing the connections veterans make within their family units is an essential practice to both preventing and controlling substance abuse, and improving general mental health outcomes (Nguyen et. al., 2014).

You'll notice that you don't need to repeat the authors names in the parenthesis if you specifically list them in the sentence. If you don't (e.g. if you say 'the author says'), you will need to specifically list the authors names inside the parentheses.

At the end of your paper, you will want to use the full citation in your references list

It will look something like this: