This UMGC Library video will highlight the changes for APA citations in the 7th edition. First we’ll
start with in-text citations, where you are giving credit to an author within the text
of your paper. In APA 6th Edition, the first time you cited a work with multiple authors
you included all of the authors. In APA 7th Edition, you cite only the first author
followed by et al. Be sure not to include a comma after the first author’s name.
In APA 7th edition, Writers are free to choose what element within a digital object
is the most equivalent to page numbers to direct readers to the portion of the work cited.
For instance, we might use slide number to identify that the quote or information being used
comes from 7th slide of the PowerPoint slide show. If citing a video we might use timestamp 1 hour,
13 minutes, and 5 seconds which is the approximate location of the information being cited.
Now we will turn to the reference list included at the end of your paper or other format work.
In APA 7th edition, for multiple authors, up to 20 should be listed.
If there are more than 20 authors, use an ellipsis after the 19th author,
followed by the last author, with no ampersand before the final author’s name.
Webpage and website titles are now italicized in APA 7th edition.
For citing a YouTube video, the title of the video is italicized. Now let’s talk about DOIs
In APA 6th edition, Digital Object Identifiers, or DOIs, were listed with doi: and the number.
In APA 7th edition, the DOI is a URL so it should be prefixed with https://doi.org/ followed by the
doi number. Note that DOI rules in 7th edition supersedes all other URL types. So you must use
the DOI if there is one, even if the resource can also be found at a regular non-DOI URL. In APA 7th
edition, no retrieved from prefix text is needed before a URL or DOI URL unless a date is needed.
If the resource does not need a date, such as a journal article, do not use “retrieved from”.
If the resource does need a date, such as a newspaper article in which recency is important,
use the word Retrieved, then the date, then a comma and the word from, then the URL.
In APA 6th edition, if you got an article from a library database, you were asked to
look up the homepage of the journal that contained the article and use that URL.
In APA 7th edition, you do nothing after the last element of the citation. Let’s say you got this
article from the Academic Search Ultimate library database.
Be sure to look carefully for a DOI in the database record or the article text or PDF.
If there is no DOI included with the article, simply end your citation after the page numbers.
No Retrieved from statement is needed.
In APA 6th edition and previous editions, you needed to include
the place that a book was published. This has been eliminated in APA 7th edition,
so a book citation will simply list publisher’s name
after the book title with no place of publication listed.
For dissertations and theses that are retrieved from the Dissertations
and Theses Global database by ProQuest, publication information is provided directly after
the title. This is followed by document type and the name of the granting institution in brackets.
Then only the name of the database is provided with no “Retrieved from” before it.
In APA 7th edition, when you are citing a streaming video file,
include the author, date, title of the video – italicized,
followed by video in brackets with a capital V followed by a period. Then list the name of
the video provider with a period, followed by the url. No Retrieved from: prefix is needed.
This concludes this overview of the changes for APA 7th Edition.
See the APA 7th Edition Manual or our other UMGC Library videos for more information
about document formatting, and other aspects of in-text citations and reference list creation.