What is APA style?

APA style is an editorial style that includes a system for in-text citations and references created by the American Psychological Association. It is most often used by writers in the social sciences. The purpose of this page is to help CBC students cite our subscription databases; it is by no means comprehensive.

DOI

When a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is assigned, it must be included as the final component of the reference list entry.
The current format of DOIs is as follows:
- https://doi.org/xxxxx
- ShortDOIs or shortened URLs are acceptable

How to Find a DOI

DOIs may be included in the database record.
You can also click on the PDF full text of articles to check. DOIs usually are listed under the title or in the headers or footers.
Go to crossref.org, click on the tab that says "Search Metadata", then type or paste in the title of the article to search for the article. The DOI will be listed under the title.

Journal Article with Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Example:

(Usually you only need to use the publication year of the journal article, but Nature is a special case. The month and date are given also because it is published weekly.)

Giles, J. (2007, January 4). Social sciences: Life's a game. Nature, 445(7123), 18-20. https://doi.org/10.1038/445018a

Magazine Article with DOI Example
(Give the month for monthly magazines; add the day for weekly magazines; give volume and issue numbers.)

Harder, B. (2004, January 10). Cow madness: Disease's U.S. emergence highlights role of feed ban. Science News, 165(2), 19-20. https://doi.org/10.2307/4014944

When No DOI can be Found

For open-access ("free") articles without DOI, use the exact article URL
For subscription-only articles without DOI retrieved from a CBC library database, treat it as if you are using the print/paper version of the article. You may end the reference entry either at the page numbers or the source title if there is no page numbers.

A Journal Article without DOI Example
Elements:

Last name of the author, Initial of first name. Middle name initial. (Publication year). Title of the article: Subtitle of the article. Title of the journal, volume number (issue number), page-page.

Example (no DOI was found for this journal):

Sedaghat, A. R. (2017). Chronic rhinosinusitis. American Family Physician, 96(8), 500.

A Newspaper Article Without DOI Example

(Give the year, month, and day for newspaper articles; use "p." for a single page number or "pp." for page numbers; exact article URL was used because no DOI was found and the article was freely available through the link.)

Glaberson, W. (2004, January 11). Killer's lawyers seek to raise standard of proof for death penalty. New York Times (Late Edition (East Coast) ), p. 27. https://nyti.ms/2kZhali

Reference Books (End with the publisher name in most cases for CBC databases.)

(a dictionary entry example from Oxford Reference)

King, R. C., Mulligan, P. K., & Stansfield, W. D. (2014). Stem cells. In A dictionary of genetics (8th ed.). Oxford University Press.

(an encyclopedia entry example from Gale Virtual Reference Library with individual author)

Lerner, B. W. (2015). H1N1 Influenza A. In J. L. Longe (Ed.), The Gale encyclopedia of medicine (5th ed., Vol. 4, pp. 2243-2247). Gale.

(an drug reference entry example from Nursing Reference Center)

Vallerand, A. H., & Sanoski, C. A. (2019). Amoxicillin. In Davis’s drug guide for nurses (16th ed). F. A. Davis Company.

EBSCO ebook Collection & ProQuest eBook Central

(ebook examples; same as the print version in most cases)

Elements:

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of book: Subtitle if any. Publisher.

Example:

Derrickson, J. (2014). Marijuana legalization: State initiatives, implications, and issues. Nova Science Publishers.

Newton, D. E. (2016). Same-sex marriage: A reference handbook (2nd ed.). ABC-CLIO.

For more information:

Listed above are just a few samples. There are many details that may be different even for articles published in the same issue of a journal.