Introduction to

Referencing
Using APA (7th) style
Learning outcomes

• Understand the importance of referencing

• Understand APA (7th) style of referencing and when a

reference is required

• Recognise common reference types

• Distinguish between in-text citations and end-text references

• Locate ECU’s referencing resources

Library Services Centre

What is referencing?
• Referencing is a standardised method of formatting the details of the
information sources you have used in your assignments or written work.

• The main style of referencing at ECU is APA (American Psychological

Association) 7th edition.

• APA style requires both an in-text citation (author-date style) and a

corresponding end-text reference (in the “Reference List”).

• The Library’s online Referencing Guide is a valuable resource for

information on how to format a wide variety of references.
 Locating the Referencing Guide

Direct link to the

Library Guides
Referencing Guide
(including the
Referencing Guide)

https://www.ecu.edu.au/library
 Referencing Guide

In-text citations

Reference list Quick Guide to

APA Referencing
Check under (PDF)
the tabs for
more examples
and information.

https://ecu.au.libguides.com/referencing
Why reference?
• To acknowledge the ideas of others in academic work and give due credit
to the author or originator of an idea.

• To enable your sources to be found and checked.

• To show you have consulted a range of sources and researched widely.

• To demonstrate that your ideas are supported with external evidence.

• To avoid plagiarism.
 What is plagiarism?
Library Services Centre

Plagiarism is to present the ideas or writings of another person within

your work without appropriate acknowledgment of their contribution, whether
you mean to or not. This includes, but is not limited to:

• paraphrasing or copying text or visual representations (e.g.

images) without acknowledging the original source;

• copying the words or ideas from another student’s

assignment, whether the entire assignment or a small part;

• self-plagiarising, which is to present some or all of your

own previously submitted work as new work.
How to avoid plagiarism
• Paraphrase correctly:
• Have you used your own words and cited the
source?
• Have you kept the meaning of the original
author’s idea?

• Acknowledge the work of others. Write down

the details you will need while you work, to
make sure it becomes a habit.
APA style referencing
In APA style referencing, for each source you cite, you need:

• a full end-text reference in your reference list, and

• a brief in-text citation.

These should be paired – every reference in your reference list

must have at least one in-text citation, and every in-text citation
has an end reference in the reference list.
Library Services Centre

End-text references
An end-text reference is the full reference. It should contain all information needed to find
the source you used.

There are four main elements included in an end-text reference.

Who? Author’s name (including initials)

When? Year of publication
What? Title of the work (check for italics and capitalisation)
Where? Publisher name and URL
Note the use of
punctuation and
Author, A. A. (year). Title. Source. italics.
 End-text: author
The format for the author element is: Surname, F. I.

Smith, J. A.

Australian Bureau of Statistics

de la Cruz, R.

Botello, L., Villanueva, E., Rivera, N. A., Velandia, F., & de la Lanza, M.
A.
End-text: date
The date is usually the year of publication, in parentheses:
(2019)

Some items, such as webpages and newspaper articles, may have a

more specific date:
(2012, May 18)

If a work has no publication date that can be found, use the abbreviation
for “no date”:
(n.d.)
End-text: title
Titles of stand-alone publications (e.g. books, reports) are in italics. Titles of items that are
part of a larger work (e.g. articles, chapters) are not in italics.

Most titles are also in sentence case – capitalise only the first word of the title and subtitle,
acronyms, and proper nouns.

e.g. Project management: The managerial process

e.g. Italian government declares state of emergency in flood-ravaged Venice

The title of a journal or a newspaper is in title case – capitalise the first word of the title
and subtitle, all the “major” words, and any words 4 letters or more.
Use title case for
e.g. Health Promotion Journal of Australia titles included
within the text of
e.g. The Sydney Morning Herald
your work.
 End-text: source
The source is usually:
• the publisher, overarching website for a webpage, or parent body for
a report, and
• DOI or URL

• Oxford University Press

• Australian Institute of Criminology. https://aic.gov.au/publications/special/005
• https://doi.org/10.1534/g3.114.015966
• YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/charlie#p/u/4/qjIsdbBsE8g
Library Services Centre

End-text: all together

Author, A. A. (year). Title. Source.

Your reference will look slightly different depending on whether you’re

citing a book, a journal article, or something else.

Examples of different types will be shown later.

Reference list
Start on a new page, titled References (centred, bold).

Your reference list is a list of all of your end-text references,

alphabetically ordered (by first author’s name or first word).
• Works by the same author are arranged by date, earliest first.
• Works with the same author and date are alphabetised by title.

Use a hanging indent.

Reference list: example
Questions?
In-text citations
An in-text citation is a brief form of the full reference, placed in your writing
directly after the idea you are citing, including:
Author last name(s) (or organisation name) and date in the format:
(Author, date).

Include in-text citations whenever you use an idea or material from another
person, whether you are quoting directly or have rewritten it in your own
words.

See the Referencing Guide for further information and examples:

https://ecu.au.libguides.com/referencing/in-text-citations
Format for in-text citations
There is more than one way to correctly format an in-text citation:

Standard “parenthetical” formatting, placed directly after the idea being referenced, within the
punctuation of the sentence:
2 authors: (Stans & Jubina, 2013).
3 or more authors: (Camara et al., 2018).
Corporate author: (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2017).

The ampersand (&) is used for ‘and’.

The phrase et al. (meaning “and others”) is used where 2+ names are not shown.

“Narrative citation” includes some or all of the citation details in your own writing:
Stans and Jubina (2013) found …
According to a 2014 study by Camara et al. …

[Note the use of and instead of the ampersand within the body of the text.]
In-text citations: group author
Use the full name of the organisation for in-text citations.
e.g. (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2011).

If you’re citing this organisation more than once and you wish to use a shorter name,
use the full name and introduce the abbreviation the first time it appears:

• 1st citation: (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2011)

• 2nd and later citations: (ABS, 2011)

• 1st in-text mention: Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)

• Each mention after abbreviation introduced: A survey conducted by the ABS (2011)…

Note: using an abbreviation is optional. You may cite the full name each time.
In-text citations: direct quotes
When you directly quote another author, word for word, you must:

• Include page number: (Author, date, page).

• Enclose the quotation in “double quotation marks” for all short quotations less than 40 words.

In fact, “a flexible mind is a healthy mind” (Palladino & Wade, 2010, p. 147).

According to Palladino & Wade (2010), “a flexible mind is a healthy mind” (p. 147).

Direct quotations should be used sparingly. You should try to use your own words whenever you
can.

For more guidance, including if your source has no page number, see the Referencing Guide: In-
text citations: https://ecu.au.libguides.com/referencing/in-text-citations
In-text citations: advanced

When citing more than one source for the same idea, list citations together, in
alphabetical order by the first author, with a semi-colon (;) separating each source:

e.g. (Brown & Jones, 2010; Johnson, 2012; Steiner et al., 2005).

If a source has no author, use the title for the in-text citation. If it’s long, use the beginning
of the title. The title should be in title case, with stand-alone works (e.g. books, webpages)
in italics, and parts of a larger work (e.g. articles, blog posts) enclosed in double quotes:

Stand-alone work: (Interpersonal Skills, 2019)

Part of a whole: (“Italian Government Declares,” 2019)
Library Services Centre

Multiple sources –
same author, same year
• If two works have the same author, order the reference list with the earliest work first.
• If two works have the same author and year, list them in alphabetical order by title.
• In-text citations should be unique to a work. To distinguish between two works with the same author
and year, use lower-case letters attached to the year, in both in-text and end references. Example
(two reports published by the same organisation in the same year):

End references:
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2019a). Australian demographic statistics, Jun 2019. (Cat. No. 3101.0).
https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3101.0
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2019b). Preschool education, Australia, 2018 (Cat. No. 4240.0). https://www.
abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/allprimarymainfeatures/20FDB484E5648A2ACA25850C0021B17D
In-text:
(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2019a)
(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2019b)
Questions?
 Reference types & examples
Regardless of what is being cited, the in-text citation will be the
same.

The end-text citation will have a different format depending on the

type of work being referenced. We will show:
• Books
• Journal articles
• Reports
• Webpages

For more information, visit the Referencing Guide: https://ecu.au.libguides.com/referencing/reference-examples

 Book reference
Format:
Author, A. A. (year). Title of book. Publisher. DOI

Book

McInerney, D. M. (2014). Educational psychology: Constructing learning

(6th ed.). Pearson Australia.

eBook

Matson, J. L. (2017). Handbook of social behavior and skills in children.

Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64592-6
You will find the information to reference
a book on the back of the title page.

If a book has a DOI (digital object identifier), include it.

 Edited book
Use (Ed.) or (Eds.)
End-text reference: after the editor(s).

Radomski, M. V., & Trombly Latham, C. A. (Eds.). (2014). Occupational

therapy for physical dysfunction (7th ed.). Wolters Kluwer Health;
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. For books with
multiple publishers,
separate them with
a semi-colon.

 Provide an in-text citation for this book, when paraphrasing and for a direct quote.
Add a page
(Radomski & Trombly Latham, 2014) number in-text
(Radomski & Trombly Latham, 2014, p. 17) for a quote.
Library Services Centre

Chapter in an edited book

General format and example:

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (year). Title of chapter. In A. Editor & B.

Editor (Eds.), Title of book (#th ed., pp. xx-xx). Publisher.

Mandler, G. (1993). Thought, memory, and learning: Effects of emotional

stress. In L. Goldberger & S. Bregnitz (Eds.), Handbook of stress:
Theoretical and clinical aspects (2nd ed., pp. 40-55). The Free Press.

 Provide an in-text citation for this book

(Mandler, 1993)
Journal articles
• What is the difference between an academic journal and a
trade journal or magazine?

• What is a peer reviewed journal?

• What is a DOI? https://doi.org/10.1000/182

Format for journal articles:

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (year). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume(issue),
page numbers. DOI (if there is one)
 Journal article (with DOI)
Author Article title: Subtitle
year

Smith, A. (2008). The future of Australian science: A student’s guide. The

Australian Journal of Scientific Education, 26(2), 253–286.
https://doi.org/10.1001/1342547979.88.6.45 Page range
Volume number
(issue number)
Journal Title DOI

Note the hanging indent.

Journal article (without a DOI)
Format:

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (year). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume(issue), page
numbers. year Article title
Authors

Bultas, M. W., Hassler, M., Ercole, P. M., & Rea, G. (2014). Effectiveness of high-fidelity
simulation for pediatric staff education. Pediatric Nursing, 40(1), 27-42.

Volume number
(issue number)
Journal Title
Report with group author
Format for a report (found online):
Author. (year). Title of work (Report No. xxx). Agency responsible. http://www.xxxx

Note:
• Most reports have a corporate author. (There may be individual authors as well. Use the
authors given credit on the cover or title page of the report.)
• Include a report number if available.
• URL should be a direct link to the PDF or document if possible.
• Include agency as the publisher. If they are also the author, do not repeat the name.

Example:
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2016). Land management and farming in Australia, 2014-
15
(Cat. No. 4627.0). https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/
4627.0Main+Features102014-15
Webpage
Format for a webpage:
Author. (year, month day). Title of work [Format if needed]. Website Name. http://www.xxxx

Note:
• Webpage format includes online-only news sites, blogs, informational sites, and streaming
video. Content may be regularly changed or updated.
• If the format is unusual, include a description (e.g. Video, Online forum post, Infographic).
• Often there is no publication date. If no date is given, use n.d. in place of the date.
• If the author and website name are the same, do not duplicate information.
Example:
Vrajlal, A. (2020, January 10). Thousands gather at Sydney climate rally as bushfire crisis
continues. HuffPost. https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/bushfires-nsw-sydney-
climate-rally_au_5e182ff6c5b650c621dc51d9
Questions?
FAQs – quiz questions & answers
1. Connecting authors you’re citing: when should you use ampersand (&) and when should you use
the word and?
• Answer: Ampersand (&) is used within the brackets of an in-text citation and in references in the
reference list. The word ‘and’ is used within the text.
2. Reference list: in what order are the references listed?
• Answer: Alphabetical order by the last name of the first author, or first meaningful word of a
group author’s name. If no author then by the first main word of the title.
3. Reference list: if there are 2 works by the same author, in what order are these 2 works listed?
• Answer: Order by date – earliest first.
4. In-text: how do you distinguish between works published by the same author in the same year?
• Answer: Use lower-case letters (a, b, c) of the alphabet following the year.
5. How is the title of a book formatted in the Reference List?
• Answer: In sentence case and in italics.
6. If an online journal article does not have a DOI, what would you use in place of the DOI?
• Answer: Nothing. Leave that element blank.
Summary
• You are required to acknowledge the source of all ideas.

• You should use the APA (7th) style referencing at ECU unless advised
otherwise by your lecturer or unit plan.

• APA style referencing consists of at least one in-text citation (author-date)

and an end-text reference (“Reference List” entry) for each source.

• Refer to the Referencing Guide for more information:

https://ecu.au.libguides.com/referencing

* All unreferenced images in this presentation used with permission of the copyright holder (ECU).