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APA (7th Edition) Referencing Guide

Guide to APA citation style using the 7th Edition of the APA Style Manual.

Check with your lecturer

This is a guide to the 7th Edition of APA style, which is a recent update to the APA citation style.

Your lecturer may prefer APA 6th Edition. Check your subject outline to see which version of APA you have been asked to use. If the subject outline does not specify which APA edition you should be using, please check with your lecturer.

If you are supposed to use APA 6th Edition, please go to the APA (6th Edition) Referencing Guide:

Published conference papers

If a conference paper has been published (for example, in a proceedings), the published form is usually either a chapter of an edited book or an article in a journal. Cite it according to the appropriate pattern.

  • Proceedings published in book form normally have the title of the specific conference as the title of the book, and have editors. For example: Empowering 21st Century Learners Through Holistic and Enterprising Learning: Selected Papers for Tunku Adbul Rahman University College International Conference 2016, edited by Geok Bee Teh and Siew Chee Choy
  • Proceedings published in journal form might be a special issue of the organising body's regular journal, or a special periodical series may exist to host the conference papers. The presence if volume and issue numbers can help with identifying these.
  • You can also check for an ISBN or an ISSN. A book will have an ISBN, while a journal will have an ISSN. Contact the library if you are unsure.

Paper published in conference proceedings, book form:

Format
Author, A. A. (Date). Title of paper. In A. Editor & B. Editor (Eds.), Title of proceedings (page numbers). Publisher. DOI OR URL if relevant.
Examples

Cismas, S. C. (2010). Educating academic writing skills in engineering. In P. Dondon & O. Martin (Eds.), Latest trends on engineering education (pp. 225-247). WSEAS Press.

Morgan, R., Meldrum, K., Bryan, S., Mathiesen, B., Yakob, N., Esa, N., & Ziden, A. A. (2017). Embedding digital literacies in curricula: Australian and Malaysian experiences. In G. B. Teh & S. C. Choy (Eds.), Empowering 21st century learners through holistic and enterprising learning: Selected papers from Tunku Abdul Rahman University College International Conference 2016 (pp. 11-19). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4241-6_2

Paper published in conference proceedings, journal form:

Format
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date). Title of article: Subtitle. Title of Journal, volume number(issue number), page numbers of the whole article. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/xxxx
Examples

Chaudhuri, S., & Biswas, A. (2017). External terms-of-trade and labor market imperfections in developing countries: Theory and evidence. Proceedings of the Academy of Economics and Economic Education, 20(1), 11-16. https://search-proquest-com.elibrary.jcu.edu.au/docview/1928612180?accountid=16285

 

Conference papers, sessions and presentations

The presentation delivered at a conference may only be available as an informally published work online, or may only have been delivered live and is not available in full. Follow the pattern given below.

Paper or session presented at conference, not formally published in proceedings (also used for Poster Presentations):

Format
Author, A. A. (Date). Title of Contribution [Type of contribution]. Conference Name, Location. DOI or URL if applicable
 
Examples

Bland, A. (2017, November). The implementation of a junior Samoan language programme in a South Island, New Zealand secondary school context [Paper presentation]. Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) Conference 2017, Canberra, Australia. https://bit.ly/37DvrHR

McDonald, E., Manessis, R., & Blanksby, T. (2019, July 7-10). Peer mentoring in nursing - improving retention, enhancing education [Poster presentation]. STARS 2019 Conference, Melbourne, Australia. https://unistars.org/papers/STARS2019/P30-POSTER.pdf

Note:

  • Make every effort to find all of the required details, however you may find that some papers are missing certain details (for example, there may not be a named editor). In this case you can skip this detail and move to the next part of the citation.
  • The title of a conference (for example, the Fourth Annual Conference of the Applied Engineering Association) is something that should be capitalised in a sentence, therefore it is capitalised in the titles of the conference proceedings and conference papers. Notice the example given above: Empowering 21st century learners through holistic and enterprising learning: Selected papers from Tunku Abdul Rahman University College International Conference 2016

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