Citation Guides

General rules

• When locating the date of the webpage, only use a date that clearly refers to the specific page or article you used. For example, "last updated". Do not use dates from headers or footers. So:
  • Okay to use: "last updated"
  • Not okay to use: "copyright", "last reviewed"
  • If no date is given, use: (n.d.).
• Retrieval date is used only when a source is regularly updated but not archived.
• Shortened URL may be used as long as you check it to make sure it goes to the correct location.
• A URL within a reference may be left all on one line, or may be left to break across two lines.

Webpage with an author and a date

Author (Year, Month Day). Page or article title. Website Title. Retrieved Month Day, Year, from URL

Anderson, G. L. (2018, September). Safe medications. Arthritis Online. Retrieved December 12, 2019, from http://www.arthritisonline.com/safe-to-use

• In the next example, the page is not likely to be updated, so no "Retrieved" date is given.

Phillips, L. V. (2018, February 5). Mental illness: A common bond. National Alliance on Mental Health. https://www.nami.org/

Webpage with a group author

• Group or corporate author name is given first, just as with an individual author.
• If author name and site name are the same, omit the website title.
• "Retrieved" date is given because this page is likely to be updated, and previous versions not archived.

American Heart Association. (n.d.). Common high blood pressure myths. Retrieved September15, 2019, from https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/high-blood-pressure/the-facts-about-high-blood-pressure/common-high-blood-pressure-myths

Webpage with no author

• In this example, there is no author and no date.
• This page is not likely to be updated, so "Retrieved" date is not given.

Page or article title. (Year, Month Day). Website Title. URL

Home for the holidays. (n.d.). http://www.homeholidays.com/1234.html

Examples

• In the next example, individual author names are given, so the usual rules about authors and dates apply.
• Title capitalization and italics are given as when citing a webpage.
• Extra information like the report number is given after the title, but is not in italics.

Berchick, E. R., Barnett, J. C. & Upton, R. D. (2019). Health insurance coverage in the United States: 2018 (Report No. P60-267). U.S. Census Bureau. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-267.html

• In the next example, the author is given in the publication as a sub-department under a major government department. Follow the wording that is given in the resource when deciding who is the author and what is the title of the website.

National Cancer Institute. (2015). What is cancer? U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/what-is-cancer

Citing generative AI tools is not mentioned in the official APA Publication Manual, but the publishers of the Manual have written a thorough guide on their website. See their post below for even more details.

General guidance:

• Before using a generative AI tool to help with your work, check your course policy on the use of AI.
• Do not cite the AI tool as an author, but as a tool used to edit, translate, summarize, or other.
• Do not trust the AI tool to provide citations, as these tools often create false citations (called "hallucinations") to make it appear scholarly.

Recommendations:

• If you use a generative AI tool as part of your research process, describe how you used it in the text of your paper. For an APA style research paper, the methods section is an appropriate place to put this. For other types of papers, the introduction might be a better place. 
• Where you reference the AI-generated content, include the wording of the prompt you used, and quote or paraphrase any relevant generated text you used.
• Because generative AI responses can’t be exactly replicated, you might copy and paste the full text of the AI-generated content into an appendix of your paper.
• APA considers the author of the generated text to be the creator or publisher of the AI software. Keep this in mind as you create your citations. 
• Once again: always check any sources cited by a generative AI tool. They are often invented.

Constructing a Citation

• Author: The creator or publisher of the generative AI software you used.
• Date: This is the year of the version of the AI software you used.
• Title: The name of the AI software you used.
• Additional information: Put the words [Large language model] in brackets after the title, to indicate the type of source.
• URL: Include the URL that links as directly as possible to the software you used.

Example, putting all the above elements together:

OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (4o mini version) [Large language model]. https://chatgpt.com/

Parenthetical or in text citations:

The normal rules apply. In this example our in text citation would be:

(OpenAI, 2024)