Reports
-
Government and Other Reports
Entry in reference list (print)
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work. Publisher (if same as author omit from the reference).
For example - reference list (print)
Department of Education and Early Childhood Development & Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority. (2011). Victorian early years learning and development framework: For all children from birth to eight years.
Entry in reference list (retrieved online)
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work. Publisher name. URL
For example - reference list (retrieved online)
Department of Health and Ageing. (2012). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health performance framework 2012 report. http://www.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.nsf/Content/oatsih-hpf-2012-toc
Make sure to look at the style notes
For example - in text citation
First use:
A report by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) and the Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority (VCAA) (2011) identified various factors....(p.132).
OR
Various factors affecting outcomes were identified (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development [DEECD] & Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority [VCAA], 2011, p.132).
Subsequent use:
...as identified in their study (DEECD & VCAA, 2011)
Style notes
- APA 7 Publication Manual, pp.266,268,288,329-331.
Reference list style notes
- Format references to technical and research reports and other grey literature as you would a book retrieved online.
- If the issuing organization assigned a number (e.g., report number, contract number, monograph number) to the report, give that number in parentheses immediately after the title.
- Provide a description of the form inside [brackets] when it would assist the reader in identifying less typical types of sources (e.g., brochures, press releases, white papers, or fact sheets). Otherwise, omit this.
- If the publisher has not been identified as the author, provide the publisher name behind the period of the title element, then the URL.
- If the publisher has been identified as the author, provide the retrieval address from the publisher's website immediately behind the period of the title element. The publisher name, if stated as author does not get repeated.
- In Australia, we often refer to Commonwealth reports by the name of the chairperson of the committee that published the report.
- In the reference list entry, do not abbreviate the group author name. Instead, spell out the full name of the group as presented in the source.
In text citation style notes
- If a work has three or more group authors, the in-text citation is shortened by, including the name of only the first author plus "et al." in every citation.
- For a work with one or two authors, include the author name(s) in every citation.
- The same guidelines apply when any of the authors are groups.
- Abbreviations: As with other abbreviations, provide the full name of the group on first mention, followed by the abbreviation.
- If the group name first appears in a narrative citation, include the abbreviation before the year in parentheses, separated with a comma.
- If the group name first appears in a parenthetical citation, include the abbreviation in square brackets, followed by a comma and the year.
-
Company Information
Entry in reference list - Company information and data from library database (Corporate Author)
Corporate Author. (Year). Title of company report (Report number - if available) [Type - if needed]. Publisher - if different to author. URL
OR
Corporate Author. (Year). Title of company report (Report number - if available) [Type - if needed]. URL
For example - reference list
Dun and Bradstreet. (2017). BHP Billiton Limited, profile [Company profile]. Company360 database. https://xxxx.
Morningstar. (2013). BHP Billiton Limited, 2013 company financials as reported. DatAnalysis Premium database.
Make sure to look at the style notes
For example - in text citation
A bond repurchase plan of up to US$2.5bn was announced during February, 2017 (Dun and Bradstreet, 2017, p.5).
OR
The Dun and Bradstreet, BHP Billiton Ltd. company profile highlighted this trend (2017)...
Style notes
- APA 7 Publication Manual, p.296
- if the publisher has not been identified as the author, use the following information behind the title element in the format 'Publisher name, http://www.xxx.xxx/'
- If the publisher has been identified as the author, use the following information behind the title element in the format 'http://www.xxx.xxx/ '
- Provide database or other online archive information in a reference only when it is necessary for readers to retrieve the cited work from that exact database or archive. Provide the name of the database when it publishes original proprietary works available only in that database.
- Provide a description of the form inside square brackets after the report title when it would assist the reader in identifying less typical types of sources (e.g., industry overviews, etc.).
-
Industry Information
Entry in reference list - Industry report from library database (no author listed)
Title of report. (Report number where given) [Type of report]. (Year, Month). Database name. URL
Entry in reference list - Industry report from library database (author listed)
Author, A.A. (Year, Month). Title of report. URL
Entry in reference list - Industry report from print source (no author listed)
Title of report. (Year). Source Name.
Entry in reference list - Industry report from print source (author listed)
Author, A.A. (Year). Title of report. Source Name.
Make sure to look at the style notes
For example - reference list
Australia mining report Q3 2013. (2013, May). Business Monitor International database.
Stickings, M. (2010, September). Latin America Monitor: Brazil Monitor. Mining report. Business Source Complete database.
Oil & gas in the United States: Industry profile. (2005). New York, NY: Datamonitor.
Collins, R. (2005). The Australian bamboo shoot industry: a supply chain approach: a report for the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. RIRDC.
For example - in text citation
It was predicted that Australia would remain a leading player in the global mining industry (Australian Mining Report Q3, 2013).
OR
Stickings pertinently points this out (2010) ...
Reference list style notes
- APA 7 Publication Manual, pp.264,284,292,297,329-331.
- If the issuing organisation assigned a number (e.g., report number, contract number, monograph number) to the report, give that number in parentheses immediately after the title.
- (Bracketed descriptions) help identify works outside peer-reviewed academic literature. It is often used to describe grey literature (e.g., reports of various nature) more clearly. Provide a square bracketed description after the report title when it would assist the reader in identifying less typical types of sources (e.g., industry overviews, etc.). Consistency of wording is helpful. You may alter the wording to best convey the information readers need.
- The source: provide database or other online archive information in a reference only when it is necessary for readers to tretrieve the cited work from that exact database or archive. Finish the database component of the source element with a period, followed by a DOI or URL as applicable.
- If the URL requires a login, provide the URL of the database home page.
In text citation style notes
- For a work with an unknown author, include the title and year of publication in the in-text citation. If the title of the work is italicized in the reference, also italicize the title in the in-text citation.
- Capitalise these titles in the text using title case, even though sentence case is used in the reference list entry.
- If the title is long, shorten it for the in-text citation.
-
Annual Reports
Entry in reference list
Name of Group (Year). Title of annual report. URL
For example - reference list
BHP Billiton Limited. (2013). 2012 Summary review annual report. http://www.bhpbilliton.com/home/investors/reports/Documents/2012/BHPBillitonSummaryReview2012.pdf
Make sure to look at the style notes
For example - in text citation
BHP Billiton lists 48 locations worldwide (BHP Billiton Limited, 2013).
OR
The BHP Billiton Limited annual report identified many reasons for this occurrence (2013): ...
Style notes
- APA 7 Publication Manual, pp.268,288,329-331
- Format references to technical and research reports and other grey literature as you would a book retrieved online.
- The author of an annual report is usually the organization that produced it, unless otherwise specified in the report. In the reference list entry for that annual report, the organisation would be listed as the author.
- If the publisher has been identified as the author, provide the retrieval address from the publisher's website immediately behind the period of the title element. The publisher name, if stated as author do not get repeated.
Explore resources to enable you to effectively integrate and cite sources into your writing and assessment tasks, visit Academic Skills.
Explore resources to enable you to effectively integrate and cite sources into your writing and assessment tasks, visit Academic Skills.
Note: Re:Cite now offers the choice of either APA 6th or APA 7th edition. You should check with your lecturer/supervisor about their version preferences. We will continue to support both APA 6th edition and APA 7th until the end of semester 2 2020. At this time, APA 6th Edition resources will be retired. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.) is available from the Library.
Explore resources to enable you to effectively integrate and cite sources into your writing and assessment tasks, visit Academic Skills.
This is an introduction to the APA style which is widely used in the social sciences and other fields, such as education, commerce and nursing.
This guide is based on the 6th edition of the APA's style rules which are set out in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition.
APA is an author-date style with two key components:
- Citations in the text, including the name of the author and year of publication.
- Reference list at end of paper, alphabetically listing of all references used in the text.
The purpose of referencing is to acknowledge the source and to enable the reader to trace the sources. Reference data must be accurate, including specific page numbers or specific URLs (web addresses), when otherwise it might be difficult to retrieve the original text.
For more information see:
- A tutorial for creating references
- A general outline of changes from the 6th edition.
- The American Psychological Association website.
Before writing your list of references, check with your tutor or lecturer for the bibliographic style preferred by the School or Department.
Reference list notes
- References cited in the text must be listed in the reference list, and all references listed in the reference list must be cited in the text.
Exceptions: do not include in the reference list sources such as:
- Personal communications, such as letters, informal email, or private social media posts
- Classical works or major religious texts
- Web sites or Facebook orTwitter feeds when discussed as a whole.
Cite all these sources only in the text.
- Order the reference list alphabetically by author surnames:
- Where an item has no author it is cited by its title, and ordered in the reference list alphabetically by the first significant word of the title (not A or The) .
- References by the same single or multiple authors are arranged by year of publication, the earliest first, e.g.,
- Hong, B.H. & Yeung, K.L. (2001)
- Hong, B.H. & Yeung, K.L. (2009)
- References with the same first author and different second or third author are arranged alphabetically by the surname of the second author, or if the same, third, and so on, e.g.,
- Brown, J., Gold, F., & Black, L. (2007)
- Brown, J., Gold, F., & Greene, H. (2006)
- References by the same author (or by the same two or more authors in the same order) with the same publication date are arranged alphabetically by the title (excluding A or The) that follows the date. Lower case letters – a, b, c – are placed immediately after the year in parentheses.
- Smith, J.R. (2008a)
- Smith, J.R. (2008b)
References with multiple authors
- For a work with up to 20 authors, include all of the names in the reference. When the work has 21 or more authors, include only the first 19 names, an ellipsis, and the final name. (see section 9.8, p.286 of the APA Manual).
Formatting the reference list
- APA requires that the reference list be double-spaced
- Entries in the reference list should have a hanging indent (the second and subsequent lines of the reference must be indented five spaces.) e.g.
American Psychological Association (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington D.C: Author.
- Book titles are italicised, e.g., Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. Chapter or section titles within a larger work are not italicised.
- Translated works: if you used the non-English version of a work, cite using the original title and immediately following that title, give the English translation in brackets. If you used the English translation, just cite the English translation.
- Give the publication date (the year the work was copyrighted) in parentheses, e.g., (2009). Note: APA uses parentheses (…) for standard parts of a reference, e.g., the year of publication, and brackets […] for information that you have inserted, e.g., format information such as [Audio podcast].
- Journal titles in the reference list must be italicised and be given in title case; do not abbreviate titles (e.g., Journal of Immunology, not J Immunol). Article titles are not italicised.
- Inclusive page numbers for all articles and chapters in books should be included in the reference list.
- List page numbers in full (e.g., 132-135, not 132-5).
- Electronic sources: in general, include the same elements, in the same order, as you would for a reference to a fixed-media source and add as much electronic retrieval information as needed for others to locate the source.
Acceptable abbreviations in the reference list for parts of books and other publications include:
ed. edition Rev.ed. revised edition 2nd ed. second edition Ed. ( Eds.) Editor (Editors) Trans. Translator(s) n.d. no date p. (pp) page (pages) Vol. Volume (as in Vol. 4) Vols. Volume (as in Vols. 1-4) No. Number Pt. Part Suppl. Supplement Tech. Rep. Technical report In-text citations
- If more than one reference is used in a set of parentheses, the references are ordered alphabetically by author name. Separate multiple citations using a semi-colon, e.g., (Coats, 2005; McMinn, 2003; Ng, Leung, Kwok, & Chan, 2007).
- To avoid ambiguity, when the in-text citations of multiple works with three or more authors shorten to the same form, write out as many names as needed to distinguish the references, and abbreviate the rest of the names to “et al.” in every citation.
- With three or more authors, cite only the surname of the first author followed by et al. and the year.
- Always give specific page numbers for quotations in the text and include a complete reference in the reference list, e.g.,
…(Miller, 1994, p. 276)…OR
Miller (1994) found that, "the 'placebo effect,'… in all participants" (p. 245).- No distinction is made between print and electronic sources when citing in text.
- If quoting the full title of a reference in the text, the first word of titles and subtitles and all other major words are capitalised and italicised e.g., When The Handicap Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin's Puzzle was published…
- For classical, major religious and very old works not included in the reference list, give the year of the translation or version that you used, with the word trans. or version, and give section numbers rather than page numbers, e.g., (Aristotle, trans. 1931); 1 Cor. 13:1 (Revised Standard Version). When the date of the original publication is available, include that date, e.g., James (1890/1983).
- To cite a web site or a Facebook or Twitter feed as a whole or to discuss it in general, you need only to provide the site URL in parentheses in the text; there is no need for a reference list entry.
Exceptions to the Basic In-Text Citation Styles
- When two works in a paper would both abbreviate to the same “et al.” form (spell out as many surnames as needed to disambiguate)
- When multiple works in a paper have an identical author (or authors) and publication year (append letters to the years)
Direct quotation of sources
These notes apply to the word-for-word reproduction from another author's work.
The quote is fewer than 40 words
- If the quote is fewer than 40 words, incorporate it into the text and use double quotation marks.
- Always provide author, year, and page number or paragraph number for non-paginated material, e.g.
According to Palladino and Wade (2010), "a flexible mind is a healthy mind" (p. 147).
In 2010, Palladino and Wade noted that "a flexible mind is a healthy mind" (p. 147).
"A flexible mind is a healthy mind," according to Palladino and Wade's (2010, p. 147) longitudinal study.
- List the complete reference in the bibliography
- If the quote is at the end of a sentence, close the quote with quotation marks, cite the source in brackets after the quotation marks, and place a full stop after the bracket, e.g.
In fact, "a flexible mind is a healthy mind" (Palladino & Wade, 2010, p. 147).
The quote is more than 40 words
- If the quote is more than 40 words, display in a freestanding block of text and omit the quotation marks.
- Start the quote on a new line, and indent about half and inch (equal to a tab space or 1.27cm) from the left margin (in the same position as a new paragraph).
- If there are additional paragraphs in the same quote, indent the first line of each by half an inch (one tab space).
- Double-space the entire quotation. Cite the quoted source, page or paragraph number in brackets after the final punctuation mark.
- Use p. for a single page number (Example: p. 15) and pp. for multiple page numbers (Examples: pp. 125-126).
- If citing an online source without page numbers, cite the paragraph number (Example: para. 4).
- When citing multiple authors after a quotation use the ampersand symbol '&' instead of the word 'and'.
- If the quoted source is cited and included in the introductory sentence only the page or paragraph number is required at the end of the quotation.
Example
Jones's (1998) study found the following:
Students often had difficulty using APA style especially when it was their first time citing source. This difficulty could be attributed to the fact that many students failed to purchase a style manual or ask their teacher for help. (p. 199)
Block quote with author at beginning
Lyoob, Rossetti and Chen (2013) noted:
Many software providers take advantage of these developing technologies to provide new cloud computing services or transform their existing products to the cloud. Since the term cloud could refer to any infrastructure, platform or software that serves for cloud computing, every component in the cloud may be provided as a service. (p. 34)
Block quote with author at the end
Cyber threats are not the only challenge to cloud computing:
While security has been a major topic of interest, reliability is a much bigger concern. Cloud computing is based on Internet access, so a fast and constant Internet connection is critical to cloud computing solutions. Therefore, it is imperative to ensure the enterprise's connectivity to the Internet is well-established and that there are backup connections in case of connectivity failure. (Lyoob, Rosetti, & Chen, 2013 pp. 35-36)
Direct quotations of online material without pagination
- List author year and page number in brackets
- If paragraph numbers are available, use these when page numbers are absent
- Use the abbreviation para, e.g.
Basu and Jones (2007) went so far as to suggest the need for a new "intellectual framework in which to consider the nature and form of regulation in cyberspace " (para. 4).
- If a subheading is available but no paragraph or page numbers, cite the heading and the numbers of the paragraph following it, e.g.
In their study, Verbunt, Pernot, and Smeets (2008) found that "the level of perceived disability in patients with fibromyalgia seemed best explained by their mental health condition and less by their physical condition " (Discussion section, para. 1).
- If the subheading is too long and unwieldy to use (and there is no paragraph or page numbers) a short title enclosed in quotation marks will suffice, e.g.
"Empirical studies have found mixed results on the efficacy of labels in education consumers and changing consumption behaviour " (Golan, Kuchler, & Kirssof, 2007, "Mandatory Labelling Has Targeted, " para. 4).
Citations within quotations
- Do no omit citations already present in the material you are quoting. The work cited should not be listed in the bibliography either unless cited as a primary source in another part of the assignment.
Can’t find what you’re looking for?
Let us know the citing and referencing advice you need to help us improve Re:cite
Need help? Chat with a Librarian
