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Academic Writer contains a Writing section where you can create and write a full APA-formatted paper.  You can write the entire paper in Academic Writer or just use it to setup the title page, headings, and references.  Export your work at any time to a Microsoft Word document.  Below are documents from Academic Writer about the essential features of their Writing tools.  

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Learn how to avoid plagiarism and self-plagiarism, including how to identify plagiarism, understand its risks and consequences, cite sources properly, and develop sound writing practices.

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APA uses in-text citations instead of footnotes or endnotes: (Last name, yyyy).

At the end of your paper include a reference list with complete bibliographic information. Here's how that would look for a journal article: 

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article.  Title of Periodical, volume number (issue number), pages.         

https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy

• Purdue OWL guide to APA citation
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Chicago Manual of Style

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Developed by Purdue's Online Writing Lab. Contains resources on in-text citation and the references page, as well as APA sample papers, slide presentations, and the APA classroom poster.

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APA 7th Edition 2019

Apa 7th edition video, apa citation how to documents, in-text citations, how to cite chatgpt with apa.

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Formating a Works Cited Page

Apa citation format examples.

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• APA Style and Grammar Guidelines 7th edition 2019
• APA Style Paper Format Consult the APA Style for additional information and examples.
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APA 7th Edition from Joshua Vossler on Vimeo .

• APA 7th Ed. Citation Guide WCC Writing Center 2023
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NOTES: The symbol "&" is used inside parentheses; the word "and" is used in text..

The author's last name and the year of publication should appear in any in-text citation.

Be aware of how to cite a work with multiple authors, and how this format will change after the first citation.

• APA Style In-Text Citations
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Research Toolkit - How to Cite Sources with APA

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Start a new page..

The title of the page (References) should be centered and not underlined.

The page should be double-spaced; bring each new reference to the margin and indent the remainder of the reference.

Only use last names and first initials, not full first names.

Only references cited in your paper appear in the References. Likewise, anything cited in your paper must appear in the References.

If you did not actually read an article but read about it (secondary sources), you must cite the article of interest and the source you read utilized within the text of your paper.

Journal Article Electronic Format from a Research Database

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article.  Title of Periodical, volume number (issue number), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy

Note: if no DOI number,  then use the URL.  APA does not require you to list the database name. 

Jafari, N., Jafari, N., Vosoughia, S., Utaberta, N., Yunos, M. Y. M., Ismail, N. A., & Ariffin, N. F. M. (2015). Influence of residents' preference of urban agriculture at rooftop garden on awareness about rooftop garden. Advances in Environmental Biology, 9 (24) , 71+. Retrieved from https://www.scimagojr.com/index.php

Three (3) or twenty (20) authors

List by last names and initials; commas separate author names, while the last author name is preceded again by ampersand.

Jafari, N., Jafari, N., Vosoughia, S., Utaberta, N., Yunos, M. Y. M., Ismail, N. A., & Ariffin, N. F. M. (2015). Influence of residents' prefer ence  of urban agriculture at rooftop garden on awareness about rooftop garden.  Advances in Environmental Biology, 9 (24) ,  71+. Retrieved from https://www.scimagojr.com/index.ph p

[note: the second and third line of a citation should have a hanging indent of .5]

A webpage or online content

Lastname, F. M. (Year, Month Date). Title of page . Site name. URL

Johnson, B. (2020, June 11). Racial & Food Justice — A Resource . The Cornell Daily Sun. https://cornellsun.com/2020/06/11/racial-food-justice-a-resource/

Group or organization

Group name. (Year, Month Date). Title of page . Site name. URL

Environmental Protection Agency (2016, June 27). Using green roofs to reduce heat islands .  https://www.epa.gov/heat-islands/using-green-roofs-reduce-heat-islands

Author, A. A. (Year of publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle . Publisher Name.

Novak, A. (2016). The rooftop growing guide: how to transform your roof into a vegetable garden or farm . Ten Speed Press.

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The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers a APA Formatting and Style Guide.

Use Purdue OWL for help with:

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APA 7th Edition

• APA Style Overview – 7th Edition
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APA 7th Edition: In-Text Citations | Purdue OWL & Choice Media Channel

In-text citations (lesson 16 of 21) | academic writer tutorial : basics of seventh edition | american psychological association (apa).

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Please click on the above hyperlinked text image to continue with this and other lessons from the Academic Writer Tutorial on the Basics of Seventh Edition APA Style by the American Psychological Association (APA).

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Generate accurate APA citations for free

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How to Cite a Book in APA Style | Format & Examples

Published on November 14, 2019 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 4, 2022.

A book citation in APA Style always includes the author’s name, the publication year, the book title, and the publisher. Use the interactive tool to see examples.

Generate accurate APA citations with Scribbr

Table of contents, basic book citation format, ebooks and online books, citing a chapter from an edited book, multivolume books, where to find the information for an apa book citation, frequently asked questions about apa style citations.

The in-text citation for a book includes the author’s last name, the year, and (if relevant) a page number.

In the reference list , start with the author’s last name and initials, followed by the year. The book title is written in sentence case (only capitalize the first word and any proper nouns ). Include any other contributors (e.g. editors and translators) and the edition if specified (e.g. “2nd ed.”).

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The AI-powered Citation Checker helps you avoid common mistakes such as:

• Missing commas and periods
• Incorrect usage of “et al.”
• Ampersands (&) in narrative citations
• Missing reference entries

A citation of an ebook (i.e. a book accessed on an e-reader) or a book viewed online (e.g. on Google Books or in PDF form ) includes the DOI where available. If there is no DOI, link to the page where you viewed the book, or where the ebook can be purchased or accessed.

Since ebooks sometimes do not include page numbers, APA recommends using other methods of identifying a specific passage in your in-text citations—for example, a chapter or section title, or a paragraph number.

When citing a particular chapter from a book containing texts by various authors (e.g. a collection of essays), begin the citation with the author of the chapter and mention the book’s editor(s) later in the reference. A page range identifies the chapter’s location in the book.

Some books come in multiple volumes. You may want to cite the entire book if you’ve used multiple volumes, or just a single volume if that was all you used.

Citing a single volume

When citing from one volume of a multivolume book, the format varies slightly depending on whether each volume has a title or just a number.

If the volume has a specific title, this should be written as part of the title in your reference list entry.

Eliot, T. S. (2015). The poems of T. S. Eliot: Vol. 1. Collected and uncollected poems (C. Ricks & J. McCue, Eds.). Faber & Faber.

If the volume is only numbered, not titled, the volume number is not italicized and appears in parentheses after the title.

Dylan, B. (2005). Chronicles (Vol. 1) . Simon & Schuster.

Citing a multivolume book as a whole

When citing the whole book, mention the volumes in parentheses after the title. Individual volume titles are not included even if they do exist.

Eliot, T. S. (2015). The poems of T. S. Eliot (Vols. 1–2) (C. Ricks & J. McCue, Eds.). Faber & Faber.

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All the information you need to cite a book can usually be found on the title and copyright pages.

The APA reference list entry for the book above would look like this:

Butler, C. (2002). Postmodernism: A very short introduction . Oxford University Press.

When a book’s chapters are written by different authors, you should cite the specific chapter you are referring to.

When all the chapters are written by the same author (or group of authors), you should usually cite the entire book, but some styles include exceptions to this.

• In APA Style , single-author books should always be cited as a whole, even if you only quote or paraphrase from one chapter.
• In MLA Style , if a single-author book is a collection of stand-alone works (e.g. short stories ), you should cite the individual work.
• In Chicago Style , you may choose to cite a single chapter of a single-author book if you feel it is more appropriate than citing the whole book.

The abbreviation “ et al. ” (meaning “and others”) is used to shorten APA in-text citations with three or more authors . Here’s how it works:

Only include the first author’s last name, followed by “et al.”, a comma and the year of publication, for example (Taylor et al., 2018).

In the 7th edition of the APA manual, no location information is required for publishers. The 6th edition previously required you to include the city and state where the publisher was located, but this is no longer the case.

If you’re citing from an edition other than the first (e.g. a 2nd edition or revised edition), the edition appears in the reference, abbreviated in parentheses after the book’s title (e.g. 2nd ed. or Rev. ed.).

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2022, July 04). How to Cite a Book in APA Style | Format & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved November 29, 2023, from https://www.scribbr.com/apa-examples/book/

Is this article helpful?

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Citation is a method of attribution that indicates your work came from another source (acknowledging the source).  It is important to cite sources to avoid plagiarism, but it is also important to cite sources so readers can learn more about your topic or research background.  Citation also lets readers know how much effort you put into the research for your paper.  Citing other's ideas also lends credibility to your ideas.  It is also important to "distinguish" your ideas from others, and to know that they are supported or differentiated from other's ideas.

Purdue owl guides  for tips on apa format, mla format and more, citation  - reflects the information needed to locate a particular source., bibliography  - lists citations for all of the relevant resources., annotated bibliography  - each citation is followed by a brief note that describes and/or evaluates the source., in-text citation  - consists just enough information to correspond to a source's full citation in a works cited list. requires a page number(s) showing exactly where relevant information was found in the original source., ama  - (american medical association). used in medicine, health, and biological sciences., apa  - (american psychological association). used in social science disciplines, like psychology and education., chicago  - used with all subjects in the "real world" by books, magazines, newspapers, and other non-scholarly publications., mla  - (modern language association). used in literature, arts and humanities disciplines..

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MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics

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MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook (9 th ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.

Guidelines for referring to the works of others in your text using MLA style are covered throughout the  MLA Handbook  and in chapter 7 of the  MLA Style Manual . Both books provide extensive examples, so it's a good idea to consult them if you want to become even more familiar with MLA guidelines or if you have a particular reference question.

Basic in-text citation rules

In MLA Style, referring to the works of others in your text is done using parenthetical citations . This method involves providing relevant source information in parentheses whenever a sentence uses a quotation or paraphrase. Usually, the simplest way to do this is to put all of the source information in parentheses at the end of the sentence (i.e., just before the period). However, as the examples below will illustrate, there are situations where it makes sense to put the parenthetical elsewhere in the sentence, or even to leave information out.

General Guidelines

• The source information required in a parenthetical citation depends (1) upon the source medium (e.g. print, web, DVD) and (2) upon the source’s entry on the Works Cited page.
• Any source information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on the Works Cited page. More specifically, whatever signal word or phrase you provide to your readers in the text must be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of the corresponding entry on the Works Cited page.

In-text citations: Author-page style

MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:

Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page 263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page, where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following information:

Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads . Oxford UP, 1967.

In-text citations for print sources with known author

For print sources like books, magazines, scholarly journal articles, and newspapers, provide a signal word or phrase (usually the author’s last name) and a page number. If you provide the signal word/phrase in the sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.

These examples must correspond to an entry that begins with Burke, which will be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of an entry on the Works Cited page:

Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method . University of California Press, 1966.

In-text citations for print sources by a corporate author

When a source has a corporate author, it is acceptable to use the name of the corporation followed by the page number for the in-text citation. You should also use abbreviations (e.g., nat'l for national) where appropriate, so as to avoid interrupting the flow of reading with overly long parenthetical citations.

In-text citations for sources with non-standard labeling systems

If a source uses a labeling or numbering system other than page numbers, such as a script or poetry, precede the citation with said label. When citing a poem, for instance, the parenthetical would begin with the word “line”, and then the line number or range. For example, the examination of William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” would be cited as such:

The speaker makes an ardent call for the exploration of the connection between the violence of nature and the divinity of creation. “In what distant deeps or skies. / Burnt the fire of thine eyes," they ask in reference to the tiger as they attempt to reconcile their intimidation with their relationship to creationism (lines 5-6).

Longer labels, such as chapters (ch.) and scenes (sc.), should be abbreviated.

In-text citations for print sources with no known author

When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name, following these guidelines.

Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work (such as an article) or italicize it if it's a longer work (e.g. plays, books, television shows, entire Web sites) and provide a page number if it is available.

Titles longer than a standard noun phrase should be shortened into a noun phrase by excluding articles. For example, To the Lighthouse would be shortened to Lighthouse .

If the title cannot be easily shortened into a noun phrase, the title should be cut after the first clause, phrase, or punctuation:

In this example, since the reader does not know the author of the article, an abbreviated title appears in the parenthetical citation, and the full title of the article appears first at the left-hand margin of its respective entry on the Works Cited page. Thus, the writer includes the title in quotation marks as the signal phrase in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader directly to the source on the Works Cited page. The Works Cited entry appears as follows:

"The Impact of Global Warming in North America." Global Warming: Early Signs . 1999. www.climatehotmap.org/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2009.

If the title of the work begins with a quotation mark, such as a title that refers to another work, that quote or quoted title can be used as the shortened title. The single quotation marks must be included in the parenthetical, rather than the double quotation.

Parenthetical citations and Works Cited pages, used in conjunction, allow readers to know which sources you consulted in writing your essay, so that they can either verify your interpretation of the sources or use them in their own scholarly work.

Author-page citation for classic and literary works with multiple editions

Page numbers are always required, but additional citation information can help literary scholars, who may have a different edition of a classic work, like Marx and Engels's  The Communist Manifesto . In such cases, give the page number of your edition (making sure the edition is listed in your Works Cited page, of course) followed by a semicolon, and then the appropriate abbreviations for volume (vol.), book (bk.), part (pt.), chapter (ch.), section (sec.), or paragraph (par.). For example:

Author-page citation for works in an anthology, periodical, or collection

When you cite a work that appears inside a larger source (for instance, an article in a periodical or an essay in a collection), cite the author of the  internal source (i.e., the article or essay). For example, to cite Albert Einstein's article "A Brief Outline of the Theory of Relativity," which was published in  Nature  in 1921, you might write something like this:

See also our page on documenting periodicals in the Works Cited .

Citing authors with same last names

Sometimes more information is necessary to identify the source from which a quotation is taken. For instance, if two or more authors have the same last name, provide both authors' first initials (or even the authors' full name if different authors share initials) in your citation. For example:

Citing a work by multiple authors

For a source with two authors, list the authors’ last names in the text or in the parenthetical citation:

Corresponding Works Cited entry:

Best, David, and Sharon Marcus. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations , vol. 108, no. 1, Fall 2009, pp. 1-21. JSTOR, doi:10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.1

For a source with three or more authors, list only the first author’s last name, and replace the additional names with et al.

Franck, Caroline, et al. “Agricultural Subsidies and the American Obesity Epidemic.” American Journal of Preventative Medicine , vol. 45, no. 3, Sept. 2013, pp. 327-333.

Citing multiple works by the same author

If you cite more than one work by an author, include a shortened title for the particular work from which you are quoting to distinguish it from the others. Put short titles of books in italics and short titles of articles in quotation marks.

Citing two articles by the same author :

Citing two books by the same author :

Additionally, if the author's name is not mentioned in the sentence, format your citation with the author's name followed by a comma, followed by a shortened title of the work, and, when appropriate, the page number(s):

Citing multivolume works

If you cite from different volumes of a multivolume work, always include the volume number followed by a colon. Put a space after the colon, then provide the page number(s). (If you only cite from one volume, provide only the page number in parentheses.)

Citing the Bible

In your first parenthetical citation, you want to make clear which Bible you're using (and underline or italicize the title), as each version varies in its translation, followed by book (do not italicize or underline), chapter, and verse. For example:

If future references employ the same edition of the Bible you’re using, list only the book, chapter, and verse in the parenthetical citation:

John of Patmos echoes this passage when describing his vision (Rev. 4.6-8).

Citing indirect sources

Sometimes you may have to use an indirect source. An indirect source is a source cited within another source. For such indirect quotations, use "qtd. in" to indicate the source you actually consulted. For example:

Note that, in most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source, rather than citing an indirect source.

Citing transcripts, plays, or screenplays

Sources that take the form of a dialogue involving two or more participants have special guidelines for their quotation and citation. Each line of dialogue should begin with the speaker's name written in all capitals and indented half an inch. A period follows the name (e.g., JAMES.) . After the period, write the dialogue. Each successive line after the first should receive an additional indentation. When another person begins speaking, start a new line with that person's name indented only half an inch. Repeat this pattern each time the speaker changes. You can include stage directions in the quote if they appear in the original source.

Conclude with a parenthetical that explains where to find the excerpt in the source. Usually, the author and title of the source can be given in a signal phrase before quoting the excerpt, so the concluding parenthetical will often just contain location information like page numbers or act/scene indicators.

Here is an example from O'Neill's  The Iceman Cometh.

WILLIE. (Pleadingly) Give me a drink, Rocky. Harry said it was all right. God, I need a drink.

ROCKY. Den grab it. It's right under your nose.

WILLIE. (Avidly) Thanks. (He takes the bottle with both twitching hands and tilts it to his lips and gulps down the whiskey in big swallows.) (1.1)

Citing non-print or sources from the Internet

With more and more scholarly work published on the Internet, you may have to cite sources you found in digital environments. While many sources on the Internet should not be used for scholarly work (reference the OWL's  Evaluating Sources of Information  resource), some Web sources are perfectly acceptable for research. When creating in-text citations for electronic, film, or Internet sources, remember that your citation must reference the source on your Works Cited page.

Sometimes writers are confused with how to craft parenthetical citations for electronic sources because of the absence of page numbers. However, these sorts of entries often do not require a page number in the parenthetical citation. For electronic and Internet sources, follow the following guidelines:

• Include in the text the first item that appears in the Work Cited entry that corresponds to the citation (e.g. author name, article name, website name, film name).
• Do not provide paragraph numbers or page numbers based on your Web browser’s print preview function.
• Unless you must list the Web site name in the signal phrase in order to get the reader to the appropriate entry, do not include URLs in-text. Only provide partial URLs such as when the name of the site includes, for example, a domain name, like  CNN.com  or  Forbes.com,  as opposed to writing out http://www.cnn.com or http://www.forbes.com.

Miscellaneous non-print sources

Two types of non-print sources you may encounter are films and lectures/presentations:

In the two examples above “Herzog” (a film’s director) and “Yates” (a presentor) lead the reader to the first item in each citation’s respective entry on the Works Cited page:

Herzog, Werner, dir. Fitzcarraldo . Perf. Klaus Kinski. Filmverlag der Autoren, 1982.

Yates, Jane. "Invention in Rhetoric and Composition." Gaps Addressed: Future Work in Rhetoric and Composition, CCCC, Palmer House Hilton, 2002. Address.

Electronic sources

Electronic sources may include web pages and online news or magazine articles:

In the first example (an online magazine article), the writer has chosen not to include the author name in-text; however, two entries from the same author appear in the Works Cited. Thus, the writer includes both the author’s last name and the article title in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader to the appropriate entry on the Works Cited page (see below).

In the second example (a web page), a parenthetical citation is not necessary because the page does not list an author, and the title of the article, “MLA Formatting and Style Guide,” is used as a signal phrase within the sentence. If the title of the article was not named in the sentence, an abbreviated version would appear in a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence. Both corresponding Works Cited entries are as follows:

Taylor, Rumsey. "Fitzcarraldo." Slant , 13 Jun. 2003, www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/fitzcarraldo/. Accessed 29 Sep. 2009. 

"MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The Purdue OWL , 2 Aug. 2016, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/. Accessed 2 April 2018.

Multiple citations

To cite multiple sources in the same parenthetical reference, separate the citations by a semi-colon:

Time-based media sources

When creating in-text citations for media that has a runtime, such as a movie or podcast, include the range of hours, minutes and seconds you plan to reference. For example: (00:02:15-00:02:35).

When a citation is not needed

Common sense and ethics should determine your need for documenting sources. You do not need to give sources for familiar proverbs, well-known quotations, or common knowledge (For example, it is expected that U.S. citizens know that George Washington was the first President.). Remember that citing sources is a rhetorical task, and, as such, can vary based on your audience. If you’re writing for an expert audience of a scholarly journal, for example, you may need to deal with expectations of what constitutes “common knowledge” that differ from common norms.

Other Sources

The MLA Handbook describes how to cite many different kinds of authors and content creators. However, you may occasionally encounter a source or author category that the handbook does not describe, making the best way to proceed can be unclear.

In these cases, it's typically acceptable to apply the general principles of MLA citation to the new kind of source in a way that's consistent and sensible. A good way to do this is to simply use the standard MLA directions for a type of source that resembles the source you want to cite.

You may also want to investigate whether a third-party organization has provided directions for how to cite this kind of source. For example, Norquest College provides guidelines for citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers⁠ —an author category that does not appear in the MLA Handbook . In cases like this, however, it's a good idea to ask your instructor or supervisor whether using third-party citation guidelines might present problems.

Citation guides

All you need to know about citations

APA in-text citation with no date

Sometimes, sources do not include a publication date. In that case a the reference entry of the source should include “n.d.” for “no date” in parentheses.

Reference list entry with no date

• Author. (n.d.). Title. Source.

For example, a book with one author and no publication date:

• King, S. (n.d.). It. Viking Press.

In-text citation with no date

• (Author, n.d.) or Author (n.d.)
• (King, n.d.) or King (n.d.)

This citation style guide is based on the official Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association ( 6 th edition).

More useful guides

• APA Style: Missing Reference Information
• APA In-Text Citations: Author/Authors
• How do I cite a resource without an author or date?

More great BibGuru guides

• APA: how to cite a TV show episode
• Chicago: how to cite a song
• MLA: how to cite a blog post

Automatic citations in seconds

Citation generators

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• NoodleTools
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African History: Colonial Period

Citing your sources.

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• Find Books & Articles
• Primary Resources on Colonial Africa
• Online Resources for Colonial Africa

APA (American Psychological Association) Style

Chicago style, harvard style, mla (modern language association) style, nlm (national library of medicine style), general citation guides.

Proper citation is an essential aspect of scholarship. Citing properly allows your reader or audience to locate the materials you have used. Most importantly, citations give credit to the authors of quoted or consulted information. Failure to acknowledge sources of information properly may constitute plagiarism.  For an explicit definition of plagiarism, see the  Boston University Academic Conduct Code .

For detailed instructions on how to cite within the text of your paper, please consult a style manual listed in this guide. Please also note: some of the resources listed do not cover every possibility you might encounter when trying to cite your sources. For this reason, it is suggested that you consult a style manual to create your bibliography.

Finally, please also see our separate citation guides  for Business students  or  for Science students .

• APA Formatting and Style Guide at Purdue OWL

• Chicago Style guide at Purdue OWL

There is no official guide to Harvard Style. If you Google “Harvard Style Guide” you will find many websites that list examples. One of the best guides is from  Monash University . 

• MLA Formatting and Style Guide at Purdue OWL

The official style manual for the National Library of Medicine (NLM), and suggested when citing documents from the associated databases MedLine and PubMed. The online edition supercedes the print edition as the most up to date.

• Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab)

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• Last Updated: Nov 27, 2023 4:42 PM
• URL: https://library.bu.edu/colonialafrica

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When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.

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How to make ChatGPT provide sources and citations

One of the biggest complaints about ChatGPT is that it provides information, but the accuracy of that information is uncertain. Those complaints exist because ChatGPT doesn't provide sources, footnotes, or links to where it derived information used in its answers.

Also: 4 things Claude AI can do that ChatGPT can't  

But that's not entirely true -- and ChatGPT can do more.

If you know how to properly prompt ChatGPT, it will give you sources. Here's how.

1. Write a query and ask ChatGPT

To start, you need to ask ChatGPT something that needs sources or citations. I've found it's better to ask a question with a longer answer, so there's more "meat" for ChatGPT to chew on. 

Also: The best AI chatbots: ChatGPT and other interesting alternatives to try

Keep in mind that ChatGPT can't provide any information after 2021 and that requests for information pre-internet (say, for a paper on Ronald Reagan's presidency) will have far fewer available sources.

Here's an example of a prompt I wrote on a topic that I worked on a lot when I was in grad school:

Describe the learning theories of cognitivism, behaviorism, and constructivism

2. Ask ChatGPT to provide sources

This is where a bit of prompt engineering comes in. A good starting point is with this query:

Please provide sources for the previous answer

I've found that this prompt often provides offline sources, books, papers, etc. The problem with offline sources is you can't check their veracity. But it's a starting point. A better query is this:

Please provide URL sources

This prompt specifically tells ChatGPT that you want clickable links to sources. You can also tweak this up by asking for a specific quantity of sources, although your mileage might vary in terms of how many you get back:

Please provide 10 URL sources

In our next step, we'll see what we can do with these.

3. Push ChatGPT to give you higher-quality sources

Remember that ChatGPT (and most large language model AIs) respond well to detail and specificity . So if you're asking for sources, you can push for higher-quality sources. You'll need to clearly specify you need reliable and accurate sources. While this won't necessarily work, it may remind the AI to give you more useful responses. For example:

Please provide me with reputable sources to support my argument on... (whatever the topic is you're looking at)

You can also tell ChatGPT the kinds of sources you want. If you're looking for scholarly articles, peer-reviewed journals, books, or authoritative websites, mention these preferences explicitly. For example:

Please recommend peer-reviewed journals that discuss... (and here, repeat what you discussed earlier in your conversation)

When dealing with abstract concepts or theories, request that ChatGPT provide a conceptual framework along with real-world examples. Here's an example:

Can you describe the principles of Vygotsky's Social Development Theory and provide real-world examples where these principles were applied, including sources for these examples?

This approach not only gives you a theoretical explanation but also practical instances where you can trace back the original sources or case studies.

Another idea is to use sources that don't have link rot (that is, they're no longer online at the URL that ChatGPT might know). Be careful with this, though, because ChatGPT doesn't know of things after 2021. So, while you might be tempted to use a prompt like this:

Please provide me with sources published within the past five years

Instead, consider using a prompt like this:

Please provide sources published from 2019 through 2021.

And, as always, don't assume that whatever ChatGPT gives you is accurate. It's still quite possible it will completely fabricate answers, even to the point of making up the names of what seem like academic journals. It's a fibber . It's a sometimes helpful tool, but also a fibber.

4. Attempt to verify/validate the provided sources

Keep in mind this golden rule about ChatGPT-provided sources: ChatGPT is more often wrong than right .

Across the many times I've asked ChatGPT for URL sources, roughly half are just plain bad links. Another 25% or more are links that go to topics completely or somewhat unrelated to the one you're trying to source. 

Also: How to use ChatGPT: Everything you need to know

For example, I asked for sources on a backgrounder for the phrase "trust but verify", generally popularized by US President Ronald Reagan. I got a lot of sources back, but most didn't actually exist. I got some back that correctly took me to active pages on the Reagan Presidential Library site, but the page topic had nothing to do with the phrase in question.

I had a bit better luck with my learning theory question from step 1. There, I got back offline texts from the people who I knew from my studies who had actually worked on those theories. I also got back URLs, but again, only about two in 10 actually worked or were accurate.

Also: 40% of workers will have to reskill in the next three years due to AI, says IBM study

But don't despair. The idea isn't to expect ChatGPT to provide sources that you can immediately use. If you instead think of ChatGPT as a research assistant, it will give you some great starting places. Use the names of the articles (which may be completely fake or just not accessible) and drop them into Google. That process will give you some interesting search queries, which will more than likely lead to some interesting reads and material that can legitimately go into your research.

Also, keep in mind that you're not limited to using ChatGPT. Just because ChatGPT exists doesn't mean you should forget all the tools available to researchers and students. Do your own web searches. Check with primary sources and subject matter experts if they're available to you. If you're in school, you can even ask your friendly neighborhood librarian for help.

Also:  How to use ChatGPT to create an app

Don't forget that there are many excellent traditional sources. For example, Google Scholar and JSTOR  provide access to a wide range of academically acceptable resources you can cite with reasonable confidence.

One final point: if you merely cut and paste ChatGPT sources into whatever research you're doing, you're likely to get stung. Use it for clues, not as a way to avoid the real work of research.

5. Consider upgrading to ChatGPT Plus

While ChatGPT Plus is more expensive (it's $20/month), it has numerous advantages over the free version. In particular, it uses the GPT-4 model, and it adds support for both Code Interpreter and plugins. For our purposes here, the WebPilot plugin can prove very helpful.

Also: How (and why) to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus

WebPilot gives ChatGPT the ability to search the web. This effectively eliminates the 2021 cutoff point for the ChatGPT knowledge base. It also allows ChatGPT to access the web to find more current sources and citations. This has the advantage of reducing the link rot symptoms that come from using a 2021 database in 2023 and beyond.

Also: GPT-3.5 vs GPT-4: Is ChatGPT Plus worth its subscription fee?

Do be aware, however, that even with current web access, ChatGPT can still hallucinate. In other words, the AI will still make stuff up, including valid-seeming sources that don't exist and have never existed. Continue to double-check everything.

How do you put sources in APA format? 

APA style is a citation style that's often required in academic programs. APA stands for American Psychological Association, and I've often thought that they invented these style rules in order to get more customers. But, seriously, the definitive starting point for APA style is the Purdue OWL . It provides a wide range of style guidelines. 

Also:  How to use ChatGPT to build your resume

Be careful: Online style formatters might not do a complete job, and you may get your work returned by your professor. It pays to do the work yourself -- and use care doing it. 

How can I make ChatGPT provide more reliable sources for its responses?

This is a good question. I have found that sometimes -- sometimes -- if you ask ChatGPT to give you more sources, or re-ask for sources, it will give you new listings. If you tell ChatGPT that the sources it provided were erroneous, it will sometimes give you better ones. It may also just apologize and give excuses. Another approach is to re-ask your original question with a different focus or direction, and then ask for sources for the new answer. 

Also: 5 ways you can use ChatGPT to help you write essays

Once again, my best advice is to avoid treating ChatGPT as a tool that writes for you and more as a writing assistant. Asking for sources, so you can simply cut and paste a ChatGPT response, is pretty much plagiarism. But using ChatGPT's response and any sources you can tease out of it as clues for further research and writing is a completely legitimate way to use this intriguing new tool.

Why are ChatGPT sources often so wrong? 

For some links, it's just link rot. Since all sources are at least three years old, some links may have changed. Other sources are of indeterminate age. Since we don't have a full listing of all of ChatGPT's sources, it's impossible to tell how valid they were to begin with. 

Also: You can build your own AI chatbot with this drag-and-drop tool

But since ChatGPT was trained mostly without human supervision , we know that most of its sources weren't vetted, and so could be wrong, made-up, or completely non-existent.

Trust, but verify.

You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz , on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz , on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz , and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV .

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