Citavi [028EN]: APA American Psychological Association, 7th ed. (English)

APA 7 in Citavi: Learn how to use the 7th edition APA style for in-text citations and bibliographies, including special author and formatting rules.

Jul 30, 2026
Knowledge

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Answer

The APA 7th edition style can be used with Citavi 6 and later.

APA is one of the most commonly used citation styles. In fact, many journal and publisher styles are based on APA. Citavi's "APA American Psychological Association, 7th ed." citation style is based on the following guidelines:

American Psychological Association. (2019). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

The APA style is a typical author-date style that uses in-text citations containing author last names and the year of publication.

Information about APA 6th edition can be found here.

In-text citation examples

... (McLoughlin & Luca, 2000) ... Bawden and Smith (2001, pp. 220–221)

Bibliography entry examples

Journal article
Bawden, D. (2001). Information and digital literacies: A review of concepts. J ournal of Documentation , 57 (2), 218–259. https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000007083
Book
Sharpless Smith, S. (2010). Web-based instruction: A guide for libraries. American Library Association.
Contribution in an edited book
Sorcinelli, M. D. (2010). Ten principles of good Practice in creating and sustaining teaching and learning centers. In K. H. Gillespie (Ed.), The Jossey-Bass higher and adult education series. A guide to faculty development (2nd ed., pp. 9–23). Jossey-Bass.
Internet document
American Library Association (2000, January). Information literacy competency standards for higher education . http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency.cfm
Conference presentation
McLoughlin, C., & Luca, J. (2000, December 9–14). Learning through self-direction: The influence of task design on team-based professional knowledge building in an online environment . [Paper presentation]. ASCILITE Conference, Coffs Harbour, Australia. http://www.ascilite.org/conferences/coffs00/papers/catherine_mcloughlin.pdf

Special characteristics

Author names are either joined by "and" or "&" depending on whether they appear inside parentheses or not:

Example within parentheses: (McLoughlin & Luca, 2000)
Example with no parentheses: McLoughlin and Luca (2000)

In-text citations should always only contain a maximum of two authors. Exception: if two different teams of authors could otherwise not be differentiated from each other, additional author names should be added until it is clear.

If a work has more than 21 authors, only the first 19 and the last author are listed in the bibliography. An ellipsis is used in place of the omitted author names.

Please modify in Word

Set line spacing in the style "Citavi Bibliography Entry" to "double".

Frequently Asked Questions

1) Why do multiple authors continue to appear in in-text citations instead of just the first author and et al.?

If shortening the citation to the first author name and et al. would potentially lead to ambiguous references because another group of authors from the same year would shorten to the same citation, additional authors are added until the citations are unambiguous:

8.18 Avoiding Ambiguity in In-Text Citations
…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.

… Because "et al." is plural (meaning "and others"), it cannot stand for only one name. When only the final author is different, spell out all names in every citation.

2) Why do initials sometimes appear in citations in addition to last names?

If you cite two authors with the same last name, APA requires the first initial so that the authors are not ambiguous:

" 8.20 Authors With the Same Surname
If the first authors of multiple references share the same surname but have different initials, include the first authors’ initials in all in-text citations, even if the year of publication differs. Initials help avoid confusion within the text and help readers locate the correct entry in the reference list (...).
(J. M. Taylor & Neimeyer, 2015; T. Taylor, 2014)
If the first authors of multiple references share the same surname and the same initials, cite the works in the standard author-date format. (...)
If multiple authors within a single reference share the same surname, the initials are not needed in the in-text citation; cite the work in the standard author-date format.
(Chen & Chen, 2019)"

If you can rule out this reason, check if you correctly entered first and last names in Citavi. To do, right-click the name in your project. On the shortcut menu, click Edit "[Name]" . If the first name appears in the Last name field, copy and paste it into the First name field.

Also check if you added the name to Citavi more than once with different spellings. If yes, merge the spelling variants via the menu Lists > Persons and organizations .

3) Can the APA style be used as a footnote style?

No. If you want to work with a footnote citation style that uses a similar format, select Footnote: author date from the Citation system dropdown menu when you search for a style.

4) What are the main differences between APA 6 and APA 7

	APA 6	APA 7
Authors in in-text citations	First citation: include up to 5 All citations after that: up to 2	Always up to 2 authors
Authors in bibliography entries	List up to 7 (the first 6 and the last)	Up to 20 (the first 19 and the last)
Issue numbers for journals	Only use for journals paginated by volume	Always use
Place of publication for books	Always use	Never use

5) How do the versions of APA 7 in German, French and Spanish differ from the English version of APA 7?

The German, French and Spanish versions are inofficial adaptations of the official English APA 7 style. We have created them because many users have requested them. The versions differ where German, French and Spanish punctuation differs from English, and in textual expressions like "2. Aufl.", "2e éd." or "2a ed." instead of "2nd ed."

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