APA Citation Generator (APA 7th edition)
Paste a DOI, PubMed ID or reference and get it in APA 7, built from the real Crossref or PubMed record so the details are right.
APA 7 example
The paper Deep learning by LeCun, Bengio and Hinton (Nature, 2015), formatted by this tool from DOI 10.1038/nature14539:
In text: (LeCun et al., 2015)
Who uses APA 7
Psychology, education, nursing, social sciences and most business programmes.
APA 7 reference rules
- List up to 20 authors by surname and initials. With 21 or more, give the first 19, an ellipsis, then the last author.
- Put the year in parentheses straight after the authors.
- Article titles take sentence case: capitalise only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns.
- Journal names and volume numbers are italic and keep title case; the issue number follows in parentheses, not italic.
- End with the DOI written as a link, https://doi.org/…, with no "Retrieved from" and no full stop after it.
- Order the reference list alphabetically by the first author’s surname, with a hanging indent.
In-text citations
Author–date in parentheses: (LeCun et al., 2015), or narrative: LeCun et al. (2015). For two authors name both every time: (Smith & Jones, 2020).
Common mistakes
- Using "et al." in the reference list. APA 7 lists authors in full up to 20; "et al." belongs only in in-text citations with three or more authors.
- Keeping the article title in Title Case because that is how the journal printed it.
- Writing "doi:10.…" instead of the https://doi.org/ form.
How this generator avoids wrong references
Every reference is looked up in Crossref, PubMed and OpenAlex before it is formatted. When the database record disagrees with what you pasted (a year off by one, a missing co-author, pages from a different issue) the citation is built from the record and you see what changed. A paper that cannot be found is still formatted, exactly as typed, but marked as unverified, and a retracted paper is flagged in red. Always check your institution's or journal's own guidance: many add small house rules on top of the official style.
Other styles
MLA 9 · Chicago author-date · Harvard · Vancouver · IEEE · AMA 11
Frequently asked questions
Is this APA 7 citation generator free?
Yes, with no sign-up. Anonymous use covers 30 reference checks a day; a free Phở account raises that to 300 a month.
How do I cite a journal article in APA 7?
Paste its DOI or PubMed ID above and choose APA 7. For example, 10.1038/nature14539 becomes: LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., & Hinton, G. (2015). Deep learning. Nature, 521(7553), 436–444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539
What does an in-text citation look like in APA 7?
Author–date in parentheses: (LeCun et al., 2015), or narrative: LeCun et al. (2015). For two authors name both every time: (Smith & Jones, 2020).
Why does the tool change details I typed?
Because it looked the paper up and the publisher’s record disagrees. The warnings under each citation list exactly what changed, so you can check.