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What Is the Essence of Encyclopedia APA Citation?

An Encyclopedia is a comprehensive reference work that is mostly used to aid research. They are best suited for research papers since such papers are known to be argumentative. Hence, every statement of argument or justification in your paper should be appropriately cited from a reliable source. The APA encyclopedia citation has an easy formatting style for this case. There are, however, some constraints based on the entry type, number of authors, and the APA edition style to be used. In all, encyclopedias are cited to confirm certain methodological pieces of information stated in your paper. Let’s see how to cite an encyclopedia APA.

APA Encyclopedia Citation Guide

APA format for encyclopedia requires particular details of each source to be included. Besides, it should follow the pattern described under each requirement. Here is what it should include: 

  • Author’s Name: The Last name should come first, followed by initials. 
  • Year of publication: This is the publication year, and should be written in parentheses.
  • Title of entry: This point describes the title of the encyclopedia entry to be cited. A colon should precede the title, and the first word of the title is capitalized.
  • Editor Information: This is to display the editor’s details. It features the editor’s initials and then the last name. This information is preceded by a prefix, “In”. It then ends with “(Ed.)”.
  • Entry Volume and Page number: This cites the volume and page number of the relevant source. The volume number should come first, followed by the page numbers. Bear in mind that they should be in parentheses. If you are citing one-pager, ‘p’ should precede the number, while ‘pp.’ precedes if there are multiple pages.
  • Publishing location: Basically, the source’s place of publication.
  • Publisher:  Tells us the name of the publisher.

So, here is the general format for APA Encyclopedia citation:

Author, F. M. (Year of publication). Dictionary/Resource entry. In Editor’s Initials Editor’s Last Name. (Eds.), Title of work. (Edition, if not first). Publisher City, State: Publisher.

APA Citation Editions and Their Distinct Differences

There are two major APA citation styles. You could cite an encyclopedia APA using the 6th edition style or the 7th. The concern here is, are there distinct differences between these encyclopedia APA citation styles? Here is a table that shows the major differences between the two styles.

APA citation 6th Edition APA Citation 7th Edition
Requires the location of a publisher to be included when citing. Location of a publisher of the encyclopedia should be ignored.

Here are the illustrations:

Print resource citing for APA 6th:

Tyler O.T. (2009). Clinical sciences: Vital departments and studies. In V. James & R. Moss (Eds.), Encyclopedia of clinical education (6th). Georgia, US: American Clinical Association.

Print resource citing for APA 7th:

Tyler O.T. (2009). Clinical sciences: Vital departments and studies. In V. James & R. Moss (Eds.), Encyclopedia of clinical education (6th). American Clinical Association.

Online Resource Citing for APA

APA citation 6th Edition APA Citation 7th Edition
For online sources, the citation should end with the source’s URL, with the phrase “Retrieved from” preceding it. The online sources’ URLs are ignored.

Below are some examples:

Online resource citing for APA 6th:

Tyler O.T. (2009). Clinical sciences: Vital departments and studies. In V. James & R. Moss (Eds.), Encyclopedia of clinical education (6th). Retrieved from http://www.clinicalsciencesamerica.com.

Online resource citing for APA 7th:

Tyler O.T. (2009). Clinical sciences: Vital departments and studies. In V. James & R. Moss (Eds.), Encyclopedia of clinical education (6th).

Citing Various Types of Encyclopedia in APA Style

APA format for encyclopedia is laden with lots of criteria. This section discusses all possible factors influencing the structure of your encyclopedia APA citation.  All the sources can be cited either as in-text (throughout the paper) or bibliography (the list of used sources at the end of work). APA format does not require to place the Works Cited at the footnote

The following examples best explain them.

Encyclopedia in Print

Structure:

Author, F. M. (Year of publication). Dictionary/Resource entry. In Editor’s Initials Editor’s Last Name. (Eds.), Title of work. (Edition, if not first). Publisher City, State: Publisher.

Intext citation Example:

(Tyler, 2007)

Bibliography example:

Tyler O.T. (2007). Temporary energy flow. In J. Gibbs (Ed.), The Thermodynamics encyclopedia. Engineering Mechanics Books.

Online Encyclopedia

Structure:

Name of encyclopedia. (Year of publication). Dictionary/Resource entry. Title of work. URL.

Bibliography example:

Clinical Encyclopedia Online. (2020). Covid-19. MedCure: Clinical Encyclopedia: MedCure Plus. https://medcureplus.gov/covid.html.

In-text example:

(Clinical Encyclopedia Online, 2019)

Encyclopedia or Dictionary on a Database

Structure:

Name of dictionary/database. (Year of publication if mentioned). Dictionary/Resource entry. Title of work. Name of a publisher. URL.

Bibliography example:

Curtis English Dictionary. (n.d.). Revolt. In Curtis English Dictionary. HarperCollins Publishers. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/rebellion.

In-text citing:

(“Revolt,” n.d.)

N.B:

“n.d” is used in place of the year, since it is in a database.

Encyclopedia Entry

Structure:

Author, F. M. (Year of publication). Dictionary/Resource entry. In Editor’s Initials Editor’s Last Name. (Ed(s).), Title of work. (Edition, if not first, p(p).). Publisher City, State: Publisher.

Bibliography example:

Tyler O.T. (2019). Biomass chemical composition. In J. Gibbs (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Biochemistry (Vol. 3, pp. 77-112). Biomass reference.

In-text citation example:

(Tyler, 2019)

APA Encyclopedia Referencing

APA reference encyclopedia is made in research papers through the number of authors, and DOI number of the publication.

Known Single Author

Bibliography reference example:

Tyler, O.T. (2018). Breast cancer. In J. Gibbs (Eds.), MedTerms Dictionary. MedCure. https://www.medcuret.com/breastcancer/article.html

In-text:

(Tyler, 2018)

With DOI

Bibliography example:

Tyler O.T. (n.d.). Sonar Echo. In Electronic music. McGraw-Hill encyclopedia of sound engineering (12th ed.). DOI: xx/xxxx. 

In-text example:

(Tyler, n.d)

Multiple Authors

Bibliography example:

Gibbs, J., Norlander, E.T. (2012). Astronomical Theories. In A. Tyler (Ed.), Encyclopedia of NASA Engineering (Vol. 6, pp. 232-243). NASA Press. 

In-text example:

(Gibbs & Norlander, 2012)

Unknown Author

Replace the author’s name with the title of entry.

Bibliography example:

Creative Intelligence. (2011). In J. Gibbs (Ed.), Harvard Encyclopedia of Philosophy (4th ed.). https://plato.harvard.edu/entries/creative-intelligence/.

In-text citing example:

(“Creative Intelligence,” 2011)

No DOI

Format:

Title. (Year). In Editor’s First Initial. Last Name (Ed.), Name of a resource or dictionary (edition). URL/Publisher.

Bibliography example:

Painting. (2002). In J. Gibbs (Ed.), A Dictionary of Art, Oxford University Press.

https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199587438.001.0001/acref-9780199587438-e-3?rskey=wPxtdM&result=4.

In-text citing example:

(“Painting,” 2013) 

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Which is the best APA citation style to use?

Either of the 6th or 7th edition APA citation style can be used. It mostly depends on the one you are required to use for your paper.

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