APA 7th edition
How to cite a clinical trial registry in APA 7th edition
Trial registrations require official registry identifiers (NCT, EudraCT) and registration dates rather than standard publication volumes.
THE FORMAT
A clinical trial registry in APA, at a glance
Sponsor Name. (Year). Title of clinical trial (Registry No. NCTxxxxxx). ClinicalTrials.gov. https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCTxxxxxx
National Cancer Institute. (2023). Evaluating monoclonal antibody therapy in advanced melanoma (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT04368728). ClinicalTrials.gov. https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04368728
(National Cancer Institute, 2023)
In prose: The National Cancer Institute (2023) registered the phase III trial.
Copyeditor formats APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE automatically — cite a source once and the references builds itself. See how citations work .
BEFORE YOU FORMAT
What APA needs from a clinical trial registry
Elements to collect
- Sponsor or principal investigator name
- Registration year
- Title of the clinical trial
- Registry name (ClinicalTrials.gov, EU Clinical Trials)
- Registry identifier number (e.g., NCT04368728)
- URL of the trial record
Rules specific to this entry
- The registration ID is placed in parentheses immediately after the trial title.
- The trial registry name (ClinicalTrials.gov) functions as the site publisher.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element APA needs for a clinical trial registry: Sponsor or principal investigator name; Registration year; Title of the clinical trial; Registry name (ClinicalTrials.gov, EU Clinical Trials).
Build the references entry
Arrange those details in the APA order: Sponsor Name. (Year). Title of clinical trial (Registry No. NCTxxxxxx). ClinicalTrials.gov. https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCTxxxxxx
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as (National Cancer Institute, 2023) — or work the same reference into your sentence as The National Cancer Institute (2023) registered the phase III trial..
Check it against the exceptions
The registration ID is placed in parentheses immediately after the trial title.
APA RULES
The conventions behind every APA entry
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.) is the authority. Where a journal or department publishes its own house rules, those win — check your submission guidelines before the references is final.
The rules that apply across every source — author order, capitalization, how the references is sorted, and where APA entries most often go wrong — are collected on the APA 7th edition guide.
The same clinical trial registry in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about APA and clinical trial registries
What if the clinical trial registry has no author?
Move the title into the author position and alphabetize by the first significant word of that title — ignoring an initial “A”, “An” or “The”. In the text, use a shortened form of the title where the author name would go.
What do I need before I can cite a clinical trial registry?
Sponsor or principal investigator name, Registration year, Title of the clinical trial, and the rest of the elements listed above. Trial registrations require official registry identifiers (NCT, EudraCT) and registration dates rather than standard publication volumes.
Is there anything unusual about a clinical trial registry in APA?
The registration ID is placed in parentheses immediately after the trial title.
What else catches people out here?
The trial registry name (ClinicalTrials.gov) functions as the site publisher.
Can I reformat this clinical trial registry in another style later?
By hand, you would retype the entry — the element order, punctuation and italics all differ between styles. In Copyeditor, sources are stored as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
Cite it once
and never reformat it again
Copyeditor keeps sources as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole references at once.
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