APA 7th edition
How to cite a report in APA 7th edition
Reports from governments, NGOs, and think tanks usually have a corporate author rather than a person, and often a report number that has to be preserved exactly.
THE FORMAT
A report in APA, at a glance
Organization Name. (Year). Title of the report (Report No. xxx). Publisher. https://example.org/report
National Center for Writing Research. (2023). Writing support in doctoral programs: A national survey (Report No. NCWR-2023-04). https://ncwr.org/reports/2023-04
(National Center for Writing Research [NCWR], 2023)
In prose: The National Center for Writing Research (NCWR, 2023) surveyed 214 doctoral programs.
Farrow, K., & Renaud, C. (2023). Writing support in doctoral programs: A national survey (Report No. NCWR-2023-04). National Center for Writing Research. https://ncwr.org/reports/2023-04
In text: (Farrow & Renaud, 2023)
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 report
Elements to collect
- Issuing organization, used as the author when no individual is named
- Year of publication
- Full title of the report
- Report or publication number, when there is one
- Publisher, when it differs from the author
- URL
Rules specific to this entry
- When the issuing organization is also the publisher, name it once as the author and leave the publisher slot empty. Repeating it is the most common error in report references.
- A group author can be abbreviated after its first appearance. Introduce the abbreviation in the first citation — (National Center for Writing Research [NCWR], 2023) — then use (NCWR, 2023) from then on, and keep the full name in the reference list.
- The report number goes in parentheses after the title, upright, exactly as printed. It is often the only way a reader can tell two annual editions apart.
- Government and NGO reports rarely carry a DOI. A plain URL to the landing page is correct, with no retrieval date for a fixed PDF.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element APA needs for a report: Issuing organization, used as the author when no individual is named; Year of publication; Full title of the report; Report or publication number, when there is one.
Build the references entry
Arrange those details in the APA order: Organization Name. (Year). Title of the report (Report No. xxx). Publisher. https://example.org/report
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as (National Center for Writing Research [NCWR], 2023) — or work the same reference into your sentence as The National Center for Writing Research (NCWR, 2023) surveyed 214 doctoral programs..
Check it against the exceptions
When the issuing organization is also the publisher, name it once as the author and leave the publisher slot empty. Repeating it is the most common error in report references.
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 report in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about APA and reports
What if the report 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 report?
Issuing organization, used as the author when no individual is named, Year of publication, Full title of the report, and the rest of the elements listed above. Reports from governments, NGOs, and think tanks usually have a corporate author rather than a person, and often a report number that has to be preserved exactly.
Is there anything unusual about a report in APA?
When the issuing organization is also the publisher, name it once as the author and leave the publisher slot empty. Repeating it is the most common error in report references.
What else catches people out here?
A group author can be abbreviated after its first appearance. Introduce the abbreviation in the first citation — (National Center for Writing Research [NCWR], 2023) — then use (NCWR, 2023) from then on, and keep the full name in the reference list.
Can I reformat this report 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.
