In most social science classes, you will be asked to use the APA system for documenting sources, which is set forth in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th ed. (Washington, DC: APA, 2010).
A reference list includes all the sources cited in the text of a paper.
APA recommends in-text citations that refer readers to a list of references. An in-text citation gives the author of the source (often in a signal phrase), the year of publication, and often a page number in parentheses. At the end of the paper, a list of references provides publication information about the source; the list is alphabetized by authors’ last names (or by titles for works with no authors). The direct link between the in-text citation and the entry in the reference list is highlighted in the following example.
in-text citation
Yanovski and Yanovski (2002) reported that “the current state of the treatment for obesity is similar to the state of the treatment of hypertension several decades ago” (p. 600).
entry in the list of references
Yanovski, S. Z., & Yanovski, J. A. (2002). Drug therapy: Obesity. The New England Journal of Medicine, 346, 591-602.
For a reference list that includes this entry, see APA-5b.
Directory to APA in-text citation models
Directory to APA reference list models