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APA Citation

Date Information

This element refers to the date of publication. At times, retrieval dates for online sources are included as well (see below).

 

Specific dates 

In references, the date as given in the work is used. Dates may be:

  • the year only
  • the year and month
  • the year, month and day
  • the year and season
  • a range of dates

 

Examples: 

Highway, T. (2021). Permanent astonishment: A memoir. Doubleday Canada.
Gunn, J. (2025, August). Confessions of the working poor. Maclean's, 138(7), 28-36.
Fishman, A. (2025, May 6). Opinion: Why media literacy should be mandatory in B.C. classrooms. The Vancouver Sun. https://vancouversun.com/opinion/op-ed/opinion-why-media-literacy-should-be-mandatory-in-b-c-classrooms
Darwin, Charles (1998-2016). On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. TalkOrigins Archive. www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter5.html

 

Note: In your in-text citations, use only the year, even if the reference list entry contains a more specific date. For more detailed information, see the In-text Citations Date page.

 

No date

When you cannot determine the date of publication, treat the work as having no date and use (n.d.).

 

Example: 

U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.). U.S. and world population clock. U.S. Department of Commerce. Retrieved June 17, 2025, from https://www.census.gov/popclock/
 

Same year, same author

When the same author published an item in the same year, you need to differentiate between them by adding the letters a, b, c, ... to the date as otherwise the reader would not know with in-text citation is from which source.

 

Example: 

Koriat, A. (2008a). Easy comes, easy goes? The link between learning and remembering and its exploitation in metacognition. Memory & Cognition, 36, 416–428. https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.36.2.416
Koriat, A. (2008b). Subjective confidence in one’s answers: The consensuality principle. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34, 945–959. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.34.4.945
 

Retrieval date

Use a retrieval date only if the work may change over time; the format would be: Retrieved June 25, 2025, from https://xxxxx

 

Example: 

U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.). U.S. and world population clock. U.S. Department of Commerce. Retrieved June 17, 2025, from https://www.census.gov/popclock/

 

Various other date information

  • For a work that has been accepted for publication but is not yet published, use the term "in press" instead of a year
  • For unpublished, informally published, or in-progress works, provide the year the work was produced
  • If a date of last update is available, use it in the reference (do not use the date of last review)
  • When the date of original publication is approximate, use "ca." (meaning circa) with the date