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, 7th ed. (2020).
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
Bell (2010) reported that students engaged in this kind of learning performed better on both project-based assessments and standardized tests (pp. 39–40).
ENTRY IN THE LIST OF REFERENCES
For a reference list that includes this entry, see 53b.