How to cite a conference paper in APA 7

APA doesn’t have one “conference paper” format. It depends on how the paper was published, or whether you are citing a talk.

1. Proceedings published in a journal

Some conferences publish their papers as a journal issue. Cite the paper as a journal article, with the journal name, volume, issue, pages and DOI.

2. Proceedings published as a book

When the proceedings are a book with editors, use the edited-book format. APA’s example is an edited volume of proceedings, with (Eds.) after the editors’ names.

3. A paper in published proceedings

Use the book-chapter format. The paper’s author comes first, then the paper title in sentence case, then “In” and the editors, the proceedings title in italics, the page range, the publisher and the DOI.

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the paper in sentence case. In E. E. Editor (Ed.), Title of the proceedings (pp. xx–xx). Publisher. https://doi.org/xxxxx

Nakamura, H. (2022). Learning from failure in group projects. In D. Osei & P. Bright (Eds.), Proceedings of the 12th conference on higher education research (pp. 88–104). Westbrook University Press. https://doi.org/10.1234/hed.2022.88

See citing a book chapter for the details of each part.

4. A presentation at a conference

For a talk, a poster or a keynote that was presented but not published in proceedings, APA uses the conference presentation format. The presenters are the authors. The date is the full range of the conference dates. The title is in italics, followed by a bracketed description such as [Conference session], [Paper presentation], [Poster session] or [Keynote address]. The source is the conference’s name and location. Add a link at the end if there is a video.

Presenter, A. A. (Year, Month Day–Day). Title of the presentation [Conference session]. Name of Conference, City, State, Country. URL

In-text citation

Use the author and year in each case: (Nakamura, 2022).

Check before you submit

• Which version did you read? A paper can first appear as a preprint, then in proceedings. Cite the one you used.
• Use the DOI if there is one. Write it as a link starting with https://doi.org/, with no period after it.
• Know which case you have. A conference paper in a journal and a talk with no published text are cited very differently.