Changing over to the new APA 7 style
ESNBU is moving to the new APA 7 housestyle brought out in October 2019. The new Publication Manual replaces the decade old APA 6 published in 2009 and widely used in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Citing social media, podcasts, twitter posts and other online sources; use of inclusive and bias-free language; changes in paper format ... Here are some of the most notable changes. They are now shorter, more logical and more writer-friendly.
References and in-text citations
1. Publisher location is no longer included in the reference.
APA 6 ✘ Covey, S. R. (2013). The 7 habits of highly effective people: Powerful lessons in personal change. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
APA 7 ✔ Covey, S. R. (2013). The 7 habits of highly effective people: Powerful lessons in personal change. Simon & Schuster.
2. The in-text citation for works with three or more authors is now shortened right from the first.
APA 6 ✘ (Taylor, Kotler, Johnson, & Parker, 2018)
APA 7 ✔ (Taylor et al., 2018)
3. Surnames and initials for up to 20 authors (instead of 7) should be provided in the reference list.
APA 6 ✘ Miller, T. C., Brown, M. J., Wilson, G. L., Evans, B. B., Kelly, R. S., Turner, S. T., … Lee, L. H. (2018).
APA 7 ✔ Miller, T. C., Brown, M. J., Wilson, G. L., Evans, B. B., Kelly, R. S., Turner, S. T., Lewis, F., Lee, L. H., Cox, G., Harris, H. L., Martin, P., Gonzalez, W. L., Hughes, W., Carter, D., Campbell, C., Baker, A. B., Flores, T., Gray, W. E., Green, G.,… Nelson, T. P. (2018).
4. DOIs are formatted the same as URLs. The label “DOI:” is no longer necessary. (ESNBU had already adopted this as early as Crossref recommended it.)
APA 6 ✘ doi: 10.33919/esnbu.19.2.0
APA 7 ✔ https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.19.2.0 ☍
5. URLs are no longer preceded by “Retrieved from,” unless a retrieval date is needed. The website name is included (unless it’s the same as the author), and web page titles are italicized.
APA 6 ✘ Walker, A. (2019, November 14). Germany avoids recession but growth remains weak. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50419127 ☍
APA 7 ✔ Walker, A. (2019, November 14). Germany avoids recession but growth remains weak. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50419127 ☍
6. For ebooks, the format, platform, or device (e.g. Kindle) is no longer included in the reference, and the publisher is included.
APA 6 ✘ Brück, M. (2009). Women in early British and Irish astronomy: Stars and satellites ['Kindle version']. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2473-2 ☍
APA 7 ✔ Brück, M. (2009). Women in early British and Irish astronomy: Stars and satellites. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2473-2 ☍
7. Numerous examples are included for online source types such as podcast episodes, social media posts, and YouTube videos. The use of emojis and hashtags is also explained.
8. Citing contributors
Clear guidelines are provided for including contributors other than authors and editors. For example, when citing a podcast episode, the host of the episode should be included; for a TV series episode, the writer and director of that episode are cited; for a TV series include the producer, for a Webinar include the instructor, for online streaming video include the person or group who uploaded the video.
Mechanics of style
In terms of style, not much has changed in the 7th edition. In addition to some updated and better explained guidelines, there are two notable changes:
9. Use only one space after a period at the end of a sentence.
10. Use double quotation marks to refer to linguistic examples (e.g. APA endorses the use of the singular pronoun “they”) instead of italics.
APA 6 ✘ APA endorses the use of the singular pronoun they.
APA 7 ✔ APA endorses the use of the singular pronoun "they".
Inclusive and bias-free language
The above brings us to the new standards to help authors reduce bias in writing around topics such as gender, age, disability, racial and ethnic identity, and sexual orientation, as well as being sensitive to labels and describing individuals at the appropriate level of specificity. Some examples are:
11. The singular “they” or “their” is endorsed as a gender-neutral pronoun.
APA 6 ✘ A researcher’s career depends on how often he or she is cited.
APA 7 ✔ A researcher’s career depends on how often they are cited.
12. Instead of using adjectives as nouns to label groups of people, descriptive phrases are preferred.
APA 6 ✘ The poor <-label
APA 7 ✔ People living in poverty <-descriptive phrase
13. Instead of broad categories, you should use exact age ranges that are more relevant and specific.
APA 6 ✘ People over 65 years old
APA 7 ✔ People in the age range of 65 to 75 years old
Paper format
14. There is more flexibility in the 7th edition regarding APA paper format specifications on font.
15. The running head in an APA format title page no longer requires the words “Running head,” and instead now only requires a page number and a shortened version of your paper’s title.
16. Heading Levels 3-5
And while we had adopted some of these new guidelines still at the working stage, the most notable change in the paper format is the change of the Heading levels 3-5 which APA has updated “to improve readability”.
When is ESNBU going to change over to APA7?
We’d already started with some parts of the working version, like no Running head, no double space at the end of the sentence, the Crossref DOI display recommendation, some social media citations and online dictionary definitions.
For manuscripts for Volume 5 Issue 2 it was too short a period for the authors to reformat already submitted manuscripts. However, from Volume 6, 2020 we require articles to be submitted in the new APA 7 format. Don’t worry; we’ll be guiding you on the way to learning the new APA 7. We'll shortly update our Manuscript Template and we'll produce an abridged APA 7 guide for our authors.