Changes to APA standards: What do you need to know?

On Wednesday, 10 May 2023, Prof. Lidija Mancini Bolka, BA, information resources specialist and expert associate at the Central Economics Library (CEK), presented the newly adopted changes from the 7th edition of APA standards at the workshop “Citing and referencing sources according to APA standards”.

At the workshop, which took place at the School of Economics and Business in Ljubljana, we had the opportunity to hear how to cite sources within the text and how to follow the rules for citing sources in the list of sources at the end of the text.

As Prof. Mancini Bolka explains, “there are quite a few changes, which are basically easier and simplified. However, after 1 October 2023, theses at the SEB LU will have to be written in accordance with the new rules adopted in April 2023”.

One change worth mentioning is that the chapter headings, including the introduction and conclusion, are now numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. When citing works with two authors, both authors are cited and separated by the & symbol, e.g. (Penger & Černe, 2014). However, for works and publications with three or more authors, only the first author is cited and “et al.” is added, e.g. (Penger et al., 2014).

One of the major changes is that when citing internet sources, we no longer need to write “Retrieved” and the date in the References, but just add the URL to the content after the title. There are also changes to the instructions on citing Slovenian regulations and general acts, on citing European legislation and on citing judgements of Slovenian courts in the text and in the References.

The new guidelines for the production of written theses of the SEB LU in Slovenian and English, together with the Recommendations for the preparation of final theses and the revised template for the preparation of written theses, are published on Student-net in the Resources for studies/Documents section.

To make editing the final work easier, Prof. Mancini Bolka told us that we can use several tools to help us: “One is References in Word for Windows, then we have BibTeX in LaTeX and EndNote where we select APA Style. For the latter, University of Ljubljana students have free access.”

Simona Vidmar, EFnews

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