A Quick Guide to APA Citation Style (7th Edition)

In academic writing, a citation is a reference to the source of information, ideas, or research findings that identifies the original author or creator and helps readers locate the original work. Citations are essential in academic writing because they give credibility to research, acknowledge the contributions of other scholars, and enable readers to trace the origins of ideas, thereby promoting intellectual integrity and knowledge.

Citations in a scientific article include in-text citations and a reference list at the end of the paper. The two are linked together.

The accepted citation style of the Iranian Journal of Seed Science and Technology is the APA style(7th edition).

All citations in articles published in the Iranian Journal of Seed Science and Technology, even citations to sources originally in Persian, are written in English.

• In-text citation:

• In-text citations appear in the main text of the article and generally include the author's name and the year of publication. There are two ways to insert in-text citations: parenthetically and narratively.

Examples of different types of in-text citations:

• Parenthetical citation with one author:

...There are more than 100 species of this genus in the world. This genus in Iran has 19 species of perennial herbs, most of which are aromatic (Mozaffarian, 2007).

• Parenthetical citation with two authors:

...Seed dormancy is defined as an intrinsic property of a seed that determines its germination capacity under environmental conditions (Finch - Savage & Leubner, 2006).

• Parenthetical citation with three or more authors:

...So that pre-germination metabolic processes are allowed to occur in the seeds but the radicle is not removed (Armin et al., 2010).

• Parenthetical multiple source citation: to cite multiple sources in an in-text citation, list them in alphabetical order by the authors' last names, as shown in the following example:

...The most important almond growing centers in terms of cultivated area and crop production are the provinces of Khorasan, Fars, East Azerbaijan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Yazd, Kerman, Isfahan, and West Azerbaijan (Chaichi et al., 2002; Darvishian, 2000; Ghasemi et al., 2010; Shahnavazi, 2012; Vazvai, 1999).

• Narrative citation with one author:

Herter (1987) reported that gentler drying of ears at 20-35°C resulted in faster and more complete hardening of the ears.

• Narrative citation with two authors:

Navratil & Buris (1981) also showed that the root system is more sensitive to drying damage compared to the plant stem.

• Narrative citation with three or more authors:

The findings of Labbafi et al. (2018) indicated that the use of sulfuric acid treatment resulted in a 73% increase in the germination of galbanum seeds.

• Narrative multiple source citation:

MacDonald (1991), Rezvani et al. (2013), and Vanda & Mondal (2022) all confirmed that chilling increases the solubility of oxygen in the water surrounding the seed and provides the embryo with the oxygen it needs.

• References:

• The full details of the sources cited in the text of the article are listed at the end of the article in alphabetical order by the last name of the first author.
• If we have cited multiple sources by the same author(s) with different publication dates, we also list them below in order of publication date (oldest to newest).
• If we have cited multiple sources from the same author(s) with the same publication date, we arrange them in the reference list alphabetically by the first word of the title (regardless of a, an, the, etc.) and then place one of the letters of the English alphabet next to the year of publication for each.

Example:

World Health Organization. (2012). Immunization: Closing the gap…

World Health Organization. (2015a). Global vaccination targets…

World Health Organization. (2015b). Keeping Nigerian children free from polio…

• When a source has 21 or more authors, list the names of the first 19 authors, then insert an ellipsis (...), followed by the name of the last author without the ampersand.

Example:

Wiskunde, B., Arslan, M., Fischer, P., Nowak, L., Van den Berg, O., Coetzee, L., Juárez, U., Riyaziyyat, E., Wang, C., Zhang, I., Li, P., Yang, R., Kumar, B., Xu, A., Martinez, R., McIntosh, V., Ibáñez, L. M., Mäkinen, G., Virtanen, E., . . . Kovács, A. (2019). Indie pop rocks mathematics: Twenty One Pilots, Nicolas Bourbaki, and the empty set. Journal of Improbable Mathematics, 27(1), 1935–1968. https://doi.org/10.0000/3mp7y-537

• More instances:

• Journal article with DOI code:

Carrillo-Reche, J., Vallejo-Marín, M., & Quilliam, R. S. (2018). Quantifying the potential of ‘on-farm' seed priming to increase crop performance in developing countries: A meta-analysis. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 38, 64. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-018-0536-0

• Book:

Smith, R. D. (2003). Seed conservation: turning science into practice. Royal Botanic Gardens.

• Chapter in a book:

Garcia, M., Condori, B., & Castillo, D. C. (2015). Agroecological and agronomic cultural practices of quinoa in South America. In K. Murphy & J. Matanguihan (Eds.), Quinoa: Improvement and sustainable production (pp. 25–46). John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118628041.ch3

• Webpages:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2019). The importance of seeds for food security. FAO. http://www.fao.org/seeds-and-food-security/en/

• Thesis or Dissertation:

Master's degree

Smith, J. D. (2023). Effects of seed priming on germination rates of bean varieties [Master's thesis, University of Sheffield]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

Doctoral degree

Zarban, R. A. Y. (2021). Characterization of strigolactone antagonists as inhibitors of Striga hermonthica seed germination and the discovery of a nitric oxide responsive protein in Arabidopsis thaliana [Doctoral dissertation, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology]. http://hdl.handle.net/10754/673848

• Group or Organization as author:

International Seed Testing Association. (2019). Seed testing rules.

• Paper presented at the conference:

Suchak, H., & Pandya, R. V. (2020). Effect of spermine and putrescine on germination and growth of Vigna radiata (L.) R. Wilczek seeds. In Proceedings of the National Conference on Innovations in Biological Sciences (NCIBS). http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3585124

• Persian-language sources:

Mansoori Gandomani, V., Heshmati, O., & Rezaei Charmahin, M. (2017). Application of chitosan on soybean (Glycine max L.) seed germination under salt stress. Iranian Journal of Seed Research, 3(2), 171–178. https://doi.org/10.29252/yujs.3.2.171 [In Persian]
Ansari Ardali, S., Nabipour, M., Roshanfekr, H. A., & Bagheri, M. (2021). Evaluation of quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Wild.) cultivars in saline conditions using germination indices in controlled environment. Environmental Stress & Crop Science, 14, 475-475. [In Persian]