Meetings and Presentations

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Introduction

When scholars want to share their ideas, they deliver talks, present posters, and discuss their results. This page will help you cite the different types of presentations, using the APA style guide (7th ed.).

Meetings and Presentations

Conference Paper, Poster, Session

If you’re citing a speech, poster, or conference session, use the following format:

Presenter, A. A., & Presenter, B. B. (Year, month and days). Title [Type of Contribution]. Conference Name, Location. DOI or URl.

In practice, we get something like this:

Flokstra, Z., & Flintwitch, I. (2002, September 7-9). The benefits of spool knitting in environmental science classrooms [Poster presentation]. Knitting Scientists Society Congress, Chicago, IL, United States. http://www.kssc.org/congress

Zizek, B. (2011, June 5). Teaching architecture with Lego [Paper presentation]. Annual Conference of the International Lego Pedagogy Group, Boston, MA, United States.

To cite an entire session, just list the contributors as the author and write “Conference sesssion” in square brackets after the title.

Symposium

A symposium is meeting where a number of scholars come together to discuss a particular topic. If they’re polite, they’ll let the chair keep them from droning on too long. You can cite all the contributors or single out specific individuals.

Here’s the basic format:

Contributor, A. A., & Contributor, B. B. (Year, month and days). Title of contribution. In C. C. Chairperson (Chair), Symposium title [Symposium]. Conference Name, Location. DOI or URL

And here’s an example:

Kushner, X., Spicer, K., & Scarface, B. K. (2017, January 19). The economic effect of the Magnitsky Act. In M. Kardashian (Chair), Conference on Russian-American Relations [Symposium]. Itinerant Economists Society Conference, Thredbo, Australia. https://doi.org.10.7444/4738928347f

Proceedings

When select conference presentations are published, they are often bundled together as one document (called the conference proceedings). When you cite a presentation included in such a publication, follow the regular rules for citing an entry or chapter in a book:

Dalek, S., & Whu, Y. (2017). The crazy physics of the EmDrive thruster. In B. S. Gallblather (Ed.), The Future of Interstellar Travel (pp. 35-42). Backwater Press. https://doi.org/10.5166/na35666sa-00

For more information about citing meetings and presentations, please see pp. 332-33 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).