Introduction
If you have questions about how to cite the date of a publication following the APA guidelines (7th ed.), please consult the examples below.
Variants
Year of Publication
The default option is to give the year of publication.
Crabby, M., & Grumby, Z. (Eds.). (2011). The anxiety of influence: Why the fear of plagiarism haunts academics. Journal of Insipidity, 24(1), 99-111.
Note the final period after the parentheses.
Month and Day
For frequent publications such as magazines and newspapers, you can give the year, month, and day (if known):
Slinky, B. (2014, May 7). The elephant in the room, or how to tranquilize people with unusually large egos. Popular Anesthetist, 108(4), 33-35.
In some cases you may instead provide the season:
(2015, Spring)
No Date
Use the abbreviation “n.d.” to indicate if a source does not have a date:
Smith, A. (n.d.). Adhocracy. In Dictionary of economic jargon. Retrieved September 19, 2019, from https://www.doej.com/business/adhocracy/
Estimated date
Prenderwick, E. (ca. 1972). Peruvian Pavlovians Society constitution. In T. Droolbug (Ed.), Papers of the Peruvian Pavlovians Society (pp. 23-33). University of Lima Press.
Multiple Years
Multi-volume publications are often published over a longer time period. Provide the first and last date of publication:
Sharp, B. (Ed.). (1999-2009). Famous Freudian slips: The complete anals (Vols. 1-11). Lima, Peru: Parapraxis Press.
In Press
If a work has accepted for publication but has not been officially published, write “in press”:
Blunt, R., Bumbles, T. T., & Wink, M. S. (in press). Can emojis adequately capture the emotional states of adolescents? Digital Communication Trends.
In such cases it is likely that there is no URL or DOI to provide.
If a work is still in progress, or has been submitted but not yet accepted, then don’t provide a description for the date. Simply list the year when the work was created.
For more information about citing the date of publication, please see pp. 289-91 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).