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APA – Citing Sources

Citing secondary souces

You should, as far as possible, avoid citing something that is being quoted or paraphrased in a secondary source, and instead try to find the original source. If you can't get hold of the primary source and you still think it is important and relevant to refer to the secondary source, you can use the following suggestion that goes for APA Style.  

In APA you refer to the original author(s) in the running text but cite the secondary source, i.e. the source that you have read and taken the quotation from. Include the publication date of the original source, if it is known to you. In the reference list, you write the reference to the secondary source, which is the one that you have read. In the following examples, it would accordingly be Englund and Smith that is found in the reference list. 

  • Cats have been popular pets for ages (Chambers, 1876, as cited in Englund et al., 2019)
  • Wilson (as cited in Smith, 2015) states that this is ...

Read more about this on APA Style: Secondary Sources