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APA Referencing Examples: Unpublished Sources

Personal communication

A personal communication could be an email, your own lecture notes, a phone call, a discussion or an unrecorded presentation - essentially it is a source which is nonrecoverable and unable to be accessed by readers. Therefore, a personal communication will have an in-text citation but no reference list entry.

Reference List

No information is required in the reference list as the data has not been published and cannot be retrieved.

In-Text

...(J. Shaw, personal communication, February 17, 2023).

OR

J. Shaw (personal communication, February 17, 2023) remarked that...

Notes

  • Contents from private or friend-only social networking webpages should be treated as Personal Communications, but information on a publicly available social networking website must be referenced, see the Social Media Post example.

Unpublished work

Format

Author, A. (Date). Title of work in italic sentence case [Description of work]. Department Name, University Name.

Reference List

O'Shea, M. (2018). Understanding proactive behavior in the workplace as a function of gender [Manuscript in preparation]. Department of Management, University of Kansas.

In-Text

... (O'Shea, 2018).

OR

O'Shea (2018) ...

Notes

  • Unpublished work includes:
    • Work in progress
    • Work submitted for publication
    • Work that is completed but not submitted for publication
  • Do not name the journal or publisher to which the manuscript has been submitted.
  • Use the year of the draft read (i.e. the year the manuscript was written, not the year it was submitted).
  • As soon as the article is accepted for publication, reference it according to the Journal Article in Press example.