Gather information about your sources. Once you find the articles, websites, books and other research material you want to use in your paper, you should start putting together information about those sources. For example, you need to know the publication date and author's name for your sources. For journal articles, you also need to know the article title, journal title, journal volume and issue, article page numbers and the DOI (digital object identifier) if available. With websites, you need only the name of the specific page or article you are referencing and that page's address.
Organize the information about each source into the proper format. Your source should begin with the last name of the first author listed followed by his initials. If your source has more than one author, add a comma after then each author's name (last name first followed by initials) in the order listed on the source. After the authors' names, you need to add the date of publication in parentheses followed by a period. Next, you need the title of the article or website. You do not have to put the title in quotation marks. Also, only the first word of the title is capitalized. For a website, you add the phrase "Retrieved from" followed by the web page's address. For journals, you add the title of the journal with all main words capitalized and the title italicized. Follow the title by the volume number (also italicized) and the issue number, if listed, in parentheses. You then add inclusive page numbers for the article followed by a period. Finally, you can add the DOI number if one is available. Write "doi" followed by a colon and the number exactly as it appears on the publication. Books follow the same format as journals except the title is italicized and only the first word is capitalized. After the book's title, you only need to add the publication location, a colon, and the publisher's name.
Compile the reference page. Once you have made all of your sources' information conform to APA guidelines you can put together the reference page. At the top of the page, "References" should be centered. Each source needs to be listed alphabetically by the authors' last names. The entire reference list should be double spaced, and each entry needs to formatted with a hanging indent (the first line is flush with the left margin but each subsequent line is indented).
Use appropriate in-text documentation. When you reference one of your sources in the text of your paper, you need to include the appropriate documentation. In APA this documentation usually includes just the last names of the authors and the date of publication. However, if you use a direct quotation, you also need to include the page number.