How to Cite a Conference Paper in APA 7

To cite a conference paper in APA 7, first answer one question: was the paper published in conference proceedings, or was it only presented? Everything in the reference follows from that answer. A talk, poster, or paper session with no published text uses the conference presentation format in Section 10.5 of the Publication Manual (7th ed.). A paper printed in proceedings uses the format of whatever the proceedings became, either an edited book chapter or a journal article. This guide walks through all three patterns with examples from real conferences, then covers the abstracts, symposium contributions, and online-only conferences that shorter guides skip.

Was your paper published or only presented?

APA 7 has no single conference paper format. The manual splits the territory three ways:

The 7th edition redrew this map. APA 6 had a dedicated wording for talks ("Paper presented at the annual meeting of...") with a year-and-month date. APA 7 dropped the phrase. A presented paper now carries a bracketed label such as [Paper presentation] and the full date range of the conference. If a template or reference manager still produces "Paper presented at," it is following the 6th edition.

For the published forms, James Cook University's APA guide states the rule plainly: a published conference paper "is usually either a chapter of an edited book or an article in a journal. Cite it according to the appropriate pattern."

Not sure which one you have? Five minutes settles it. Search the conference's website for a proceedings page, and look the paper's exact title up in Google Scholar or the publisher's digital library (IEEE Xplore, the ACM Digital Library, SpringerLink). A PDF with page numbers, an editor list, or a DOI is a published paper. A program listing, an abstract page, or a slide deck with none of those is a presentation. When the search turns up both a proceedings version and the talk, cite the version you read.

The official rule for presented papers

Format:

Presenter, A. A., & Presenter, B. B. (Year, Month Day-Day). Title of contribution [Paper presentation]. Conference Name, City, State, Country. URL

Five details carry this template:

• The date is the full run of the conference, not the day you presented. A poster shown on the second morning of a September 27-30 congress is still dated (2018, September 27-30).
• The paper's title is italicized and written in sentence case, like an article title.
• The bracket names what the work was: [Paper presentation], [Poster presentation], [Conference session], or [Keynote address]. George Washington University's guide notes that sessions, papers, and posters all follow the same pattern; the bracket is the only element that changes.
• The location appears the way the conference lists it: city, state abbreviation, and country for U.S. events (Chicago, IL, United States), or city and country elsewhere (Canberra, Australia).
• Add a URL only when something is retrievable online, such as an abstract page, a recording, or slides. When nothing is, the reference ends at the location.

In-text citations take the usual author-date form: (Pearson, 2018) in parentheses, or Pearson (2018) in the sentence. Join two authors with an ampersand inside parentheses and with the word "and" in running text. For three or more authors, use the first author plus et al. from the very first citation (Section 8.17). Our complete guide to in-text citations covers the narrative and parenthetical forms in detail.

Worked examples

Each example below comes from a university APA style guide or the APA Style site, so you can check the pattern against its source.

1. Paper presentation, one author

Reference entry:

Bland, A. (2017, November). The implementation of a junior Samoan language programme in a South Island, New Zealand secondary school context [Paper presentation]. Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) Conference 2017, Canberra, Australia.

In-text: (Bland, 2017) or Bland (2017).

Two things are worth copying here. The conference announced itself by month, so the reference carries only a month; use whatever dates the conference publishes. And there is no URL: the paper was delivered, never posted, so the reference ends at the location.

2. Workshop session, three authors

Reference entry:

Lippold, S., Rach, J., & Fritsch, A. (2020, February 13-14). Study program development: Building a bridge between tradition and innovation - An unusual approach [Workshop session]. 2020 European Learning & Teaching Forum, Utrecht, Netherlands.

In-text: (Lippold et al., 2020).

Two lessons in one entry. The bracket bends to fit the format, here [Workshop session] for a workshop. And three authors means et al. from the first citation onward; writing out all three surnames in the text is an APA 6 habit that the 7th edition retired.

3. Poster presentation with a URL

Reference entry:

Pearson, J. (2018, September 27-30). Fat talk and its effects on state-based body image in women [Poster presentation]. Australian Psychological Society Congress, Sydney, NSW, Australia. http://bit.ly/2XGSThP

In-text: (Pearson, 2018).

The congress posted the poster online, so the reference closes with the link the conference distributed. This is the model to follow whenever the poster, abstract, or recording lives somewhere a reader can reach.

4. Paper published in proceedings, book form

Reference entry:

Cismas, S. C. (2010). Educating academic writing skills in engineering. In P. Dondon & O. Martin (Eds.), Latest trends on engineering education (pp. 225-247). WSEAS Press.

In-text: (Cismas, 2010).

Every conference-specific element is gone: no bracket, no date range, no city. The year stands alone, the paper title sits in roman type, the proceedings title takes the italics, and a page range and publisher close the entry. The skeleton is identical to a book chapter in APA 7, because that is what the paper has become.

5. Paper published in proceedings, journal form

Reference entry:

Chaudhuri, S., & Biswas, A. (2017). External terms-of-trade and labor market imperfections in developing countries: Theory and evidence. Proceedings of the Academy of Economics and Economic Education, 20(1), 11-16.

In-text: (Chaudhuri & Biswas, 2017).

Some proceedings are journals in everything but name. The giveaway is the numbering: volume 20, issue 1, continuous page ranges. Here "Proceedings of the Academy of Economics and Economic Education" is the journal's name, so it is italicized along with the volume, exactly as in a journal article reference.

6. A whole proceedings volume

Reference entry:

Huang, S., Pierce, R., & Stamey, J. (Eds.). (2006). Proceedings of the 24th annual ACM international conference on the design of communication. ACM Digital Library. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1166324&picked=prox

In-text: (Huang et al., 2006).

Purdue OWL, the source of this example, is candid that the 7th edition manual gives no rule for citing an entire proceedings volume and models the entry on an edited collection. Reach for this form only when your point is about the collection itself; when your evidence comes from one paper, cite that paper.

7. Conference abstract printed in a journal supplement

Reference entry:

Leckenby, S., & Acklaghi, H. (2018). Is point-of-care troponin enough in decision making process in emergency departments [Poster presentation]. Emergency Medicine Australasia, 30(S1), 43-44. https://doi.org/10.1111/1742-6723.12962

In-text: (Leckenby & Acklaghi, 2018).

Medical and science conferences often print their abstracts in a journal supplement. East Carolina University's guide accepts two routes: cite the poster as a presentation with conference details, or cite the printed abstract with journal elements, as above. The supplement route keeps the [Poster presentation] bracket while borrowing the journal's volume, supplement number, pages, and DOI. Prefer it when the DOI exists; it gives your reader a stable path to the text.

Special cases

Online-only and virtual conferences

The 7th edition went to press in 2019 and gives no rule for a conference with no physical location. The defensible choice: keep every other element, use the location the conference itself advertises, and when it advertises none, skip the location element and close with the URL. Whichever version you pick, apply it to every virtual conference in your reference list.

A paper inside a symposium or panel

Cite your contribution under its own title. The italics belong to the paper's title; the conference name follows the bracket in plain roman type, never in the title slot. This holds even when the paper was one of four inside a named symposium: the reference is built around what you presented, and the conference name element locates it.

The same paper lives in three places

A conference paper often exists as a talk, a preprint, and a proceedings paper at once. Cite the version you actually used. If you read the proceedings version, cite it with the chapter or journal pattern, which hands your reader page numbers and usually a DOI. If all you have is the PDF from the conference website, cite the presentation with that URL, and see our guide to citing a PDF in APA 7 for how the file format affects the entry.

Two presentations by the same author in the same year

Academics on the conference circuit hit this constantly: two 2024 talks by the same presenter produce two references that in-text citations cannot tell apart. Section 9.47 of the manual assigns lowercase letters to the year, (Nguyen, 2024a) and (Nguyen, 2024b), with the letters following the alphabetical order of the titles in the reference list. Assign the letters there first, then carry the matching year-letter pair into the text. The full ordering rules, including undated works and same-surname authors, are in our guide to APA reference list order.

Nothing about the talk is online

That is normal and needs no workaround. The presentation format does not require a URL. End the reference at the location, as in the Bland example, and the entry still identifies the work by presenter, date, title, and venue.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

• Citing a published proceedings paper as a presentation. It feels like a talk because you watched the talk, but the text you read has page numbers. Cite the printed form with the chapter or journal pattern.
• Keeping the APA 6 wording "Paper presented at the meeting of..." Older templates and some generators still emit it. APA 7 replaced the phrase with the bracketed label.
• Dating the entry to your session. The date element covers the whole run of the conference, September 27-30, even if you spoke on the 28th.
• Italicizing the conference name. Italics belong to the paper title in the presentation format, the proceedings title in the book form, and the journal name in the journal form. The conference name stays roman in all of them.
• Dropping the bracket. [Poster presentation] versus [Conference session] is the only signal a reader gets about what the work actually was. A missing bracket also makes the entry look like a mislabeled book.
• Listing every author in the text of a three-author paper. APA 7 uses the first author plus et al. from the first citation (Section 8.17).

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