Cite an Annual Report in APA Style

APA style is a writing format created by the American Psychological Association. It is used primarily in the behavioral and social sciences, but is also used in graduate and post-graduate study, not-for-profit organizations and for-profit businesses in the medical and social services arenas. Along with a specific editorial style, APA also has specific rules regarding annotations and the work cited page. If you are using APA to cite an annual report, there are certain formats to follow both at the end of the text in a bibliography or in text citations.

Steps

Creating a Bibliographic Entry using APA style

  1. State the author's name if there is one. Usually it is a company that is the author of an annual report. Sometimes, however, there is an individual author. If so, lead the entry with this. [1]
    • Type the author's name at the beginning of the entry and add a period at the end.
    • If XYZ Corp's annual report was written by William Brown, the APA citation would include this name directly after the location and look like this: William Brown. XYZ Corp. (2001). XYZ Corp. Annual Report.. Smith, WI.
    • If there is no author, but an editor, include the editor's name where the author's name would go followed by (Ed.).
  2. State the company name and the year in which the annual report was published. Unlike books or other sources that begin with an author's name, in an annual report, the first information given is the company's name, followed by the year the annual report was published.[2]
    • Write the company's legal name with a period immediately following the name. Make sure you include the company's business structure designation if it is included as part of its name.
    • Add 1 space, then write the date for the year in which the annual report was published.
    • Enclose the date in parentheses and add a period. For example, XYZ Corp's 2000 annual report published in 2001 would be cited as: XYZ Corp. (2001).
  3. Include the title of the annual report. This will be found on the cover page of the report and is usually a simple title indicating that the document you are reading is an annual report for a certain company or entity. [2]
    • Press the space bar once after the period for the annual report published date.
    • Type the company's annual report title in italics and include a period at the end. For example, XYZ Corp.'s annual report would be cited as XYZ Corp. (2001). XYZ Corp. Annual Report.
  4. Provide the city and state for the company. Just like any other citation, the report will have been published in a location, which needs to be mentioned. You will need to include the city and state of the publication, which can be found on the cover page or within the first few pages of the report. Sometimes there are pages with publication information that will include the locations.
    • Add 1 space after the period for the annual report title.
    • Type the city name, a comma, 1 space and the state abbreviation where the company is located.
    • Add a colon immediately after the state. For example, if XYZ Corp is located in Smith, Wisconsin, the city and state would be APA cited as: XYZ Corp. (2001). XYZ Corp. Annual Report.. Smith, WI:
  5. Use the virtual location for online reports. Sometimes there is no physical printing location of the report, and it can only be found online. In this case include the URL where you found the report. Instead of putting a city and state following the title, you'll need to put the URL as a location. Type "Retrieved From," after the title, followed by a colon, and copy and paste the URL.
    • For example: XYZ Corp. (2001). XYZ Corp. Annual Report.. Retrieved from: www.xyzcorp.org/annualreport.
    • This also applies to if you received the report from a database online. You would use the database information, instead of a URL, following "Retrieved from:"[3]
  6. Check your entry for errors and proper formatting. Since APA entries will follow a very specific set of punctuation and formatting options, you'll want to make sure to double check it carefully. Using the above example, it would be: XYZ Corp. (2001). XYZ Corp. Annual Report.. Smith, WI: Author. William Brown.
    • If there was no physical location, but only a URL, it would look like this: William Brown. XYZ Corp. (2001). XYZ Corp. Annual Report.. Retrieved from: www.xyzcorp.org/annualreport.

Citing an Annual Report Within a Text

  1. Place in-text citations before end punctuation, enclosed in parentheses. There are many ways to cite your information within a text depending on the citation style, including footnotes or merely an author's last name. APA in-text citations follow the information you're citing, and use the title of the report in parentheses before the punctuation. They do not use footnotes.[4]
    • An example would be: "According to XYZ's annual report, the company failed to meet profit expectations during the first quarter (citation)."
  2. Place the company's name, date, and page number in parentheses. The specific information that goes in the parentheses is important. This will let people reading your work follow up on your sources, both for verification purposes but also to help with their own research. Include the title of the report, the report's date, and the page number within the parentheses.[5]
    • For example: (XYZ Corp 2010, p. 210).
  3. Make sure to cite any information or ideas that are not your own. While citations are important for helping other researchers, they are also an important part of intellectual honesty. Any ideas, statistics, or quotes that you take directly from the annual report, should be cited with specific place you pulled the information from.
    • When in doubt, it is better to cite too much than risk plagiarism or intellectual dishonesty.

Tips

  • State abbreviations are always the United State's Postal Service's state abbreviations.
  • The annual report publishing date is usually at least one year higher than the year the annual report represents. For example, citing an annual report published in 2001 generally includes information from the financial activities of 2000.
  • If any of the information for the annual report is missing, cite the report using the available information. To show the information is not available, include "information unknown" where the missing information would be located. For example, if the published date for XYZ Corp. was unknown, the APA citation would state: XYZ Corp. (Date unknown).

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ http://rasmussen.libanswers.com/faq/32821
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2014/02/how-to-cite-an-annual-report-in-apa-style.html
  3. ↑ http://libguides.butler.edu/c.php?g=34156&p=217445
  4. ↑ http://libguides.unitec.ac.nz/apareferencing/referencingreports
  5. ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/09/
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