Citing Secondary Sources in APA 7

In scholarly work, a primary source reports original content, while a secondary source refers to content first reported in another source.

According to APA 7, secondary sources should be used very sparingly, and primary sources should be used instead. Use secondary sources when the original work is out of print, unavailable, or available only in a language that you do not understand. Otherwise, APA 7 prefers that students locate the primary source, read it, and cite it directly instead of citing the secondary source.

If you do have to cite a secondary source, Section 8.6 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association 7th Edition states:

When citing a secondary source, provide a reference list entry for the secondary source that you used. In the text, identify the primary source and then write “as cited in” the secondary source that you used. If the year of publication of the primary source is known, also include it in the text. For example, if you read a work by Lyon et al. (2014) in which Rabbitt (1982) was cited, and you were unable to read Rabbitt’s work yourself, cite Rabbitt’s work as the original source, followed by Lyon et al.’s work as the secondary source. Only Lyon et al.’s work appears in the reference list.

(Rabbitt, 1982, as cited in Lyon et al., 2014)

If the year of the primary source is unknown, omit it from the in-text citation.

Allport’s diary (as cited in Nicholson, 2003)

There is not a function in PERRLA specifically for creating secondary sources, but you can still accomplish this in your PERRLA papers with a small amount of manual editing.

Instructions for both PERRLA for Word and PERRLA Online are included below. Both sets of instructions assume that you already have your paper open.

PERRLA for Word

1. Create a reference for your secondary source.
2. Add a regular citation to the paper using the reference you created in Step 1.
3. Right-click the citation.
4. Choose Remove Content Control.
   This will allow you to manually edit the citation.
5. Type the words "as cited in" after the opening parenthesis and before the citation.
   If you did not mention the author of the original work in the sentence, you will also need to type the original author's name, followed by a comma, followed by the year of publication (if available), followed by another comma before "as cited in," as shown in the previously mentioned example (Rabbitt, 1982, as cited in Lyon et al., 2014).

That's it! You now have cited a secondary source in your APA 7 PERRLA paper.

PERRLA Online

Please be aware that you will not be able to manually edit the citations in your PERRLA Online paper until you are finished with the paper and have downloaded it to your computer as a Word document. So, adding "as cited in" to your citations will be the very last step in completing the paper.

1. Create a reference for your secondary source.
2. Add a regular citation to the paper using the reference you created in Step 1.
3. Once you are completely finished with the paper, click the File menu in the Editor's toolbar.
4. Click Download Simplified Word File (.docx).
   This will download a "clean" copy of the paper with no content controls to your computer as a Word document.
5. Open the downloaded paper in Microsoft Word.
6. Find the citation and type the words "as cited in" after the opening parenthesis and before the citation.
   If you did not mention the author of the original work in the sentence, you will also need to type the original author's name, followed by a comma, followed by the year of publication (if available), followed by another comma before "as cited in," as shown in the previously mentioned example (Rabbitt, 1982, as cited in Lyon et al., 2014).

There you have it! You now have a citation for a secondary source in your APA 7 PERRLA paper.