How to cite a thesis in APA 7
A master's or doctoral thesis submitted to a university. Used in psychology, education, and most social sciences. 7th edition published 2020.
Quick answer
To cite a thesis in APA 7, include the author(s), year, title, and container or publisher details. A concrete example is below.
Example
Jumper, J. (2017). Deep learning approaches to protein structure prediction [PhD thesis]. University of Chicago.
This example is rendered with the official CSL definition for APA 7. For the exact style required by your journal, paste your references into DEEPNOTIS and pick that style from the dropdown — the app covers 2,800+ variants.
What you need
For a thesis, APA 7 expects these fields at minimum:
- Author
- Year
- Thesis title
- Degree type (PhD, Master's…)
- Institution
- URL or database if online
Common mistakes
- Using title case for article titles. APA uses sentence case for everything except the journal name.
- Spelling out author first names. APA 7 uses initials (e.g. 'Smith, J.'), not full given names.
- Forgetting the DOI. When a DOI exists, most styles now require it (usually as a full https://doi.org/… URL).
- Inconsistent capitalization. APA uses sentence case for titles; MLA and Chicago use title case. Mixing them is the single most common style error.
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Last updated: 5 May 2026