Who Is Responsible for This Content?
To determine authorship, ask yourself, “who is responsible for this content?” Most often, the “who” will be one person, or several people, who have served as authors or editors. But keep in mind that entities (governments, associations, agencies, companies, etc.) can also function as authors or editors. See pp. 196–197 of the Publication Manual for an index of the author variation examples available.
“No Author”: Are You Sure?
Oftentimes when it appears there is no author, a company or organization of some sort is actually responsible for the content. For example, if you are reporting on H1N1/swine flu pandemic of 2009, one of your sources might be a CDC brief like the one cited below, which was authored by an entity (the CDC) rather than a specific person:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2009). CDC recommendations for the amount of time persons with influenza-like illness should be away from others. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/guidance/exclusion.htm |
“No Author”: For Sure
In some cases, there truly is no way to pin down who the author is. We treat this as “no author.” In reference citations, we handle this by moving the content’s title into the author position (with no quotation marks around it). This most commonly occurs for wiki entries, dictionary entries, and unattributed website content. In the in-text citation, the title (put inside double quotation marks) likewise takes the place of the author’s name.
Lee, C. (2010, January 7). The generic reference: Who? [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/01/the-generic-reference-who.html
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