APA (7th ed.) Citing Guide: Data Sets, Software & Tests

Use the following suggestions for citing text generated using AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Co-pilot and more.

Citing Images generated using AI tools? Check the APA suggestions on the Visual Works / Figures page

Sample format:

Company that developed the AI generator. (Year of the version you used). Name of AI Generator (Version number) [Type of AI generator]. URL

Reference list entry examples:

ExLibris. (2024). Primo Research Assistant [Retrieval-augmented generation model]. https://georgian.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/researchAssistant?vid=01OCLS_GEORG:GEORG

Meta. (2024). Llama (LLaMA 3) [Large language model]. https://ai.meta.com/llama

Microsoft. (2023). CoPilot [Large multimodal model]. https://copilot.microsoft.com

OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (GPT-4o) [Large multimodal model]. https://chat.openai.com/

In-Text Citations:

In the text of your paper, provide the prompt you used and then any portion of the relevant text that was generated. You can also put the full text of long responses from a generative AI tool in an appendix of your paper. Create your in-text citation with the company name and year indicated in your reference list entry, eg: (OpenAI, 2023) or OpenAI (2023).

Other Information

APA suggests stating or disclosing the use of AI tools in the Methods section or in the introduction. In the text of the paper or other assignment, the writer must provide the prompt used. Writers may also put the full text output in an appendix. APA states that ChatGPT-4 or later versions are “multimodal models”, while earlier versions are “large language models”.

For more information, please see the Citing and Disclosing AI Use page.

Reference list entry:

Statistics Canada. (2020, July 14). Table 18-10-0204-01 Electric power selling price index monthly [Data table]. https://doi.org/10.25318/1810020401-eng

City of Toronto. (2020, March 16). About wellbeing youth - legal justice support [Data set]. https://open.toronto.ca/dataset/wellbeing-youth-legal-justice-support/  

See Publication Manual Section 10.9 and APA Style. Not all Statistics Canada tables have a DOI. If this is the case, provide the URL to the table.

There are two things to consider when using mobile app as an information source, are you referencing the whole app or a piece of information.

Follow this format for the whole app. 

Sample format:

Author, A. A. or Name of Group. (Date). Title of work (Version number) [Mobile app].  Publisher. http://xxxxx

Reference list entry:

Farlex, Inc. (2019). Medical dictionary by Farlex (Version 3.1) [Mobile app]. App Store. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/medical-dictionary-by-farlex/id1015991271

Vividata collects consumer information through surveys. Users use the data visualization software, Dapresy, to generate tables.

Example:

Image Source: Vividata. (2020). [Demographics by generation/age and personally watch Disney channel] [Data set]. https://vividata.ca/

Reference List Entry:

Vividata. (2020). [Demographics by generation/age and personally watch Disney channel] [Data set]. https://vividata.ca/

Note: The title is in square brackets as you need to create a title for the data you've generated. To describe the item, "Data set" is added and is also in square brackets. The generated data will probably be presented in your paper or presentation as a table or as a graphic. Follow the Tables and Figures recommendations for in-text citations.

For all of the examples above, the in-text citation follows the same format unless noted with the example. Refer to the Publication Manual, Section 8.17 for explanation with multiple authors.

Parenthetical citation format: (last name of author(s), year)

e.g. (Farlex, 2019)

e.g. (Statistics Canada, 2020)

Narrative citation format: include the author's or authors' names in the sentence, with the date in brackets

e.g. Farlex (2019) wrote...

e.g. Statistics Canada (2020) wrote...

More in-text citation information on this guide.