Citing Sources in APA7

PRIMA Scholar uses APA7 by default. The /cite command returns one APA7 reference, the writing-with-citations skill drafts prose with APA7 citations, and every search result carries a ready-made APA7 reference. You can ask for five other styles whenever you need them.

Get One Citation With /cite

Type /cite followed by a DOI or a paper title.

/cite 10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01

1. Claude first searches your library with what you typed, and for a title it tells you the document ID if you already hold the paper. The library search does not cover the DOI field, so for a DOI this check does not tell you whether you already hold the paper.
2. For a DOI, Claude looks the paper up with scholar_get_paper and returns its APA7 reference.
3. For a title, Claude searches with up to three results from each database and lists the matches with authors, year and source.
4. You pick the right paper from the list, and Claude returns its APA7 reference.

Claude returns the reference on its own, ready to paste, with a note only when the paper is already in your library. The /cite command file shows this example output.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behaviour. *Psychological Inquiry*, *11*(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01

*Already in your library (ID: 42)*

How PRIMA Scholar Builds a Reference

The search server writes a reference in all six styles for every paper it returns, from the details the database supplies. For APA7 it follows these rules.

• Authors: each name becomes surname and initials, with an ampersand before the last author. Up to 20 authors appear.
• Year: the year goes in brackets after the authors, or (n.d.) when the database gives no year.
• Title: the title appears as the database supplies it.
• Source: the journal follows, with volume, issue and pages where the database gives them. An arXiv paper with no journal shows arXiv as its source.
• Link: a DOI appears as a https://doi.org/ link in lower case, or the paper’s web address when there is no DOI.

Note

The generated reference is plain text built from database records, so check it before you submit work. It carries no italics, and it keeps the title’s capitals as the database gave them. It treats the last word of each name as the surname, which can split surnames such as “van den Broeck”. For a paper with more than 20 authors it lists the first 20, so check the APA7 rule for long author lists.

Write With Citations

Ask Claude to write a section with citations, for example “write 500 words on psychological safety in team performance, with references”. The writing-with-citations skill then guides the work.

1. Claude asks for the topic, the length, the audience, any outline you have and the citation style you want.
2. It searches your library first, then the academic databases if your library holds too little, aiming for 5 to 15 sources.
3. It chooses sources by relevance, recency, citation count, method quality and a spread of research groups.
4. It drafts the prose with in-text citations, notes contradictory evidence and adds confidence tags to empirical claims.
5. It builds the reference list from every work cited and checks each in-text citation against it.
6. It shows you the draft, and you approve it, ask for changes or reject it.
7. Once you approve, it saves the final version at the location you give.

Without a location, the skill names the folder ~/Documents/Agent Outputs/ followed by a project identifier. To cite papers you already have as files, import them to your library first, as Your Research Library explains.

APA7 In-Text Citations

The skill’s APA7 quick reference sets out how in-text citations look. These examples come from that reference.

Authors	Narrative	Parenthetical
One author	Dweck (2006)	(Dweck, 2006)
Two authors	Deci and Ryan (2017)	(Deci & Ryan, 2017)
Three or more	Gagné et al. (2015)	(Gagné et al., 2015)

• Several works together: list them in one set of brackets, in alphabetical order, separated by semicolons, as in (Bandura, 1997; Deci & Ryan, 2017; Dweck, 2006).
• Direct quotes: add the page number, as in (Author, Year, p. 12).
• Long quotes: indent a quote of 40 words or more as a block, without quotation marks, with the citation after the full stop.
• Secondary sources: write “as cited in” and list only the source you read.

In a reference list, APA7 uses sentence case for article titles and title case for journal names. Journal names, book titles and volume numbers are in italics.

Other Citation Styles

Every search result carries all six styles unless you ask for one. To use another style in writing, name it in your request, for example “write this section with Harvard referencing”. These examples come from the PRIMA Scholar README.

Style	Example
APA7	Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.
Harvard	Dweck, C.S. (2006) Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.
Chicago	Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House, 2006.
Vancouver	Dweck CS. Mindset: the new psychology of success. Random House; 2006.
IEEE	C. S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House, 2006.
MLA	Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House, 2006.

These examples show how each style should look. The ready-made citations in search results are plain text built from database records, without italics, and they differ in detail. The Harvard citation, for example, has no brackets round the year. Check any generated citation against your style guide.

The styles differ most in their in-text citations.

Style	In-Text Form	Reference List Name
APA7	(Author, Year)	References
Harvard	(Author Year)	Reference List
Chicago, author-date	(Author Year)	Bibliography
MLA	(Author Page)	Works Cited
Vancouver	A number, such as [1], in order of first mention	References

To get one style from a search, ask Claude for that style. Claude then sets the citation_style option and each result carries only the style you chose.