Reference Manager Usage

Alsina : Journal of Arabic Studies requires every manuscript to be prepared with a reference manager. Mendeley is strongly preferred, and Zotero is also accepted.

1. Required Citation Style

From Volume 8, Number 2 (2026) onward, all manuscripts must use the American Psychological Association 7th Edition (APA 7th). Articles published in earlier volumes follow the Chicago Manual of Style (full note), 17th Edition, and are not required to be converted.

Set your reference manager to American Psychological Association 7th edition so that in-text citations and the reference list are generated consistently throughout the manuscript.

2. Installing the Style

Mendeley. Open Mendeley Reference Manager or Mendeley Desktop, go to the Citation Styles menu, choose More Styles, search for American Psychological Association 7th edition, and install it. Then select that style in the Mendeley Cite add-in inside Microsoft Word.

Zotero. Open the Zotero desktop application, go to Edit → Preferences → Cite → Styles, click Get additional styles, and search for American Psychological Association 7th edition. Then select that style in the Zotero word processor plugin.

3. Checking the Output

Reference managers import metadata automatically, and imported records are often incomplete or incorrectly capitalised. Authors remain fully responsible for checking every entry before submission. In particular, verify that:

author names are written as Surname, Initials. and separated correctly;
article and book titles use sentence case, while journal titles and book titles use title case and italics;
volume, issue, and page ranges are present and correctly formatted;
every DOI is given as a full link beginning with https://doi.org/;
Arabic-language titles are followed by an English translation in square brackets; and
every work cited in the text appears in the reference list, and vice versa.

4. Further Guidance

Detailed rules and examples of APA 7th citations and references are available on the Citation and References page. Formatting requirements for the manuscript as a whole are set out in the Author Guidelines.