Women and Queer Researchers Cited, but Not in Sight: Rethinking APA Citation Style

In this article, I reflect on the APA citation practice of using last names and initials in references for psychological research. This practice reduces authors to their last names in the guise of gender-neutrality, thus making women and gender non-binary authors invisible despite being cited. Decades after Nancy Russo’s commentary recommending the use of first names along with last names, there have been no changes in APA style, while other citation styles have incorporated the practice of using first names and last names in references to address this issue. In the changing global socio-cultural landscape that acknowledges gender fluidity, including first names and gender pronouns in end references and in-text citations can be one of the ways of making women and non-binary authors’ works more visible in the field of Psychology or other disciplines that use APA style.