ISBN to APSA Citation Converter

What is an ISBN?

An ISBN (International Standard Book Number) identifies one specific edition and format of a published book. ISBN-13 is the current standard – 13 digits beginning with 978 or 979 – while older books also carry a 10-digit ISBN-10. Both work here, with or without hyphens. You will find the number above the barcode on the back cover or on the copyright page behind the title page. When you paste an ISBN into CiteTools, we look the book up in Google Books, then in Open Library, and pull the fields a book citation needs: authors or editors, full title and subtitle, publisher, publication year, and edition. That is the tedious part of citing a book done for you; the formatter then applies the punctuation, capitalization, and author-name rules of the style you select.

How the ISBN to APSA conversion works

1. Find the ISBN above the barcode or on the copyright page and paste it in – hyphens optional.
2. CiteTools looks the book up in Google Books, then in Open Library.
3. Copy the finished book citation with publisher, year, and edition included.

Example input:

9780262033848

About APSA Style

American Political Science Association - used in political science and international relations.

APSA style, from the APSA Style Manual for Political Science, 2018 edition, is the author-date system of political science. The first author is inverted and the others keep normal order, all with full first names. The year follows the authors, article titles sit in quotation marks, and a DOI follows the pages. The in-text citation is the surname and the year, with a comma before a page.

Frequently asked questions