Liberty University uses APA 7th edition in most of its schools, and Turabian 9th edition, with footnotes, in divinity, history, government and music. Its Writing Center publishes a quick guide, sample papers and templates for each style, which the Jerry Falwell Library repeats. Both make choices of Liberty's own: which APA paper your level writes, how the Bible and a Canvas lecture are cited, and when ibid. is still required.
EdCitation is not affiliated with Liberty University; this follows its public library guide, checked on 2 October 2026. EdCitation publishes this Liberty citation guide, and we tested two of our free tools, Cite a source and Verify references, on Liberty's own sample entries: the final section prints their output exactly, mistakes and all.
Which citation style does Liberty University use?
The style your school sets, unless your assignment names another. Liberty University (2025a), the Writing Center's chart of residential departments, gives one style to most schools, splits a few by programme, and warns that Liberty Online programmes may use different formats. So the instructions decide; EdCitation's free Check your paper reads them into a checklist, citation style included.
| School or programme | Style | Liberty page |
|---|---|---|
| Aeronautics, Behavioral Sciences, Business, Education, Engineering, Nursing | APA 7 | Residential chart |
| Arts and Sciences: Family and Consumer Sciences, Interdisciplinary Studies, Modern Languages | APA 7 | Residential chart |
| Arts and Sciences: English | APA or MLA | Residential chart |
| History (Arts and Sciences); Divinity; Helms School of Government; Music | Turabian 9, notes-bibliography | Residential chart; Turabian Quick Guide |
| Arts and Sciences: Mathematics; General Math & Sciences | No set format | Residential chart |
| Communication and the Arts, except Theatre Arts | APA 7; AP style for articles in Digital Media & Journalism | Residential chart |
| Communication and the Arts: Theatre Arts | MLA 9 | Residential chart |
| Health Sciences: Allied Health Professions; Public & Community Health | AMA 11 for graduates, APA 7 for undergraduates | Residential chart |
| Health Sciences: Biology & Chemistry | Varies with the field's journals | Residential chart |
| Law | Bluebook: 22nd edition residential, 21st online | Residential chart; Bluebook Resources |
| CASAS technical programmes | The degree programme's style | Residential chart |
| Any APA 7 or MLA 9 course | Each entry built in Cite a source, free | EdCitation |
Between APA 7 and MLA 9, EdCitation covers most Liberty schools directly. For Chicago it offers only the 18th edition's author-date system; Turabian's notes-bibliography, AMA, Bluebook and AP style are outside what it builds. Nor is Liberty's Turabian Chicago 18: the Turabian Quick Guide (Liberty University, n.d.-d) keeps Liberty on Turabian's 9th edition, based on the Chicago Manual's 17th, until Turabian itself is updated.
What are Liberty University's own APA 7 rules?
Mostly APA 7 as published, with these choices and additions.
Student paper or professional paper?
Your level decides. The APA Quick Guide (Liberty University, n.d.-a) puts every undergraduate on APA 7's student paper: a simple title page, no running head, no abstract. Graduate and doctoral students write the professional paper: an expanded title page, the same running head on every page, and an abstract unless the instructions say otherwise. Liberty prefers 12-point Times New Roman or 11-point Calibri, and a conclusion is always a Level 1 heading, dissertations included.
The reference and citation rules
| Rule | What Liberty asks | Liberty page |
|---|---|---|
| DOIs | As https://doi.org/ links; for articles from 2007 on, search Google Scholar or Crossref when none is printed | APA Quick Guide |
| Library links | No OpenAthens or other login links; with no DOI or open address, no link | APA Quick Guide; library journals page |
| Undated web pages | n.d., then "Retrieved Month Day, Year, from" | Sample student paper; comprehensive list |
| Discussion board posts | Set out like a paper with no title page, references straight after the post | APA Quick Guide |
| Generative AI | Only where the written instructions allow it, then APA's pattern with OpenAI as author | AI handout |
On AI, Owen (2024) adds that the handout itself grants no permission.
The Bible and Canvas lectures
Liberty University (2025b) expects students to cite the Bible in nearly every course, in APA's book format: the version's name in the author's place, in italics, with the word "Version" left out on purpose, both years, and the verse where a page number would go. It goes in the reference list, and later verses from the same version in one paragraph need only the verse.
A class lecture takes the course number and name, the week and lecture when a course has several, and the lecture's title in italics. A named presenter is the author, with Liberty University as publisher; with no presenter, Liberty University is the author. Without a direct link, give Canvas's address, https://canvas.liberty.edu, and the year and semester you took the course.
Where do Liberty's own pages disagree?
- Undated pages. The APA Quick Guide keeps retrieval dates for content likely to change; the sample paper and the comprehensive list, updated 24 August 2026 (Liberty University, 2026a), give one to every undated page. Follow the sample paper.
- Sample entries. The library prints one DOI as "https://doi.org.10.1037/rev0000126" and gives Feminist therapy a chapter's DOI. Copy Liberty's patterns, not its typing.
What does a Liberty APA reference page look like?
Five of Liberty's own examples make a short undergraduate reference page in exactly its form, the web page updated to how it reads today. Under the heading References, bold and centred, every entry hangs by half an inch.
King James Bible. (2017). King James Bible Online. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ (Original work published 1769)
McCauley, S. M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Language learning as language use: A cross-linguistic model of child language development. Psychological Review, 126(1), 1–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000126
National Nurses United. (2017, September 21). What employers should do to protect RNs from Zika. https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/what-employers-should-do-to-protect-rns-from-zika
Peters, C. (2012). COUN 506: Integration of spirituality and counseling. Week one, lecture two: Defining integration: Key concepts. Liberty University. https://canvas.liberty.edu
Prior, K. S. (2018). On reading well: Finding the good life through great books. Brazos Press.
The matching citations in the text:
- (King James Bible, 1769/2017, John 3:16), then the verse alone later in that paragraph.
- (McCauley & Christiansen, 2019), (National Nurses United, 2017), (Peters, 2012) and (Prior, 2018), adding p. and the page for a quotation.
Liberty's sample cites the union's page as undated; it now shows 21 September 2017, so the date replaces n.d. and the retrieval date goes.
How do you cite at Liberty in Turabian, MLA or AMA?
Turabian: footnotes, ibid. and the book review
Liberty allows only notes-bibliography, with footnotes, never endnotes, and still requires ibid. for a note repeating the source of the note just before it on the same page, though Turabian's 9th edition advises against it (Liberty University, n.d.-d). The Bible is cited only in parentheses, never in the bibliography. EdCitation builds Chicago 18 author-date, not Turabian notes-bibliography, so it cannot write those footnotes; its Chicago entry holds a bibliography's elements in another order, to be reset against Liberty's chart (Liberty University, 2026b). Our Chicago and Turabian paper guide covers the page.
The exception is the book review, Liberty's one use of Turabian author-date, with the list titled References and usually the reviewed book's entry at the top of page one (Liberty University, 2024a). EdCitation builds Chicago's author-date system, so three Chicago 18 changes need undoing:
- Add the place of publication. The University of Chicago Press (n.d.) dropped the requirement in the 18th edition; Liberty's author-date chart (Liberty University, 2020) keeps it, as in "Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co."
- In the text, name up to three authors. Chicago 18 uses et al. from three; Liberty's chart starts at four.
- In the list, give every author up to ten, then the first seven and et al. Chicago 18 lists six, then three and et al.
For Prior's book, Cite a source gave "Prior, Karen Swallow. 2018. On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books. Brazos Press." For a Liberty book review, add the place: Prior, Karen Swallow. 2018. On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press.
MLA 9, AMA 11 and Bluebook
Cite a source builds MLA 9 directly. Liberty requires 12-point Times New Roman, gives only group papers a title page, and keeps Version in MLA Bible entries: The Bible. English Standard Version, Crossway Bibles, 2016 (Liberty University, n.d.-c).
For AMA, EdCitation's Vancouver is closest: both number sources and abbreviate journals. Liberty's AMA list ends a journal entry "JAMA Neurol. 2015;72(8):912-919. doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2015.1019" (Liberty University, 2024b). From a Vancouver entry, delete the month, write page ranges in full, close up "doi:", drop the final full stop, and cut long author lists to three names and et al. Bluebook is written by hand.
How do you build a Liberty reference list, step by step?
- Find the style in the assignment; the free Check your paper reads the instructions into a checklist.
- Download Liberty's template for your style and level from the Writing Center.
- Search the Jerry Falwell Library, or EdCitation's Find sources across about 300 million published works.
- Paste each source's DOI, ISBN or address into Cite a source, and keep OpenAthens links out of the entry.
- Correct by hand what no record holds: a web page's author, the Bible, Canvas lectures, and Turabian, AMA or Bluebook details.
- Run the finished list through Verify references and settle each "check this" before submitting.
What did EdCitation return on Liberty's own examples?
For a Liberty reference list, EdCitation is the strongest free choice: each entry is looked up in the publisher's record, never written, which no chatbot can do. The Jerry Falwell Library (2025) cautions that RefWorks may not match what a course requires; the runs below show what to check. Cite a source takes a DOI, a title, a PubMed ID, an ISBN or a web address and sets the reference in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE or Vancouver, and screens the source for retraction. Verify references takes a whole pasted list. Neither costs anything or needs an account. EdCitation finds sources, cites them and checks them, and the writing stays yours: it never writes any part of a paper. All runs: 2 October 2026, quoted as plain text.
What Cite a source made of a DOI, an ISBN and two web pages
For 10.1037/rev0000126, APA came back as "McCauley, S. M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Language learning as language use: A cross-linguistic model of child language development. Psychological Review, 126(1), 1–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000126", Liberty's entry element for element. For the ISBN 9781587433962, read from Open Library, it gave "Prior, K. S. (2018). On reading well: Finding the good life through great books. Brazos Press.", the library's example word for word.
At Liberty's address for the National Nurses United page, APA gave "What employers should do to protect RNs from Zika. (2017, September 21). National Nurses United. https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/what-employers-should-do-to-protect-rns-from-zika". Title, date and current address were right; no author was read, and with the union entered as an organisation, APA gave the worked example's entry exactly.
For https://dictionary.apa.org/positive-transference, an undated Liberty example, only the site's name was read as the title. With the author and entry corrected in the form, APA gave "American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Positive transference. APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved October 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.apa.org/positive-transference", the retrieval date as Liberty wants it but the entry's title in italics. By hand, remove those italics, write "In" before the dictionary, and set APA dictionary of psychology in italics and sentence case.
Verify references on seven of Liberty's sample entries
Seven entries, pasted exactly as Liberty prints them, came back from Verify references like this:
- McCauley and Christiansen, with the "doi.org.10" link: verified, "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches." Still write https://doi.org/ yourself.
- Owen's 2020 article, the comprehensive list's first example: verified, for the same reason.
- Prior: verified, "Title, author and year match a library catalogue record."
- Kalnay et al., 21 authors and a short DOI: verified, "Title, year and first author match a published record."
- Brown's Feminist therapy, with the DOI ending -007: "check this", "The DOI's record has the same first author and year but another title, "Summary"." That is the book's summary chapter; the book's own DOI is 10.1037/0000092-000.
- National Nurses United as Liberty prints it (n.d., "nurses", the old address): verified, "The page is at this address, and its title matches." That is generous: the heading says RNs, and the page now shows a date. Correct both by hand.
- King James Bible Online: "could not check", "The site at this address turns automated readers away, so the page could not be read here." A page the tool cannot reach is never reported as not found.
Everything above cost nothing. For a whole paper, Pro ($8 a month) brings References from a file, which takes the uploaded paper, checks each reference and pairs every in-text citation with its entry, and Mechanics QA, whose formatting check follows the APA 7 student paper. Max ($24 a month) adds Theoretics QA: your paper judged against your own assignment, with nothing rewritten. Plans are on the pricing page, and no plan promises a grade.
Quick questions
Does Liberty University use APA 7?
Yes, in most schools, nursing, business, education and engineering among them. Divinity, history, government and music use Turabian 9; theatre uses MLA 9.
Do Liberty graduate students need a running head in APA?
Yes. Graduate and doctoral students write APA 7's professional paper, with a running head and, unless told otherwise, an abstract; undergraduates need neither.
How do I cite the Bible in APA at Liberty?
Put the version's name in italics, without the word Version, where the author goes, then both years and the verse: (King James Bible, 1769/2017, John 3:16). The Bible also gets a reference list entry.
Can EdCitation build Turabian footnotes for a Liberty divinity or history paper?
No. The Chicago that EdCitation's Cite a source offers is 18th-edition author-date, so Liberty's footnotes are written by hand. For a book review, add the place of publication to the author-date entry.
Does Liberty still use ibid. in Turabian?
Yes, for a footnote repeating the source of the note just before it on the same page, though Turabian 9 advises against it.
References
- Jerry Falwell Library. (2025). Using sources: Citation resources. Liberty University. https://libguides.liberty.edu/c.php?g=749313&p=5365863
- Jerry Falwell Library. (2026a). APA writing guide: Books and ebooks. Liberty University. https://libguides.liberty.edu/c.php?g=1036190&p=7511541
- Jerry Falwell Library. (2026b). APA writing guide: Journal articles. Liberty University. https://libguides.liberty.edu/c.php?g=1036190&p=7511542
- Liberty University. (n.d.-a). APA format quick guide. Academic Success Center. https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/writing-style-guides/apa-guide/
- Liberty University. (n.d.-b). Bluebook resources. Academic Success Center. https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/writing-style-guides/bluebook-resources/
- Liberty University. (n.d.-c). MLA formatting quick guide. Academic Success Center. https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/writing-style-guides/mla-formatting-quick-guide/
- Liberty University. (n.d.-d). Turabian format quick guide. Academic Success Center. https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/writing-style-guides/turabian-guide/
- Liberty University. (2020). Turabian chart of citations: Author-date format for book reviews [PDF]. Academic Success Center. https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2022/05/Turabian-Chart-of-Citations-author-date-for-book-reviews-only.pdf
- Liberty University. (2024a). A sample paper for the purpose of correct formatting in author-date style for all students using Turabian for book reviews [PDF]. Academic Success Center. https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2022/05/Turabian-author-date-format-9th-edition-for-book-reviews-only-04092022.pdf
- Liberty University. (2024b). Sample references in AMA-11 format [PDF]. Academic Success Center. https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2020/11/Sample-References-in-AMA-Format-FINAL.pdf
- Liberty University. (2025a). Residential departments & citation styles [PDF]. Academic Success Center. https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/Schools-Citation-Styles_UPDATED.pdf
- Liberty University. (2025b). Sample APA-7 paper: Student format for undergraduate students [PDF]. Academic Success Center. https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2020/05/Sample-Paper-APA-7th-student-version-08062020.pdf
- Liberty University. (2026a). Comprehensive APA-7 reference list [PDF]. Academic Success Center. https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2020/05/Comprehensive-APA-7-Reference-List-uploaded-10182022.pdf
- Liberty University. (2026b). Turabian chart of citations: Notes-bibliography format [PDF]. Academic Success Center. https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2022/09/Turabian-Chart-of-Citations-NB-09132022-1.pdf
- Owen, C. (2024). Citing generative artificial intelligence [PDF]. Liberty University Online Writing Center. https://www.liberty.edu/casas/academic-success-center/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/AI-handout.pdf
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.). What's new in the eighteenth edition. The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/help-tools/what-s-new.html