# NOUN referencing style: APA format, projects and course materials

**Which referencing style does the National Open University of Nigeria use?** The National Open University of Nigeria asks for APA referencing in every student guide we read: the Faculty of Education manual says APA format should be strictly adhered to, Computing and Public Administration name APA, and the NOUN Library teaches the 7th edition. Cite a NOUN course material like a book: its writers, year, italic title, NOUN and the web address.

Published 2026-10-02 by EdCitation. https://edcitation.com/newsletter/referencing-at-national-open-university-of-nigeria

The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) asks for APA referencing: the author's surname and the year in your sentence, such as (Okpala & Saleh, 2019), and an alphabetical reference list at the end. Every NOUN document we found that names a style names APA, and the [NOUN Library's user education page](https://library.nou.edu.ng/library-guide/user-education-services/) teaches the 7th edition. What NOUN's pages leave open is how to cite its own course materials, and where the examples in GST 104, the compulsory Use of Library course, part company with APA 7.

Every rule below was read on 2 October 2026 in NOUN's public documents, each linked under References. EdCitation is not affiliated with National Open University of Nigeria; this follows its public library guide, checked on 2 October 2026.

EdCitation, which publishes this guide, ran its free [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite) and [Verify references](https://edcitation.com/verify-references) on NOUN sources, GST 104's own examples among them; the answers are quoted below. For other Nigerian universities, see [referencing at Nigerian universities](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/referencing-at-nigerian-universities).

## Which referencing style does NOUN use?

APA, in every NOUN document we read that names a style. None gives a faculty or a level a different one.

| NOUN document | For whom | What it says | Page |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Research Project Manual, Faculty of Education (2019) | Undergraduate, PGDE, M.Ed, PhD | "APA format should be strictly adhered to" | p. 9 |
| GST 104: Use of Library (2019) | Every undergraduate | Teaches Harvard and APA, and calls APA the most commonly used | pp. 93–105 |
| GST 107: A Study Guide for the Distance Learner (2018) | First-semester students | Its sample assessment sheet marks citing "using the APA format" | p. 106 |
| Computer Science handbook (2022–2027) | Undergraduate and M.Sc. projects | "References (APA style)" | pp. 43, 45 |
| PAD 890 project format | M.Sc. Public Administration | "American Psychological Association (APA) style should be adopted" | p. 5 |
| User Education Services | Library users | A video titled "APA 7th Edition In-text Citing and Referencing" | Library page |
| Building each entry | Any source with a DOI or address | [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite/apa), APA 7 | EdCitation |

In order, those are the Faculty of Education (2019), Okpala and Saleh (2019), Adewale et al. (2018), the Faculty of Computing (2022), Aturu-Aghedo (2017) and the National Open University of Nigeria Library (n.d.).

### Which edition of APA does NOUN want?

The 7th, as far as NOUN's pages say. The Library's video is titled for the 7th edition (we could read the page, not the video), and no faculty document names an edition.

GST 104 keeps older habits. Its further reading lists a guide to APA's 6th edition, and its examples put "Retrieved from" before an address and "doi:" before a DOI, both dropped by APA 7 (see [retired citation rules](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/retired-citation-rules-you-can-stop-following)). PAD 890's model paragraph names three authors, "Fulk, Brief, and Barr (1985)", where APA 7 writes Fulk et al. (1985).

NOUN's Journal of Education asks contributors for the current APA, guided by the 7th edition, yet starts *et al.* only above three authors and wants a retrieval date after every online source (NOUN Journal of Education, n.d.); that page is for journal authors. Where NOUN's documents disagree, follow APA 7, which the Library teaches, unless your supervisor's template says otherwise.

### What about Law and Harvard?

We found no Faculty of Law referencing guide on NOUN's public pages; ask the faculty. EdCitation builds six styles, APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver, and no legal one, so footnotes for cases and statutes are written by hand. GST 104 also teaches its own Harvard: use it only when a facilitator asks, checking EdCitation's Harvard (Cite Them Right) against GST 104's templates.

## What are NOUN's APA rules, one by one?

GST 104's Unit 4 sets them out; APA's 7th-edition handouts show where some have moved (American Psychological Association, n.d., 2026).

| Rule | What NOUN's page says | APA 7 today | NOUN page |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Text and list | Every citation listed, every entry cited, alphabetical by surname | Same | GST 104, p. 102 |
| Two authors | (Okpala & Igbeka, 2009) | Same | GST 104, p. 102 |
| Three or more | (Okpala et al., 2017) | First author and *et al.* from three | GST 104, p. 102 |
| Quoted page | (Okpala et al., 2017 P.45) | (Okpala et al., 2017, p. 45) | GST 104, p. 102 |
| Source quoted in another | (Smith, 2008, as cited in Jones, 2010); list Jones only | Same | GST 104, p. 103 |
| Article titles | Capitals on the first word, the subtitle's and proper nouns | Same | GST 104, pp. 102–103 |
| Volume and issue | Volume italic; issue in brackets, none for continuous pagination | Issue whenever the journal has one | GST 104, p. 103 |
| DOI | Preferred to a URL; written "doi:" | https://doi.org/ | GST 104, p. 104 |
| Web address | "Retrieved from" before it | Address alone; a retrieval date only for changing pages | GST 104, p. 104 |
| Figures | Literature, illustrations and figures all cited | Same | Education manual, p. 9 |
| Building the entry | | [APA 7](https://edcitation.com/cite/apa) in Cite a source | EdCitation |

Copying GST 104 letter for letter costs most at the quoted page and the DOI; see also [APA 7 in-text citations](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/apa-7-in-text-citations).

## What does the NOUN project format ask of the reference list?

A section headed References after the last chapter and before the appendices, in APA. The Faculty of Education (2019) places it after Chapter 5 and asks that everything used be "well cited". Both Computing project outlines end with "References (APA style)", followed in a software project by the source code as Appendix A, and PAD 890 closes with APA references and an appendix of the documents and data used (Aturu-Aghedo, 2017).

### How referencing is marked

GST 107 prints a sample Faculty of Education project assessment sheet on which referencing is one of eight items: 10 marks of 100, split between materials "correctly cited using the APA format" and being comprehensively cited (Adewale et al., 2018). Each faculty, it adds, gives the format its reports are marked on.

## How do you reference NOUN course materials in APA?

As books, when you read them on NOUN's public e-Courseware. No NOUN page we read gives a template for its own course materials, but APA's reference guide gives the book pattern, with a URL for an ebook from a website and no place of publication (American Psychological Association, 2026), and a NOUN course material is a book with named writers, a year and a publisher.

### Where each part comes from

- **Authors:** the course writers on the Course Information page. GST 104 lists Dr. Angela E. Okpala and Dr. Adam Gambo Saleh, so: Okpala, A. E., & Saleh, A. G. Titles such as Dr are left out.
- **Year:** the copyright line, "© 2019 by NOUN Press".
- **Title:** the course title in italics and sentence case, *Use of library*. Keep the code in your sentence: the GST 104 course material (Okpala & Saleh, 2019).
- **Publisher:** the "Published by" line, National Open University of Nigeria.
- **Address:** the PDF's address on the e-Courseware.

If no writers are named, the university is the author and is not repeated as publisher. For something only on the learning platform, such as a recorded facilitation, follow APA's example of slides on a classroom website: creator, year, title, a description in square brackets, the platform and its login address (American Psychological Association, 2025).

## What does a NOUN APA reference list look like?

Like this: four real sources, in APA 7 as the Library teaches it. In the text:

> Okpala and Igbeka (2005) analysed how library users searched CD-ROM databases. Unegbu and Ndulaka (2025) studied how information and directional signs affect postgraduate students' use of library resources at NOUN's Owerri Study Centre. GST 104 asks students to "be consistent with your referencing style across the document" (Okpala & Saleh, 2019, p. 102). The Universal Basic Education programme began in 1999 as a federal reform to widen access to basic education (Universal Basic Education Commission, n.d.).

Under References, double spaced, with hanging indents:

> Okpala, A. E., & Igbeka, J. U. (2005). Analysis of users’ searches of CD-ROM databases. *The Electronic Library*, *23*(3), 362–368. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470510603769
>
> Okpala, A. E., & Saleh, A. G. (2019). *Use of library*. National Open University of Nigeria. https://nou.edu.ng/coursewarecontent/GST%20104.pdf
>
> Unegbu, M. C., & Ndulaka, O. (2025). Information and directional signages on utilization of university library resources by postgraduate students of National Open University Nigeria, Owerri Study Centre. *African Journal of Social Issues*, *8*(1), 962–971. https://doi.org/10.4314/ajosi.v8i1.58
>
> Universal Basic Education Commission. (n.d.). *About us*. Retrieved October 2, 2026, from https://ubec.gov.ng/about-us/

### What each entry shows

Okpala and Igbeka is GST 104's own example, corrected. The commission's page shows no date, hence n.d.; its page data records changes as late as December 2025, so it takes a retrieval date, as APA's undated Worldometer example does (American Psychological Association, 2025).

## Which EdCitation style is closest to NOUN's, and what do you change?

APA 7. EdCitation's [APA 7](https://edcitation.com/cite/apa) is NOUN's own style, so most entries need nothing. These are the changes our runs on 2 October 2026 called for:

| EdCitation printed | Change to, for NOUN |
| --- | --- |
| Chukwuduziem Unegbu, M., from the publisher's record | Unegbu, M. C., as the author's other articles give it |
| *About Us*, still capitalised after the details were corrected | *About us*, in sentence case |
| A government page dated 2021, July 1 from hidden page data, with no author | The agency as author and n.d., entered in the form first |
| Unrelated records offered for a course material's PDF address | The entry written by hand, as above |
| A suggested entry whose subtitle was the article's standfirst | The title alone |

## What did Cite a source and Verify references return on NOUN sources?

For a NOUN project, EdCitation is the right place to start the reference list, because it looks each source up and never composes one. [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite) takes authors, year, volume, issue and pages from the publisher's record, where a chatbot predicts what a reference probably says. It works from a DOI, a title, a PubMed ID, an ISBN or a web address, in APA 7 and five other styles, screens for retraction, and needs no account or payment; its checks below caught a wrong year in GST 104 itself. EdCitation never writes any part of a project: it finds, cites and checks sources, and every chapter and sentence stays yours.

### Cite a source on three sources and a course material

For 10.1108/02640470510603769, the article behind GST 104's journal example, APA came back exactly as in the worked list above, with no retraction reported. For 10.4314/ajosi.v8i1.58:

> Chukwuduziem Unegbu, M., & Ndulaka, O. (2025). Information and directional signages on utilization of university library resources by postgraduate students of National Open University Nigeria, Owerri Study Centre. *African Journal of Social Issues*, *8*(1), 962–971. https://doi.org/10.4314/ajosi.v8i1.58

The record, and the journal's own "How to Cite" line, fold a middle name into the surname; the same author's 2022 and 2023 records give Unegbu alone as surname. See [names in references across cultures](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/names-in-references-across-cultures).

The commission's address, https://ubec.gov.ng/about/, now opens at /about-us/, and came back as:

> *About Us*. (2021, July 1). Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC). https://ubec.gov.ng/about-us/

The date came from data hidden in the page, and no author was read. With the commission entered as author and the date left empty in the form, it became:

> Universal Basic Education Commission. (n.d.). *About Us*. Retrieved October 2, 2026, from https://ubec.gov.ng/about-us/

Only the capital U is left to lower. GST 104's PDF address, https://nou.edu.ng/coursewarecontent/GST%20104.pdf, did not open the course material: Cite a source offered five unrelated records instead.

### Verify references on GST 104's own examples

We pasted three of GST 104's APA examples as printed, and three entries from the worked list, into [Verify references](https://edcitation.com/verify-references):

- **Okpala and Igbeka,** with "in Kenneth Dike Library" in the title: verified, "Title, year and first author match a published record." The record's title ends at "databases": copy the title from the record.
- **Dorea and da costa,** with "Doi:10.1079/BJN20051370": verified, "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches." The entry shown restores Dórea's accent, da Costa's capital and issue 6.
- **Waring and Levy,** with GST 104's "Retrieved from" address: "could not check", "The page at this address did not answer. Check it in a browser." Without that address: "check this", "The work was published in 2010, not 2009; the record has no date in 2009." Its suggested entry carried the article's standfirst as a subtitle.
- **Unegbu and Ndulaka,** corrected: verified, "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches."
- **The commission's page:** verified, "The page is at this address, and its title matches."
- **GST 104 as a book,** with its PDF address: verified, "The address opens a PDF whose first pages carry the entry's title."

One GST 104 example carries the wrong year, and the dead address came back "could not check", never "not found". For a whole project, Pro ($8 a month) adds [References from a file](https://edcitation.com/tools/references-from-a-file), which checks every reference and matches every in-text citation to the list; see [pricing](https://edcitation.com/pricing).

## How do you build a NOUN reference list, step by step?

1. Confirm the style and template with your supervisor or faculty manual. EdCitation's free [Check your paper](https://edcitation.com/check) reads written instructions into a checklist, citation style included.
2. Paste each DOI or web address into [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite), choose APA 7, and on a web page enter the author, and a date only if the page shows one.
3. Write NOUN course materials by hand: writers, copyright year, italic title, the university, the e-Courseware address.
4. Make the changes in the table above, checking every name against the article itself.
5. Cite with "&" inside brackets, *et al.* from three authors, and ", p." before a quoted page.
6. Run the list through [Verify references](https://edcitation.com/verify-references), settle every "check this", and open any "could not check" address yourself.

## Quick questions

### What referencing style does NOUN use?

APA. The Faculty of Education manual says APA format should be strictly adhered to; Computing, Public Administration and GST 104 name APA too.

### Which APA edition should NOUN students use?

The 7th, which the NOUN Library teaches. GST 104's examples keep "Retrieved from" and "doi:", habits APA 7 dropped.

### How do I reference NOUN course materials in APA?

As a book: the course writers, the copyright year, the course title in italics, National Open University of Nigeria and the e-Courseware address.

### How many marks does referencing carry in a NOUN project?

On the Faculty of Education sheet printed in GST 107, 10 of 100. Your faculty's own sheet decides.

### Can EdCitation build NOUN references?

Yes, for published sources: EdCitation's [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite/apa) builds APA 7 from the publisher's record, free. Check names and capitals, and write course materials by hand.

## References

- Adewale, O., Opateye, J., Onwubere, C., & Onwumelu, N. (2018). *A study guide for the distance learner*. National Open University of Nigeria. [https://nou.edu.ng/coursewarecontent/GST%20107%20October%202018_docx.pdf](https://nou.edu.ng/coursewarecontent/GST%20107%20October%202018_docx.pdf)
- American Psychological Association. (n.d.). *In-text citation checklist* [PDF]. [https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/in-text-citation-checklist.pdf](https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/in-text-citation-checklist.pdf)
- American Psychological Association. (2025). *APA Style common reference examples guide* [PDF]. [https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/reference-examples.pdf](https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/reference-examples.pdf)
- American Psychological Association. (2026). *Reference guide for journal articles, books, and edited book chapters* [PDF]. [https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/reference-guide.pdf](https://apastyle.apa.org/instructional-aids/reference-guide.pdf)
- Aturu-Aghedo, C. (2017). *M.Sc. public administration graduate project format: PAD 890* [PDF]. National Open University of Nigeria. [https://nou.edu.ng/coursewarecontent/PAD%20890%20GRADUATE%20PROJECT%20FORMAT%202017.pdf](https://nou.edu.ng/coursewarecontent/PAD%20890%20GRADUATE%20PROJECT%20FORMAT%202017.pdf)
- National Open University of Nigeria Faculty of Computing. (2022). *Department of Computer Science student handbook (2022–2027)* [PDF]. [https://nou.edu.ng/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2024/07/CSD-2022-HANDBOOK.pdf](https://nou.edu.ng/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2024/07/CSD-2022-HANDBOOK.pdf)
- National Open University of Nigeria Faculty of Education. (2019). *Research project manual and format of writing and presenting a research report* [PDF]. [https://nou.edu.ng/coursewarecontent/Research%20Project%20Manual%20and%20Format.pdf](https://nou.edu.ng/coursewarecontent/Research%20Project%20Manual%20and%20Format.pdf)
- National Open University of Nigeria Library. (n.d.). *User education services*. [https://library.nou.edu.ng/library-guide/user-education-services/](https://library.nou.edu.ng/library-guide/user-education-services/)
- NOUN Journal of Education. (n.d.). *Guidelines for authors and contributors*. [https://nounje.nou.edu.ng/guidelines-for-scholars/](https://nounje.nou.edu.ng/guidelines-for-scholars/)
- Okpala, A. E., & Igbeka, J. U. (2005). Analysis of users’ searches of CD-ROM databases. *The Electronic Library, 23*(3), 362–368. [https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470510603769](https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470510603769)
- Okpala, A. E., & Saleh, A. G. (2019). *Use of library*. National Open University of Nigeria. [https://nou.edu.ng/coursewarecontent/GST%20104.pdf](https://nou.edu.ng/coursewarecontent/GST%20104.pdf)
- Unegbu, M. C., & Ndulaka, O. (2025). Information and directional signages on utilization of university library resources by postgraduate students of National Open University Nigeria, Owerri Study Centre. *African Journal of Social Issues, 8*(1), 962–971. [https://doi.org/10.4314/ajosi.v8i1.58](https://doi.org/10.4314/ajosi.v8i1.58)
- Universal Basic Education Commission. (n.d.). *About us*. [https://ubec.gov.ng/about-us/](https://ubec.gov.ng/about-us/)