How to Cite a Secondary Source in APA 7 Without Pretending You Read the Original

There is a particular kind of academic awkwardness that sets in when you are writing about Freud, Bandura, Milgram, or some other famous figure and realise that you have not actually read the original text being discussed. You have read a textbook chapter, lecture slide, review article, or handbook chapter that talks about it. You know the idea is relevant. You also know that citing the original source directly would be, strictly speaking, a small act of bibliographic theatre. APA does have a way through this, but it is meant for situations where you really did find the original work only through another source. APA’s own guidance says to cite primary sources when possible and to cite secondary sources sparingly.

That is the key principle here. A secondary citation is not a clever shortcut. It is what you do when you are relying on a source that discusses an original work you did not read yourself. Purdue OWL describes this as citing an indirect source: name the original source in the sentence or citation, but list only the secondary source in the reference list, because that is the work you actually used.

TL;DR

If you did not read the original source, do not pretend you did. In APA 7, you usually mention the original author in the text, then write as cited in followed by the secondary source you actually read. In the reference list, you include only the secondary source. APA’s example follows exactly this pattern.

What a secondary source actually is

A secondary source is a source that reports, describes, interprets, or quotes another source. In practice, this often means textbook summaries, review papers, handbook chapters, and articles discussing classic studies. If you are reading a modern article that says “Bandura (1977) argued…” and you have not read Bandura’s original text yourself, Bandura is the primary source and the modern article is the secondary source. APA’s guidance on secondary sources is built precisely for that situation.

This matters because students often muddle two different things. One is knowing about an original source. The other is having read it. Academia would quite like those to be the same thing. Life, deadlines, and inaccessible books often have other plans.

When a secondary citation is acceptable

APA does not ban secondary citations. It just does not want them becoming your personality. The official guidance says to use primary sources where possible and secondary citations sparingly. That means they are reasonable when the original source is unavailable, difficult to obtain, very old, out of print, or only encountered through another work you are actually using.

For students, this comes up constantly with classic studies and older theory. You may know a foundational idea through a contemporary textbook or review article. That is fine, provided you cite it honestly. What looks bad is when a paper starts performing scholarship it did not do. A lecturer can usually smell that. The smell is “I cited the original because it made me look serious.” Unfortunately, it also makes you look careless if the reference list reveals the opposite.

How to format it in the text

The standard APA pattern is simple. You name the original source, then add as cited in and the secondary source you actually read. APA’s own example is along the lines of Rabbitt (1982, as cited in Lyon et al., 2014). Purdue gives the same logic with examples such as Johnson (1985, as cited in Smith, 2003).

So, for example:

Bandura’s account of observational learning (as cited in Smith, 2021) suggests that behaviour can be acquired through modelling.

Or in narrative form:

Bandura (as cited in Smith, 2021) argued that observational learning plays a central role in social behaviour.

If you know the year of the original source, include it. If you do not, you can still cite the original author through the secondary source. Purdue explicitly notes that if you know the year of the original source, include it in the citation.

What goes in the reference list

This is the part students get wrong most often. The reference list should include only the secondary source you actually read, not the original source you did not read. APA says this directly: provide an entry for the secondary source that you used. Purdue says the same thing in slightly plainer terms.

So if you read Smith (2021) discussing Bandura (1977), your reference list contains Smith (2021). Not Bandura. Not both. Just Smith.

This rule is not pedantic for the sake of it. A reference list is supposed to tell the reader what you actually used. If you list the original source as though you read it, you are not being impressive. You are making the paper less accurate.

The mistake that makes students look shifty

The worst version of this is when someone writes something like this in the body:

Bandura (1977) showed that behaviour is learned through observation.

Then the reference list quietly contains only a textbook or review article. That creates a very obvious little credibility wobble. Either you read Bandura and forgot to reference him properly, or you did not read Bandura and cited him as though you had. Neither interpretation is flattering.

A cleaner version would be:

Bandura’s account of observational learning (as cited in Jones, 2022) remains influential in psychology.

Then the reference list includes Jones (2022) only. It is accurate, tidy, and far less likely to make your marker suspicious in the low-key way markers specialise in.

What if you are quoting, not just paraphrasing?

If you are directly quoting wording that appears in the secondary source, then you cite the secondary source as the source of the quotation, and you should include the relevant locator if available, such as a page number. Purdue’s indirect-source guidance gives examples with page numbers for quoted material and advises including location information to help readers find the passage.

That means if a review article quotes Freud and you are quoting the wording from that review article, you are still not quoting Freud directly. You are quoting the review article’s presentation of Freud. There is a difference, and APA wants you to be honest about it.

When “as cited in” starts looking lazy

Used once or twice, secondary citation is normal. Used constantly, it starts to suggest that your research process is basically a chain of people quoting people quoting people until nobody knows where the idea originally lived. APA’s instruction to use secondary sources sparingly exists for a reason.

This is especially true when the original source is easily available. If you are citing a recent journal article secondhand when you could have opened it yourself, that starts to look less like efficiency and more like corner-cutting in academic dress. There is nothing morally grand about reading the primary source, but it usually leaves you with a stronger grasp of what was actually claimed, how it was framed, and whether the secondary source simplified it into something a bit too neat.

A quick example

Suppose you are writing about a classic idea from Vygotsky, but you encountered it through a modern textbook by Taylor published in 2023. You did not read Vygotsky directly. Your sentence might look like this:

Vygotsky’s idea that learning is socially mediated (as cited in Taylor, 2023) remains central to developmental psychology.

Your reference list then includes Taylor (2023), because Taylor is the source you read.

What you do not do is add Vygotsky to the reference list like a decorative intellectual flourish. That is the citation equivalent of borrowing someone else’s library card and pretending the books are yours.

The real point

Secondary citation is basically an honesty device. It lets you acknowledge the original source while being clear about where you actually encountered it. That is useful, because academic writing has a terrible habit of making students feel that looking authoritative matters more than being accurate. In reality, the opposite is true. A paper that cites secondary sources correctly looks much more competent than a paper that overreaches and hopes nobody checks. APA’s guidance is actually fairly reasonable on this point: read primary sources when you can, use secondary citations when you must, and make the trail clear.

Stop Letting Citation Oddities Derail the Paper

If you have ever spent twenty minutes trying to work out whether a source belongs in the text, the reference list, both, or neither, that is exactly the sort of low-level academic nonsense the Original Matter APA Writing Pack is built to reduce. The In-Text Citation Converter helps generate APA 7 parenthetical and narrative citations, including options for group authors and location details, while the Reference Organizer & Formatter helps clean up the references section so your citations and reference list are less likely to drift into separate realities. The site’s Writing Tools are explicitly framed around those exact jobs.

Because the point of the essay is not meant to be the part where you quietly wonder whether “as cited in” is a rescue rope or a confession.

References

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Basic principles of citation. APA Style.

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Secondary sources. APA Style.

Purdue OWL. (n.d.). In-text citations: Author/authors. Purdue University.

Purdue OWL. (n.d.). Reference list: Other print sources. Purdue University.