Referencing a lab manual follows the same general rules as citing a book, with a few key differences depending on whether the manual is commercially published, created by your university department, or hosted online. The exact format varies by citation style, but the core challenge is usually the same: figuring out who the author is and how to classify the source. Here’s how to handle it in the most common styles.
Identify What Type of Lab Manual You Have
Before you format anything, figure out which category your lab manual falls into. This determines which template you’ll use.
- Published lab manual: A manual with a named author, ISBN, edition number, and a commercial or university press publisher. Treat this like a book.
- Unpublished or course-specific manual: A manual written by your instructor or department specifically for your course, often printed in-house or distributed as a PDF through your school’s learning platform. This needs a slightly different format with a bracketed description.
- Online lab manual: A manual accessed through a website or as a downloadable file. Treat this like a book but add the URL or DOI at the end.
The author field trips people up most often. If an individual wrote the manual, use their name. If a department or institution created it with no single author listed, use the department or institution name as the author. For example, “Department of Biology” or “University of California” can serve as the author in your citation.
APA 7th Edition Format
APA treats lab manuals as books. The basic template for a printed, published manual is:
Author(s). (Year). Title of lab manual: Subtitle if available (Edition). Publisher.
For example:
Smith, J. A., & Lee, R. T. (2020). General chemistry lab manual (3rd ed.). University Press.
If the manual was created by an institution rather than a named individual, put the institution in the author position:
University of California. (2019). Biology laboratory manual (2nd ed.). UC Press.
Unpublished Lab Manuals in APA
For a manual your instructor wrote specifically for your course, add a bracketed description after the title to signal that it’s not a commercially available source:
Miller, S. R. (2022). Organic chemistry lab manual [Unpublished lab manual]. Department of Chemistry, State University.
The bracketed label replaces the publisher, since the manual was never formally published.
Online Lab Manuals in APA
If you accessed the manual through a website, add the URL at the end. APA 7th edition no longer requires “Retrieved from” before the URL unless the content is likely to change over time (like a wiki or unarchived page). If there’s a DOI available, use that instead of a URL, since DOIs are more stable links.
National Institute of Health. (2021). Basic molecular biology lab manual (4th ed.). NIH Publications. https://www.nih.gov/labmanual/molecularbiology
In-Text Citations in APA
Use parenthetical or narrative format just as you would for any book. If the manual has a named author, cite by last name and year: (Smith & Lee, 2020). If the author is a department or institution, use the organization name: (University of California, 2019).
When a lab manual has no author at all, the title moves into the author position. Use a shortened version of the title in italics for your in-text citation. For example, if the full title is Health and Safety Manual, your parenthetical citation would be (Health and Safety Manual, 2008). For a direct quote, include the page number: (Health and Safety Manual, 2008, p. 11).
MLA 9th Edition Format
MLA uses a container-based system, so you build citations by filling in a set of elements in order: Author, Title, Container, Other Contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication Date, Location. Not every element will apply to a lab manual, but you include whichever ones are relevant.
For a published lab manual with a named author:
Smith, John A., and Rebecca T. Lee. General Chemistry Lab Manual. 3rd ed., University Press, 2020.
If a department prepared the manual and no individual author is listed, the department name goes in the author position:
Science and Math Department. “Manual for PHYS 1402.” Feb. 2023. College of the Mainland. Course handout.
Note the differences from APA here. MLA puts the title in quotation marks for shorter works like course handouts, and in italics for full-length published books. A department-produced course packet is typically treated as a shorter document, so quotation marks are appropriate. You can also add a description like “Course handout” at the end to help your reader identify the source type.
For in-text citations, MLA uses author and page number in parentheses: (Smith and Lee 34). If the department is the author, use the department name: (Science and Math Department 12). If you’ve used the full department name in your works cited entry, match it exactly in your parenthetical.
CSE Style for Science Courses
The Council of Science Editors style is common in biology, chemistry, and other natural science courses. CSE offers three systems for in-text references: citation-sequence (numbered in order of appearance), name-year, and citation-name (numbered alphabetically). Your instructor will specify which one to use.
For books in the citation-sequence system, the format is:
Author(s). Title. Edition. Publisher; Year.
Applied to a lab manual, this would look like:
Smith JA, Lee RT. General chemistry lab manual. 3rd ed. University Press; 2020.
CSE does not italicize book titles, and author names use initials without periods. These small details are easy to miss if you’re used to APA or MLA formatting.
IEEE Style for Engineering Labs
If you’re in an engineering course, you may need IEEE format, which uses numbered references in square brackets. The IEEE Reference Guide covers books in this general pattern:
[1] J. A. Smith and R. T. Lee, General Chemistry Lab Manual, 3rd ed. University Press, 2020.
Each source gets a number in the order it first appears in your text. When you refer to it again, you reuse the same number. In-text, you simply write the bracketed number: [1].
Tips That Apply Across All Styles
A few practical issues come up regardless of which citation style you’re using. First, check whether your lab manual has an edition number. Many manuals are revised every few years, and including the edition helps your reader find the exact version you used. Second, if the manual is a PDF distributed through a course management system like Canvas or Blackboard, treat it as an online source and include whatever URL or file information you can. Some instructors provide a direct link; if the link is behind a login wall and inaccessible to outside readers, note the platform name instead.
If your manual lists an editor rather than an author (common for manuals compiled from multiple contributors), place the editor in the author position and add the appropriate label. In APA, that’s “(Ed.)” or “(Eds.)” after the name. In MLA, you’d write “edited by” in the Other Contributors slot. In CSE, add “editor” or “editors” after the name.
Finally, if you genuinely cannot identify an author, editor, department, or institution, most styles allow you to begin the citation with the title. This is a last resort. Check the first page, the copyright page, your course syllabus, and your institution’s course catalog before concluding that no author exists. In most cases, either an instructor or a department is responsible for the manual, and that name belongs in your citation.