How to Cite a Lab Manual
A lab manual is three sources under one name. A manual with a publisher and an ISBN is a book. A departmental PDF, spiral handout, or Canvas upload is unpublished coursework. A protocol on protocols.io is a versioned online work with its own DOI. This guide follows APA 7 classroom and intranet recoverability, as reprinted by Alamo Colleges on 29 May 2026; the MLA Style Center course-materials post (19 March 2025) and course-pack post (30 May 2019); and CMOS 18 §§14.30 and 14.114. It is the lab-manual page, not the syllabus and course-pack comparison or the MLA-only course-materials walkthrough.
By CitationEasy Editorial Team25 min read
On this page
How to Cite a Lab Manual: Quick Answer
Decide first whether the manual was published. If the copyright page names a press, an edition, and an ISBN, cite it as a book. If it exists only as a departmental PDF, a bound course pack, or an LMS file, cite it as unpublished coursework: the instructor or department is the author, the university is the publisher or affiliation, and APA adds a bracketed description. In every style, point the reader to the experiment you used with a page number, or with the experiment number when the manual has no pages. A protocol you followed on protocols.io is not a manual — cite the version you actually ran, with its DOI.
Templates (not sample sources)
APA 7, published manual:
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of lab manual (Xth ed.). Publisher.
APA 7, departmental manual:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of lab manual [Unpublished lab manual]. Department Name, University Name.
APA 7 in-text:
(Author, Year, p. X) or (Author, Year, Experiment X)
MLA 9, published manual:
Author, First Name, and First Name Author. Title of Lab Manual. Xth ed., Publisher, Year.
MLA 9, departmental manual:
Author, First Name. Title of Lab Manual. Department Name, University Name, Year.
MLA 9 in-text:
(Author X)
Chicago 18 note, published manual:
1. First Name Author and First Name Author, Title of Lab Manual, Xth ed. (Publisher, Year), X.
Chicago 18 note, departmental manual:
2. First Name Author, "Title of Lab Manual" (unpublished lab manual, Department Name, University Name, Year), X.
Chicago 18 author-date in-text:
(Author Year, X)
Which kind of lab manual do you have?
Open the front matter before you open a citation generator. These four questions decide the template, and they decide it the same way in APA 7, MLA 9, and Chicago 18.
- Is there a publisher and an ISBN? A copyright page naming a commercial or university press, an edition statement, and an ISBN mean the manual is a book. Cite it as one. Custom-printed manuals sold through a campus bookstore usually still carry a publisher line; check it. J. A. Beran and Mark Lassiter's Laboratory Manual for Principles of General Chemistry, 11th edition (Wiley, 2022; ISBN 978-1-119-57769-0) is that case.
- Was it written for one course and never published? A departmental PDF, a spiral-bound handout, or a Canvas upload with no publisher is unpublished coursework. The department or instructor is the author and the university is the affiliation. Do not invent a publisher to make it look like a book.
- Is the experiment reprinted from somewhere else? Course packs often reproduce a chapter from a published manual. When the original source is printed on the page, cite the original; the pack is only where you happened to read it.
- Did the procedure come from outside the manual? A protocol you followed on protocols.io, a supplier technical bulletin, or the methods section of a published paper is cited as what it is: an online work, a report, or a journal article. The methods-section part of this guide shows how to name those inside your own write-up.
This page versus the syllabus and course-materials guides
Three CitationEasy pages can look like the same query. They are not. How to Cite a Syllabus, Class Handout, or Course Pack is the three-style comparison for a syllabus, a photocopied sheet, and a bound pack. How to Cite Course Materials in MLA is the MLA-only walkthrough for a syllabus, a live lecture, and LMS slides. How to Cite a Lecture or PowerPoint in APA 7 is the APA recoverability page for talks and decks. Stay here when the object is a lab manual, a lab protocol, or the procedure sentence in a methods section.
APA 7: a book, an unpublished work, or a classroom source
APA 7 has no lab-manual template because it does not need one. A published manual follows the book reference pattern in Publication Manual §10.2. An unpublished manual follows the unpublished-work pattern: italic title, a bracketed description, then the department and university that hold it. Which of those you use depends on the recoverability test APA applies to every classroom or intranet source: if your readers can retrieve the manual, write a reference entry; if they cannot, cite it as a personal communication in the text only. The wording below is the Style Center classroom-slide rule as reprinted by Alamo Colleges (last updated 29 May 2026) and the personal-communications reprint on the same guide.
Official APA Style wording, Alamo reprint (29 May 2026)
Works that cannot be recovered by readers are cited in the text as personal communications. Personal communications include emails, text messages, online chats or direct messages, personal interviews, telephone conversations, live speeches, nonarchived social media livestreams (e.g., Instagram Live, Twitter Spaces), unrecorded webinars, unrecorded classroom lectures, memos, letters, messages from nonarchived discussion groups or online bulletin boards, and so on.
Use a personal communication citation only when a recoverable source is not available. For example, if you learned about a topic via a classroom lecture, it would be preferable to cite the research on which the instructor based the lecture. However, if the lecture contained original content not published elsewhere, cite the lecture as a personal communication.
If the slides come from a classroom website, learning management system (e.g., Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, Sakai), or company intranet and you are writing for an audience with access to that resource, provide the name of the site and its URL (use the login page URL for sites requiring login).
If the audience for which are you writing does not have access to the slides, cite them as a personal communication.
The fourth sentence keeps the official "are you" wording. That is the Style Center line, not a typo introduced here. Swap slides for lab manual and the same recoverability test applies. A lab report submitted to the course has readers who can open the file, so the reference entry is correct. A manuscript sent to a journal has readers who cannot. In that case APA wants a personal communication — or, better, a citation to the published method the manual was adapted from.
Published lab manual
Treat it as a book. Put the edition in parentheses after the title, with no italics on the edition, and end with the publisher. APA 7 no longer lists the publisher's city. If the manual accompanies a textbook, cite the manual by its own title and authors, not the textbook's. The worked example is J. A. Beran and Mark Lassiter, Laboratory Manual for Principles of General Chemistry, 11th edition, issued by Wiley in August 2022 (ISBN 978-1-119-57769-0; 496 pages; 39 experiments and four dry labs). That bibliographic record comes from the Wiley product page, opened for this rewrite.
APA 7, published lab manual (Beran and Lassiter, 2022)
Reference:
Beran, J. A., & Lassiter, M. (2022). Laboratory manual for principles of general chemistry (11th ed.). Wiley.
Parenthetical:
(Beran & Lassiter, 2022)
Narrative:
Beran and Lassiter (2022)
Parenthetical, named section from the Wiley contents:
(Beran & Lassiter, 2022, Laboratory Safety and Guidelines section)
Unpublished departmental manual
When the department wrote the manual and never published it, the reference follows APA's unpublished-work pattern. The author is the person or department named on the cover. The title is italicised because the manual is a standalone work. Publication Manual §9.21 asks for a description in square brackets whenever the work falls outside the standard categories; "Unpublished lab manual" says exactly that. The source is the department and university. When the department is also the author, do not repeat it as the publisher; give the university alone.
If the manual lives on a learning management system, APA treats it as a classroom source that your classmates and instructor can retrieve. Name the LMS as the source and give the login page, not the deep link behind the password. The official classroom-file pattern is Example 102 in Publication Manual §10.14, reprinted in the Common Reference Examples Guide (3 March 2026) and on the Alamo PowerPoint page as Mack and Spake (2018). Change only the bracketed description from [PowerPoint slides] to [Lab manual] or [Unpublished lab manual].
Official APA classroom LMS pattern, then a labelled departmental template
Mack, R., & Spake, G. (2018). Citing open source images and formatting references for presentations [PowerPoint slides]. Canvas@FNU. https://fnu.onelogin.com/login
Parenthetical (official):
(Mack & Spake, 2018)
Narrative (official):
Mack and Spake (2018)
Template, instructor as author (not a real course):
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of lab manual [Unpublished lab manual]. Department Name, University Name.
Template, department as author (not a real course):
Department of Chemistry. (Year). Title of lab manual [Unpublished lab manual]. University Name.
Template, posted on an LMS (not a real login URL):
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of lab manual [Lab manual]. Canvas@University. https://login-page-url
Template, experiment as locator:
(Author, Year, Experiment 3)
The audience still matters. A lab report for that course can use the LMS reference. A thesis, journal article, or public report cannot. APA's classroom-sources rule then treats the manual as a personal communication: (A. A. Author, personal communication, Month Day, Year) in the text, with no reference entry. In practice a journal manuscript should cite the published method the manual was adapted from instead.
Course-pack manual
APA Style has no dedicated lab-manual-in-a-pack example. If the experiment is a reprint of a published manual, cite the published manual; the reprint note on the course-pack page gives you the details. If the experiment was written for the course and exists only in the pack, cite it as a part of a larger unpublished work, the way APA cites a chapter in a book, with the pack as the container and the department as the source. The classroom course pack page is the official home for that reprint-versus-original split.
APA 7, labelled course-pack templates (not invented experiments)
Template, experiment written only for the pack:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of experiment. In Title of course pack (pp. XX–XX). Department Name, University Name.
If the pack reprints a published manual:
Cite Beran and Lassiter (2022), or whichever published manual the permissions line names — not the pack.
Citing one experiment or section
APA's citing specific parts of a source page says to add the part to a standard in-text citation and to write a standard reference list entry for the whole work. A lab manual with page numbers takes p. or pp.. A manual without them takes the part the reader can find. An experiment number is that part — the same customizing move APA already allows for a chapter, a table, or a slide.
Official APA locator wording, then lab-manual locators
Cite specific parts of a source—for example, page ranges, tables, or figures—in the text in APA Style by adding information about the part to a standard in-text citation and writing a standard reference list entry.
Do not cite a specific part of a source in the reference list. Instead, cite the work that readers would retrieve to find the part.
There are many other possibilities—customize the wording to the work you are citing.
Official page example:
(Stoddard et al., 2020, p. 47)
Official chapter example:
(Merenda, 2018, Chapter 14)
Published manual, Wiley section title:
(Beran & Lassiter, 2022, Laboratory Safety and Guidelines section)
Template, experiment number, no page numbers:
(Author, Year, Experiment 3)
MLA 9: the university is the publisher
MLA 9 builds every entry from the same core elements, so a lab manual is a matter of filling them in correctly. The MLA Style Center (19 March 2025) says to begin with the author if the author of a handout or other course material is known, to check that the instructor really wrote it before listing them, and to style a standalone handout's title in italics. For a departmental manual, the university (or the department, then the university) is the publisher. A published manual is simply a book entry with an edition.
MLA Style Center, "How do I cite course materials?" (19 March 2025)
If the author of a work—such as a syllabus, handout, or slide—is known, begin your works-cited-list entry with the name of the author. But be careful not to assume that the instructor is the author; you should only list the instructor in the Author element if you know that they created the materials. If the instructor is not the author, you may give the instructor’s name in the Contributor element. If the author is unknown, list the work by its title.
Titles of handouts are capitalized like other titles, and they are styled in italics if they are stand-alone works. If a handout is part of a collection, enclose the title in quotation marks and do not italicize it. If the handout does not have a title, provide a description in place of a title, following the style for untitled works: capitalize the description sentence-style—that is, capitalizing only the first letter of the first word and any proper nouns—and do not italicize it or enclose it in quotation marks.
If a digital platform merely links to an outside source, such as an e-book, the platform is considered a passive conduit and should not be cited as a container.
MLA 9, published lab manual (Beran and Lassiter, 2022)
Works cited:
Beran, J. A., and Mark Lassiter. Laboratory Manual for Principles of General Chemistry. 11th ed., Wiley, 2022.
In-text:
(Beran and Lassiter)
In-text with a page, if your copy is paginated:
(Beran and Lassiter 12)
Unpublished departmental manual
Italicise the title because the manual is a standalone work. Put the department and university in the publisher slot. If the manual names no author at all, begin with the title; MLA does not list a department as author when that same department is the publisher. The year is the year printed on the manual, usually the academic year it was issued. "2023–2024" is a date; use the later year, or the year on the copyright line if there is one.
The Style Center's post on slide presentations uploaded to an LMS (15 September 2020) is the model: the LMS is the container, the upload date is the date, and the format can go in the optional-element slot at the end. Carson is a classroom illustration in that post, not a recoverable public file. Use it as the pattern, then fill in your instructor, title, platform, and URL.
Official MLA LMS pattern, then labelled departmental templates
Carson, Sandy. Introduction to Digital Humanities. Blackboard, uploaded by Carson, 20 Oct. 2019, blackboard.ucla.edu/. PowerPoint presentation.
Template, instructor as author (not a real course):
Author, First Name. Title of Lab Manual. Department Name, University Name, Year.
Template, no named author:
Title of Lab Manual. Department Name, University Name, Year.
In-text, no named author:
(Shortened Title 12)
Template, posted on Canvas (not a real course URL):
Author, First Name. Title of Lab Manual. Canvas, uploaded by Author, Day Mon. Year, canvas.school.edu/. PDF download.
Course-pack manual
MLA addresses course packs directly. The Style Center (30 May 2019) says a course pack may be cited more than one way and tells students to ask the instructor. Its own example cites the pack as the container, with the compiler, the term, and the university. Without instructions, cite the original source when it is known. Anne Smith and Iowa State in that post are classroom illustrations; Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is the real story.
Official MLA Style Center course-pack examples
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” Course pack for English 285: American Short Story Writers, compiled by Anne Smith, Spring 2015, Iowa State U.
Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery.” “The Lottery” and Other Stories, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, pp. 291-302.
If the pack reprints Beran and Lassiter:
Cite the Wiley manual, not the pack, unless your instructor tells you to cite the pack as the container.
Chicago 18: quotation marks for unpublished manuals
Chicago 18 draws the same line APA does, but it draws it with typography. A published manual is a book: italic title, publisher and year in parentheses in the note, page or section after. An unpublished manual gets its title in quotation marks, not italics, followed by a parenthetical description that says what it is and where it is held. CMOS 18 no longer requires a place of publication for books. The live Notes-Bibliography and Author-Date Quick Guides carry the book patterns. The unpublished-title rule is CMOS 18 §14.114, as reprinted by the University of Queensland.
Official CMOS 18 wording
Note that a place of publication is no longer required in book citations (see CMOS 14.30).
Titles of unpublished manuscripts, like the titles of other unpublished works, appear in quotation marks. Include the words unpublished manuscript and the date of the version consulted, if known; for electronic files, a last-saved or last-modified date may be appropriate. End the citation with an indication of format. (14.114)
Unpublished manuscripts that are unavailable for others to consult may be mentioned in the text or in a note but are not usually included in a bibliography or reference list.
The first sentence is the live Notes-Bibliography Quick Guide line. The second is the University of Queensland reprint of §14.114. The third is the What's New in the 18th Edition summary of the same paragraph. Swap unpublished manuscript for unpublished lab manual when that is what you hold.
Official CMOS 18 book pattern, then the same pattern on Beran
1. Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown (Pantheon Books, 2020), 45.
Binder, Amy J., and Jeffrey L. Kidder. The Channels of Student Activism: How the Left and Right Are Winning (and Losing) in Campus Politics Today. University of Chicago Press, 2022.
Full note, published lab manual:
1. J. A. Beran and Mark Lassiter, Laboratory Manual for Principles of General Chemistry, 11th ed. (Wiley, 2022).
Shortened note:
2. Beran and Lassiter, Laboratory Manual for Principles of General Chemistry.
Bibliography:
Beran, J. A., and Mark Lassiter. Laboratory Manual for Principles of General Chemistry. 11th ed. Wiley, 2022.
Author-date reference list:
Beran, J. A., and Mark Lassiter. 2022. Laboratory Manual for Principles of General Chemistry. 11th ed. Wiley.
Author-date in-text:
(Beran and Lassiter 2022)
Unpublished departmental manual
Chicago's unpublished-manuscript pattern is the model. The title goes in quotation marks. The description in parentheses names the kind of document, the department and university that hold it, and the year. If the manual is a PDF on a learning management system, you may add the platform after the locator so a reader knows where to ask for it. If nobody outside the course can obtain the file, CMOS 18 §14.114 says to mention it in a note and usually omit it from the bibliography.
Chicago's citation guides say nothing specific about course packs. Douglas College's Chicago 18 course-materials page states that gap in so many words and tells students to ask the instructor. The practical split is the same as APA and MLA: cite the original publication when the pack reprints one, and otherwise cite the experiment as an unpublished piece inside the pack.
Chicago 18, labelled unpublished-manual templates
Full note (not a real course):
1. First Name Author, "Title of Lab Manual" (unpublished lab manual, Department Name, University Name, Year), 21.
Shortened note:
2. Author, "Shortened Title," 23.
Bibliography, when readers can obtain the file:
Author, First Name. "Title of Lab Manual." Unpublished lab manual, Department Name, University Name, Year.
Author-date reference list:
Author, First Name. Year. "Title of Lab Manual." Unpublished lab manual, Department Name, University Name.
Author-date in-text:
(Author Year, 21)
Full note, experiment written only for a pack:
1. First Name Author, "Title of Experiment," in Title of Course Pack (unpublished course pack, Department Name, University Name, Year), 23.
Lab protocols from protocols.io
A protocol on protocols.io is not a manual and should not be forced into a manual template. Each protocol is a versioned online work with its own DOI, and the DOI can change with the version, so cite the version you followed. The title is italicised in APA because the protocol is a standalone work; MLA and Chicago put it in quotation marks because the site is the container. Use the DOI, not only the page URL, in all three styles; see how to use DOIs. The worked example is Ashley Jones, Cynthia Torkel, David Stanley, Jamila Nasim, Justin Borevitz, and Benjamin Schwessinger, "Scalable high-molecular weight DNA extraction for long-read sequencing," published 19 October 2020, DOI 10.17504/protocols.io.bnjhmcj6. That is the identifier on the live protocols.io record opened for this rewrite. The same group later published a related PLOS ONE paper (Jones et al., 2021, 10.1371/journal.pone.0253830); cite the protocol if you followed the protocol, and cite the paper if you used the paper.
Jones et al. (2020) protocols.io protocol in all three styles
APA 7 reference:
Jones, A., Torkel, C., Stanley, D., Nasim, J., Borevitz, J., & Schwessinger, B. (2020). Scalable high-molecular weight DNA extraction for long-read sequencing. protocols.io. https://doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.bnjhmcj6
APA 7 in-text:
(Jones et al., 2020)
MLA 9 works cited:
Jones, Ashley, et al. "Scalable High-Molecular Weight DNA Extraction for Long-Read Sequencing." protocols.io, 19 Oct. 2020, https://doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.bnjhmcj6.
MLA 9 in-text:
(Jones et al.)
Chicago 18 note:
1. Ashley Jones et al., "Scalable High-Molecular Weight DNA Extraction for Long-Read Sequencing," protocols.io, October 19, 2020, https://doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.bnjhmcj6.
Chicago 18 bibliography:
Jones, Ashley, Cynthia Torkel, David Stanley, Jamila Nasim, Justin Borevitz, and Benjamin Schwessinger. "Scalable High-Molecular Weight DNA Extraction for Long-Read Sequencing." protocols.io, October 19, 2020. https://doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.bnjhmcj6.
Citing a procedure inside a methods section
A methods section cites the source of a procedure, not the sentence you copied from it. The rule that reviewers apply is simple: if you followed a written procedure, cite it; if you changed it, say what changed and still cite it. Three habits keep this honest.
- Cite the manual when the manual is the source. "Titrations followed the procedure in the departmental manual (Author, Year, Experiment 7)" is a complete, correct sentence in a lab report. Do not paraphrase the manual's steps without the citation, and do not quote them at length; describe what you did.
- Cite the published method behind the manual when you can find it. Most teaching protocols are adaptations of a published method, and a manuscript for readers outside the course should cite that paper or protocol. The manual's own reference list, or the instructor, will tell you what it was adapted from. That is the same preference APA states for classroom lectures.
- Say "adapted from" when you changed anything. "DNA was extracted following Jones et al. (2020), with the optional sorbitol wash omitted" tells a reader exactly which steps are yours. Chicago and MLA use the same sentence with their own citation forms.
Methods-section sentences that cite correctly
APA 7, published manual plus protocol:
Safety steps followed Beran and Lassiter (2022, Laboratory Safety and Guidelines section). High-molecular-weight DNA was extracted following Jones et al. (2020), with the optional sorbitol wash omitted.
APA 7, labelled departmental template:
Samples were prepared according to Experiment 3 of the course manual (Author, Year).
MLA 9:
Safety steps followed Beran and Lassiter. High-molecular-weight DNA was extracted following Jones et al., with the optional sorbitol wash omitted.
Chicago 18 (notes):
Safety steps followed the published laboratory manual,1 and high-molecular-weight DNA was extracted following Jones et al., with the optional sorbitol wash omitted.2
Chicago 18 (author-date):
Safety steps followed Beran and Lassiter (2022). High-molecular-weight DNA was extracted following Jones et al. (2020), with the optional sorbitol wash omitted.
Quick comparison
| Case | APA 7 | MLA 9 | Chicago 18 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published manual | Book reference; edition in parentheses; publisher, no city | Book entry; edition then publisher and year | Book note and bibliography; no place of publication |
| Departmental manual | Italic title + [Unpublished lab manual]; department, university | Italic title; department, university as publisher | Title in quotation marks; (unpublished lab manual, department, university, year) |
| Manual on an LMS | LMS as source, login URL (Mack pattern) | LMS as container, upload date, URL (Carson pattern) | Same as departmental; may add the platform; omit bibliography if unobtainable |
| Course-pack experiment | Cite original if reprinted; otherwise part of the pack | Ask the instructor; Style Center example cites the pack | Cite original if reprinted; otherwise piece in the pack |
| protocols.io protocol | Italic title, protocols.io, DOI | Title in quotes, protocols.io, date, DOI | Title in quotes, protocols.io, date, DOI |
| One experiment | (Author, Year, p. X) or (Author, Year, Experiment X) | (Author X); name the experiment in prose if unpaginated | Page in note or after year; name the experiment in prose |
Published manual (has a publisher and ISBN)
APA 7:
Beran, J. A., & Lassiter, M. (2022). Laboratory manual for principles of general chemistry (11th ed.). Wiley.
MLA 9:
Beran, J. A., and Mark Lassiter. Laboratory Manual for Principles of General Chemistry. 11th ed., Wiley, 2022.
Chicago 18 bibliography:
Beran, J. A., and Mark Lassiter. Laboratory Manual for Principles of General Chemistry. 11th ed. Wiley, 2022.
Unpublished manual (department PDF or handout)
APA 7 template:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of lab manual [Unpublished lab manual]. Department Name, University Name.
MLA 9 template:
Author, First Name. Title of Lab Manual. Department Name, University Name, Year.
Chicago 18 bibliography template:
Author, First Name. "Title of Lab Manual." Unpublished lab manual, Department Name, University Name, Year.
Common mistakes
- Citing the textbook when you used the separate lab manual. They have different authors, titles, and page numbers. Beran and Lassiter (2022) is not the lecture textbook that may sit next to it.
- Pasting the Canvas deep link into an APA reference. APA wants the LMS login page; MLA wants the URL the reader would actually open.
- Italicising an unpublished manual's title in Chicago. Chicago italicises published titles and puts unpublished ones in quotation marks.
- Listing the department as MLA author when the same department is the publisher. Begin with the title instead.
- Citing protocols.io without checking the DOI on the version you followed. Jones et al. (2020) is 10.17504/protocols.io.bnjhmcj6; a later version can carry a different suffix.
- Writing a methods section that reproduces the manual's steps with no citation. Describe what you did and cite where the procedure came from.
- Using n.d. for a manual that prints an academic year on its cover. "2023–2024" is a date; use the later year, or the year on the copyright line if there is one.
- Building a reference entry for a manual your readers can never obtain. In APA that case is a personal communication; in CMOS 18 §14.114 it usually stays in a note. Better still, cite the published method the manual adapted.
Frequently asked questions
- Is a lab manual cited as a book?
- Only when it was published: a publisher, an edition, and usually an ISBN on the copyright page. Then APA, MLA, and Chicago all use their ordinary book formats. Beran and Lassiter (2022) is that case. A manual written by a department and distributed only to a course is an unpublished work and takes the unpublished-manual pattern instead.
- Who is the author of a departmental lab manual?
- The person or unit named on the cover. If an instructor is credited, list the instructor. If only the department is named, APA and Chicago use the department as author; MLA begins with the title when the department is also the publisher. The MLA Style Center says not to assume the instructor wrote the file.
- How do I cite a specific experiment from a lab manual?
- Use page numbers when the manual has them. When it does not, APA lets you name the part, as in (Author, Year, Experiment 3) or (Beran & Lassiter, 2022, Laboratory Safety and Guidelines section). In MLA and Chicago, name the experiment in your sentence and cite the manual as a whole, or add a page if your copy is paginated. Do not invent a page you have not seen.
- Do I need a reference entry for a lab manual in APA?
- Yes, if your readers can retrieve it, which is true for a lab report submitted to the course. If the manual is unavailable to your readers, APA's classroom-sources rule treats it as a personal communication, cited in the text only. For work aimed at readers outside the course, cite the published method the manual was adapted from.
- How do I cite a lab manual posted on Canvas or Blackboard?
- APA names the LMS as the source and gives the login URL, following the Mack and Spake (2018) classroom pattern, and keeps the bracketed description. MLA uses the LMS as the container with the upload date and URL, following the Carson Blackboard pattern, and may add the file format at the end. Chicago cites it as an unpublished manual and can add the platform; if outsiders cannot obtain it, leave it out of the bibliography.
- How do I cite a course pack that contains the lab manual?
- If the experiment is reprinted from a published manual, cite the published manual in every style. If it was written for the course, MLA's Style Center example cites the pack with its compiler, term, and university, and tells you to ask the instructor which form they want. APA and Chicago cite the experiment as a part of the unpublished pack.
- How do I cite a protocol from protocols.io?
- Cite it as an online work with a DOI, and include the version you followed because a later version can carry a different DOI. Jones et al. (2020), 10.17504/protocols.io.bnjhmcj6, is a real example. APA italicises the title and names protocols.io; MLA and Chicago put the title in quotation marks with protocols.io as the container. Do not cite it as a lab manual.
- Do I have to cite the manual in my methods section if I followed it exactly?
- Yes. Following a procedure is exactly what a citation records. Write what you did in your own words, cite the manual or protocol as the source, and add "adapted from" plus a description of any step you changed. Copying the manual's steps verbatim without a citation is plagiarism even in a methods section.
- Should I cite the later journal article instead of the protocols.io record?
- Cite what you used. If you followed Jones et al. (2020) on protocols.io, that DOI is the source. If you used the later PLOS ONE methods paper (Jones et al., 2021, 10.1371/journal.pone.0253830), cite the paper. Do not swap one for the other to make the reference look more formal.
Build the reference from the right template
Use the book generator for a published manual such as Beran and Lassiter (2022), the lecture and course-materials generator for a departmental manual or a file on Canvas, and the in-text generator to get the locator and punctuation right for the experiment you cite.
Related guides and official manuals
- How to Cite a Lecture or PowerPoint in APA 7
- How to Cite Course Materials in MLA
- How to Cite a Syllabus, Class Handout, or Course Pack
- How to Cite Personal Communications
- How to Cite Books in APA
- How to Cite a Book in MLA
- How to Cite a Book in Chicago Style
- How to Use DOIs
- How to Cite Lecture Notes in APA
- How to Cite a PDF in APA
- APA Style: classroom or intranet sources
- APA Style: classroom and course materials references
- APA Style: book references
- APA Style: citing specific parts of a source
- Alamo Colleges: PowerPoint and classroom LMS reprint (29 May 2026)
- MLA Style Center: citing course materials
- MLA Style Center: citing course-pack material
- MLA Style Center: slide presentation on an LMS
- Chicago Notes-Bibliography citation guide
- Chicago Author-Date citation guide
- University of Queensland: CMOS 18 unpublished manuscripts
- Wiley: Beran and Lassiter 11th edition
- protocols.io: Jones et al. DNA extraction (10.17504/protocols.io.bnjhmcj6)