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Citation mechanics

Corporate author

Also called: group author, organisational author, institutional author

An organisation credited as the author of a work, used when no individual is named.

Reports, standards, and government publications are usually authored by a body rather than a person: the World Health Organization, a department of education, a standards committee. The organisation goes in the author position, spelled out in full.

Well-known bodies can be abbreviated after first use in APA, but only if you introduce the abbreviation: “(World Health Organization [WHO], 2024)” and then “(WHO, 2024)”. The reference list always uses the full name.

Where the organisation is also the publisher, most styles do not repeat it — an APA reference for a WHO report names WHO as author and leaves the publisher field empty.

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