Which Citation Style Do Universities Require? A Study of 20 U.S. and Canadian Schools

Students are told to "use the right citation style", but who actually decides what the right style is? We checked the official websites of 20 large universities in the United States and Canada, across six common disciplines, to find out.

The short answer: in most cases, nobody puts it in writing. Only 12 of the 120 programs we looked at (10%) have a department, faculty or school page that names a required style. Everywhere else, students have to rely on library guides or their instructor.

Key findings

• Only 1 in 10 programs states a required style. 12 of 120 university and discipline pairs have a department-level statement. 75 rely on library guidance that describes what is "commonly used", 6 explicitly leave it to the instructor, and for 26 we found no official statement at all.
• Canadian departments are far more explicit. 10 of the 12 department-level statements came from Canadian universities. Among the 10 U.S. universities, only two nursing schools (Michigan and Penn State) put a style in writing.
• Nursing is the most regulated discipline. Five nursing programs state APA as their style, more than any other field. Queen's University goes furthest: APA 7th edition "is required for formatting all written assignments in all Nursing courses."
• Where a style is named, the conventions are consistent. Every source that named a style for nursing or psychology named APA. Every source for English named MLA. Every history source named Chicago (one department also accepts MLA), and every engineering source that named a style included IEEE.
• Business is the exception. No official statement was found for 10 of 20 business programs, and those that did name a style split between APA, Chicago and Harvard. Business students are the most likely to be told "check with your instructor".
• Some departments penalize the wrong style. The University of Calgary's history handbook says APA and MLA "are not acceptable for history essays", and that writers who use them "will normally be penalized."
• Official guidance is often out of date. Several university pages still point to superseded editions: a University of Toronto nursing guide based on the APA 6th edition, a University of Ottawa English style guide based on MLA 7th edition (2009), and University of Calgary English resources citing MLA 8th edition. The current editions are APA 7 (2019), MLA 9 (2021) and Chicago 18 (2024).

Results by university and discipline

✱ = a department, faculty or school page states the style. Other named styles come from university library or writing centre guidance. "Not stated" means no official source was found.

What this means for students

1. Your course outline or syllabus is the real rule. Because so few departments set a style, the instructor usually decides. If the outline names a style and an edition, follow it exactly.
2. If nothing is stated, use your field's convention. APA for nursing, psychology and most social sciences; MLA for English and literature; Chicago for history; IEEE for engineering. These defaults held across almost every source we checked.
3. Check the edition. University pages can lag behind. Unless your instructor says otherwise, use APA 7, MLA 9 or the current Chicago edition.
4. Business students should ask early. It is the one field where APA, Chicago and Harvard all appear, sometimes within the same university.

Our free citation generator formats references in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE and AMA, so you can switch styles if your instructor asks for a different one.

Methodology

• Universities (20): 10 in Canada (Toronto, UBC, McGill, McMaster, Waterloo, Alberta, Ottawa, Calgary, Western, Queen's) and 10 in the U.S. (Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, UCLA, Texas A&M, Arizona State, Florida, Rutgers, Purdue, NYU), chosen for size and undergraduate enrolment.
• Disciplines (6): Nursing, Psychology, Business, History, English/Literature and Engineering.
• Sources: official university web pages only, including library citation guides, writing centres, department and faculty handbooks, and school syllabi. Third-party sites were excluded.
• Classification: each of the 120 pairs was coded as Department rule (a department, faculty or school page names the style), Library guidance (a library or writing centre page says the style is commonly used in the field), Instructor decides (an official page says to follow the instructor), Not found, or No program.
• Verification: department-level statements were checked against the live pages and documents on 30 September 2026.
• Limitations: we reviewed public pages only. Some requirements sit in course outlines behind student logins, so a "Not stated" result means no public statement was found, not that none exists. Library guidance describes convention, not policy.

Download the data

The full dataset (120 rows, with the source URL for every data point) is available as a CSV: citation-styles-by-discipline.csv. You are welcome to use it with a link back to this page.

Research by North Essay Help, September 2026.