Academic Writer®: APA's tool for teaching and learning effective writing

Help students master academic writing with APA’s essential teaching and learning resource.

Free educator trial
“It has helped students improve their writing and boosted their confidence.”
Academic Success Center, Northcentral University

“Now, student learning of APA Style is proactive—right from the beginning.”

Associate Professor, Holy Family University

“It’s taken a lot of stress off of me because I can focus on other things besides how to teach APA Style.”
Dissertation Support Specialist, Piedmont College 

See what instructors and students have said about Academic Writer on our YouTube playlist.

View Playlist

What Is Academic Writer?

Academic Writer combines authoritative teaching tools with advanced writing and content management technology in an unparalleled, cloud-based suite of instructional resources. With a robust digital library of interactive quick guides and tutorials, samples, and more to supplement course content, Academic Writer supports students who have questions about how to conduct research, structure their papers, and format what they write so educators can focus on teaching their core discipline.

By offering a single environment to support learning, research, writing, and collaboration, Academic Writer helps students
  • compose research papers with confidence;
  • think and write like seasoned professionals; and
  • master the application of APA Style®, giving them the freedom to think critically while conducting research and writing papers.
Academic Writer integrates seamlessly into all major Learning Management Systems (LMSs) such as Canvas, Blackboard, D2L, and Moodle.

See how Academic Writer enhances writing instruction

Customer Success!

Read about how faculty at Lehigh Carbon Community College (LCCC) use Academic Writer to simplify APA Style instruction. Starting in Introduction to Psychology, Academic Writer gives LCCC’s students a solid writing foundation that they build upon throughout the psychology curriculum.
Download customer story

Hear from Product Experts and Users!

View recent webinars to hear about new features and tools, how 7th edition APA Style guidelines are integrated, and discover best practices for teaching with Academic Writer!

View on Demand

Learn More

Check out this comprehensive overview brochure for an in-depth look at Academic Writer and its three integrated centers.
Download Brochure

An award-winning platform designed by the creators of APA Style

Academic Writer has been updated with new features to help instructors teach, and students master, APA Style®. Along with these new features, the platform was updated to match the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.), reflecting best practices in writing and publishing. Academic Writer assures students and educators a level of accuracy, consistency, and confidence not available from any other source. 
Accessibility and ADA Compliance

APA is invested in making sure that our publications are inclusive of individuals from different backgrounds, and that our websites are accessible to audiences of all abilities. View the Academic Writer Accessibility Conformance Report (VPAT) to learn more. Individuals who require an accessible version or who are using Academic Writer with 6th edition Publication Manual guidelines can request their VPAT via academicwriter@apa.org .


APA is a member of the IMS Global community, which is committed to technology-enabled innovation and inclusive design in education. Academic Writer is an IMS Global Certified Product and adheres to current standards of online instructional design and interoperability. Visit IMS Global for more information on Academic Writer certifications. 

Academic Writer at a Glance

Three independent but integrated centers provide expert instructional resources to help students develop optimal research and writing skills.

A laptop displaying a preview of the Academic Writer™ Learning Center webpage

The Learning Center includes a rich assortment of instructional tools that enable students to design their own approach to mastering academic writing and APA Style.

 

  • NEW   Academic Writer’s quick guides and tutorials have been transformed into interactive lessons. Self-quizzes have been integrated into these lessons to serve as built-in knowledge checks.
  • NEW Summative Assessments — These low-stakes quizzes are designed to gauge student mastery of APA Style concepts. There are 75 quizzes total, which pertain to topics covered in the quick guides and tutorials of Academic Writer, including bias-free language, citing sources, and writing style.
  • Quick Guides — These brief lessons cover specific guidelines for APA Style academic writing, including reference and page formatting, avoiding bias in writing, and more.
  • Tutorials — Longer than the quick guides, these provide in-depth information on topics such as avoiding plagiarism, conducting experimental research, finding sources for papers, and more.
  • Hundreds of samples   — Browse nearly 30 samples of tables, figures, and full papers, along with more than 150 sample references.
  • Convenient links to sections of the Publication Manual   — Quickly look up specific guidelines and read relevant text from the Publication Manual  online.

 

A laptop displaying a preview of the Academic Writer™ Reference Center webpage

The Reference Center serves everyone from the most experienced researchers to those who are launching their first project. It provides expertly created templates for proper APA Style formatting of citations, and allows for the import and management of reference libraries in the common RIS format.

  • NEW — Reference tagging allows users to create their own tags to organize their references. They can search by these tags, allowing them to find references more easily when writing a paper.


  • Academic Writer has been updated to include 47 new forms for reference types added to the Publication Manual (7th ed.) such as Instagram photos, infographics, recorded webinars, anthologies, and legal materials


  • Manage references — Enter and store references using an unrivaled set of customized forms for more than 120 reference types, all of which were created by APA experts for strict adherence to the seventh edition guidelines of APA Style.


  • An extensive library for reference verification  — Quickly search over 4 million preformatted references adapted from APA's PsycINFO ®  database. These references can be added directly to a paper’s reference list.
A laptop displaying a preview of the Academic Writer™ Writing Center webpage

At the heart of Academic Writer is the Writing Center, as everything students have learned about the scholarly writing process culminates in the creation of a research paper or article. Writers at all levels of experience will benefit from the professional tools and expert guidance provided in the Writing Center. Convenient links to material from the Learning Center, Publication Manual text, point-of-use help, and more help make the process of writing an academic paper in APA Style painless.

 

  • NEW — We’ve added a long-requested tool. Users can now create an annotated bibliography in the format specified in the Publication Manual (7th ed.) .
  • Paper templates help with paper formatting and more — Academic Writer guides students through the proper formatting of title pages, fonts, margins, and more with structured templates for the most common research paper types.
  • Collaboration between students and educators — Students can collaborate on group papers, and educators can monitor and comment on students’ progress.
  • Convenient tools for references and displaying results — A unique resource pane is pinned to the bottom of the writing space, providing easy access for citing sources and adding references, tables and figures, appendices, and footnotes.
  • Helpful Research Tools — Specially created tools assist students in developing, planning, and tracking their research.

 

Academic Writer®
FREE EDUCATOR TRIAL

If you are a student looking for personal access to Academic Writer, and your instructor has not informed you that they will be using it for your course, you can get information on individual student subscriptions at academicwriterdirect.com.

Instructors and Administrators

Contact us to send a question, schedule a demo, or find out about pricing for PsycLearn or Academic Writer.

Share by: