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MLA Style Guide Ninth Edition

Publisher

Publisher,

The publisher is the entity primarily responsible for producing the work or making it available to the public.

The Publisher element may include the following:

  • the publisher of a book
  • the studio, company, distributor, or network that produced or broadcast a film or television show
  • the institution responsible for creating the context of a website
  • the theater company that put on a play
  • the agency of department that printed or produced a government publication

 

When you give publishers' names in the list of works cited, include the word, Publishing or Publishers (e.g., Workman Publishing) or Pictures (e.g., Dream-Works Pictures) if it appears, but omit words denoting the type of legal corporate entry the publisher is, like Company (Co.), Corporation (Corp.), Incorporated (Inc.), and Limited (Ltd.). Also omit initial articles (The).

If the name of an academic press contains the words University and Press or a foreign language equivalent, use the abbreviation UP or the equivalent in the publisher's name. If University and Press are separated by other words, replace them with U and P (e.g., U of Chicago P).

A publisher's name can be omitted for the following types of publications either because it is not necessary to give the publisher's name or because there is no publisher.

  • periodicals (works whose publication is ongoing, like journals, magazines, and newspapers)
  • works published by their authors or editors (that is, self-published works)
  • websites whose titles are essentially the same as the names of their publishers (e.g., The Modern Language Association publishes a website of the same name
  • websites not involved in producing the works they make available (e.g., a service where users upload and manage their own content, like WordPress or YouTube, or a platform that aggregates previously published content, like JSTOR; if the contents of an aggregated site are organized into a whole, as the contents of YouTube and JSTOR are, the site is named in the Container element)

 

Book

Charon, Rita, et al. The Principles and Practices of Narrative Medicine. Oxford UP, 2017.

 

Websites

Websites are published by individuals and various kinds of organizations, including media companies, corporations, governments, museums, libraries, and universities and their departments. The publisher's name can often be found in a copyright notice at the bottom of the home page or on a page that gives information about the site.

Bauch, Nicholas. Enchanting the Desert: A Pattern Language for the Production of Space. Stanford UP, 2016, www.enchantingthedesert.com/home/.

Folgerpedia. Folger Shakespeare Library, 17 July 2018, folgerpedia.folger. edu/Main_Page.

 

Audio and Visual Media

Publication information for films and television series can usually be found on a screen credit near the beginning or end of a work or on a landing page or navigation menu on the website or streaming service airing the work. Film and television shows are often produced and distributed by several companies performing different tasks. When documenting a work in film or television, you should generally cite the production company that made the show or the network that broadcast it.

"I Have a Thing About Bathrooms." Killing Eve, created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, season 1, episode 5, BBC America, 6 May 2018.

 

Multiple Publishers

If two ore more independent organizations are named in the source and they seem equally responsible for the work, include each of then in the Publisher element, separating the names with a forward slash (/). But if you know that one of the organizations had primary responsibility for the work, list it alone.

Parisian, Catherine M., editor. The First White House Library: A History and Annotated Catalogue. Pennsylvania State UP/Bibliographic Society of
          America/National First Ladies' Library, 2010.