Incorrect biblatex APA-7 citation when having multiple same author/year entries

apa-stylebiblatex

I noticed that biblatex is incorrectly creating citations when there are multiple references with the same first author and same year – when using the APA citation style. Specifically, it lists more than one author even though only the first author's last name and et al. should be used.

A short example:

\documentclass[a4paper,twoside,11pt]{report} %openright
\usepackage[onehalfspacing]{setspace}

\usepackage[style=apa, backend=biber]{biblatex} %maxcitenames=1

% Bibliography file
\begin{filecontents}{biblio.bib}
@article{entry1, 
    author = "One Author1 and Two Author2 and Four Author4 and Three Author3",
    title = "Title 1",
    year = "1993",
}
@unpublished{entry2, 
    author = "Author1, One and Author2, Two and Author3, Three and Author4, Four",
    title = "Title 2",
    year = "1993",
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{biblio.bib}


\begin{document}
\textcite{entry1} \\
\textcite{entry2} \\
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Results in the citations shown below, which incorrectly list three author names. However, APA-7 specifics that references with three or more authors should only use the first authors last name and et al.

enter image description here

Best Answer

To correctly implement the APA-7 style it is important to set the parameter uniquelist=false:

\usepackage[style=apa, backend=biber, uniquelist=false]{biblatex}

If this option is used, the citations will be correctly formatted, only using the first author name and numbering the years:

enter image description here

Note that it is NOT sufficient to set the maxnames=1 or the likes, as uniquelist=true will override these parameters.

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