MLA Citations (9th ed.): Publisher

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The publisher is the organization primarily responsible for producing the source 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 content of a website
• the theater company that put on a play
• the agency or department that printed or produced a government publication

A publisher's name may be omitted when, by convention, the publisher need not be given or there is no publisher. Examples include:

• periodicals (works who 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
• websites not involved in producing the works they make available (such as WordPress or YouTube, where users upload and manage their own content; if the contents of an aggregated site are organized into a whole, the site is named in the Container element)

Omit business words when you give publishers' names in the list of works cited, including Company (Co.), Corporation (Corp.), Incorporated (Inc.), Limited (Ltd.), etc. Also omit initial articles (The).

In the names of academic presses, replace University Press with UP (or, if the words are separated by other words or appear alone, replace them with U and P: "U of Chicago P").

If the word University or a foreign language equivalent does not appear in the name of the press but the word Press does, spell out Press.

Examples:

Garner, Bryan A. Legal Writing in Plain English, 3rd ed., U of Chicago P, 2023.

Hagan, Susan M. The Space Between Look and Read: Designing Complementary Meaning. The MIT Press, 2023.

Hartmann, Ross. The Structure of Story: How to Write Great Stories by Focusing on What Really Matters. Kiingo, 2020.

If two or more independent organizations are named in the source and they seem equally responsible for the work, include each of them in the Publisher element. Separate the names with a forward slash (/). 

If one of the organizations had primary responsibility for the work, list it alone.

Example:

Martínez, Florentino García, and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, editors. The Dead Sea Scrolls, Study Edition. Brill / Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005.

When a work is published by a division of a nongovernment organization, list the entities from largest to smallest and separate them with commas.

Example:

Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible. U of Texas, Austin, Harry Ransom Center / U of Oxford, Bodleian Libraries / Folger Shakespeare Library, 2016, manifoldgreatness.org.

If the government agency as it appears in the source has many component parts, you can truncate the name, keeping only the name of the government and the primary agency.

Example:

Thompson, Alexandra, and Susannah N. Tapp. Criminal Victimization, 2022. U.S. Dept. of Justice, Sept. 2023, bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv22.pdf.

City of publication should be included in books published before 1900. In an entry for a pre-1900 work, you may give the city of publication in place of the publisher. Spell the name of the city according to the source.

Example:

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret. Translated by John Oxenford, new ed., London, 1875.

A publisher with offices in more than one country may release a novel in two versions - perhaps with different spelling and vocabulary. If you read an unexpected version of a text (such as the British edition when you are in the United States), stating the city of publication will help your readers understand your source. Place the name of the city, followed by a comma, before that of the publisher.

Example:

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. London, Bloomsbury, 1997.