How do I refer to a work rather than the authors with an APA citation? [closed]

The APA Publication manual recognizes two kinds of in-text citations, parenthetical and narrative. They are characterized as follows:

In parenthetical citations, the author name and publication date (or equivalent information; see Section 9.12) appear in parentheses. In narrative citations, this information is incorporated into the text as part of the sentence. (§8.11)

As far as I can see, in all their examples of narrative citations, the last names that occur outside the parentheses are taken as referring to the authors of the cited works. For example, one might write

Salas and D’Agostino (2020) examine several aspects of this problem.

which would mean something like ’Salas and D'Agostino (in their work published in 2020) examine several aspects of this problem.

My question is, within APA style, can I also use a narrative citation to refer to the work rather than the authors of that work? For example, could I write:

Salas and D'Agostino (2020) is the most complete treatment of this problem in the literature.

Obviously here I would be referring to the work, not the authors, hence ‘is’ rather than ‘are‘. Is this also correct? And if not, what do I write if I want the subject of my sentence to refer to the cited work rather than the authors?

(In other author-date citation systems I am familiar with, I could refer to the work by omitting the parentheses, like this:

Salas and D'Agostino 2020 is the most complete treatment of this problem in the literature.

This seems logical to me. But unfortunately I find that APA style does not allow for this; hence my question.)

Solution 1:

This question is not just about the APA style, but more generally about in-text citations within the author-year style of citation. Here is what The Chicago Manual of Style says on the subject:

15: Author-Date References

15.28: Syntactic considerations with text citations

An author-date citation is a form of bibliographic shorthand that corresponds to a fully cited work; it does not refer to a person. … A locution such as “in Smith 2009,” though technically proper, is usually best avoided except as part of a parenthetical citation. To help readers identify the source citation, prefer “in Smith (2009)” or, for example, “in Smith’s (1999) study.”

So, this is fine:

Salas and D'Agostino (2020) is the most complete treatment of this problem in the literature.

But arguably, this is better:

The work of Salas and D'Agostino (2020) is the most complete treatment of this problem in the literature.