diff --git a/doc/source/development/contributing.rst b/doc/source/development/contributing.rst
index 9599dc5bd1412..a9237c239701b 100644
--- a/doc/source/development/contributing.rst
+++ b/doc/source/development/contributing.rst
@@ -410,7 +410,7 @@ Some other important things to know about the docs:
   doc build. This approach means that code examples will always be up to date,
   but it does make the doc building a bit more complex.
 
-* Our API documentation in ``doc/source/api.rst`` houses the auto-generated
+* Our API documentation files in ``doc/source/reference`` house the auto-generated
   documentation from the docstrings. For classes, there are a few subtleties
   around controlling which methods and attributes have pages auto-generated.
 
@@ -428,7 +428,8 @@ Some other important things to know about the docs:
      ``Methods`` section in the class docstring. See ``CategoricalIndex`` for an
      example.
 
-  Every method should be included in a ``toctree`` in ``api.rst``, else Sphinx
+  Every method should be included in a ``toctree`` in one of the documentation files in
+  ``doc/source/reference``, else Sphinx
   will emit a warning.
 
 .. note::
@@ -444,11 +445,11 @@ Some other important things to know about the docs:
 The utility script ``scripts/validate_docstrings.py`` can be used to get a csv
 summary of the API documentation. And also validate common errors in the docstring
 of a specific class, function or method. The summary also compares the list of
-methods documented in ``doc/source/api.rst`` (which is used to generate
+methods documented in the files in ``doc/source/reference`` (which is used to generate
 the `API Reference <https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/api.html>`_ page)
 and the actual public methods.
-This will identify methods documented in ``doc/source/api.rst`` that are not actually
-class methods, and existing methods that are not documented in ``doc/source/api.rst``.
+This will identify methods documented in ``doc/source/reference`` that are not actually
+class methods, and existing methods that are not documented in ``doc/source/reference``.
 
 
 Updating a *pandas* docstring