Research Assistance : APA Style for Citing Electronic Resources

Electronic resources (full text articles, books, scholarly projects, reference databases, and professional and personal web sites) must all be documented as you would with print sources. Documentation allows the author and publisher of the work to receive credit, the reader to consult the original source, and allows you the student to avoid plagiarism.

"Fabrication is the intentional invention, counterfeiting and/or alteration of quotations, data, procedures, experiments, sources or other information for which the student claims authorship in an exercise which he or she submits with the expectation of receiving academic credit"

"Plagiarism is the intentional use of the ideas, words, or work of another without attribution, when the information they provide is not common knowledge, either in content or form, and includes, but is not limited to (1) quoting from the published or unpublished work of another without appropriate attribution; (2) paraphrasing or summarizing in oneās own work any portion of the published or unpublished materials of another without attribution; and (3) borrowing from anotherās work information which is not in the domain of common knowledge."

The APA style guide is most often used by those in psychology and the social sciences. Ask your instructor which format to use.

Basic format:

Author. (Date). Title of Article. Title of Journal. [Online]. Pages (length). Retrieved [month, day, year] from database (Accession Number.) On the World Wide Web : URL.

The examples below are from some of the most used electronic sources at NCCU.

Online Full-Text Sources

Masterfile, from EBSCO via NCLIVE

Abouserie,R.(1994).Sources and levels of stress in relation to locus of control and self esteem in university students. Educational Psychology, 14 (3), pp. 323+. Retrieved December 30, 1999 from EBSCO database (Masterfile, AN: 9412055114)

ABI Inform Global from BELL& HOWARD via NCLIVE

Merrick, B. (1998, November). High credit card debt puts some students at risk. Credit Union Magazine, 64 (11), p 11. Retrieved December 30, 1999 from BELL HOWARD online database (ABI Inform Global, AN#CUG8209202582096)

If you are citing the entire web site, but not a specific document on the site, it is sufficient to give the address of the site in the text. For instance,

The American Psychological Association's website features news and products relevant to the discipline of mental health (http://www.apa.org).

To cite a specific document on a web site, use the style appropriate for a print source of the same type, using as much information as can be found on the electronic document. The additional web information is added at the end of the citation in a retrieval statement that includes the date the document was looked at.

An article from the APA Monitor, a newspaper:

McGuire, P.M., Sleek, S. (1999, December). Rural psychology reaches into Ozarks.APA Monitor. Retrieved December 30, 1999 from the World Wide Web: http://www.apa.org/monitor/pr1.html.

An article from Web Journal of Current Legal Issues , an online journal:

Keown, J and Gormally, L. (1999). Human Dignity, Autonomy and Mentally Incapacitated Patients: A Critique of Who Decides? Web Journal of Current Legal Issues, 1999 (4). Retrieved December 30, 1999 from the World Wide Web: http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/1999/issue4/keown4.html

The examples in this handout are based upon the following sources:

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 4th edition

The APA's website: http://www.apa.org/journals/webref.html

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