The Generic Reference: Where

by Jeff Hume-Pratuch

This post is part of an ongoing series about how references work. It began with an introduction to the generic APA Style reference and posts on the author or “who” element, the date or “when” element, and the title or “what” element. Upcoming posts will cover adding supplementary information in brackets and mixing and matching elements of example references.

The last generic element in an APA reference is where a reader should go to locate the reference you used. (An alternate label for this element might be how—as in, “How can I locate that source?”)

Periodicals

For journals, newsletters, and magazines, the primary locator element is the volume number. It goes after the periodical’s title, in italics, and the article’s page range follows:

Elk, A. (1972a). My theory on brontosauruses. Journal of the All-England Summarize Proust Competition, 31, 12–27.

If (and only if) the journal is one that restarts the page numbering at 1 for each issue, include the issue number in parentheses after the volume number:

Elk, A. (1972b). The other theory on brontosauruses. Journal of the All-England Summarize Proust Competition, 31(4), 47–50.

Note that if the issue number is used, it is in roman (i.e., not italic) type, as is the comma following it.

Books, Reports, and So Forth

Give the name and location of the publisher (city and state or, outside the United States, city and country) for books, reports, brochures, and other nonperiodical publications.

Gumby, T. F. (1972). The brain specialist. Cambridge, England: Python.

Note that the name of the publisher is given in as brief a form as possible. Eliminate words such as Publishers, Co., and Inc., and use only the surname for publishing houses that are named after persons (e.g., Erlbaum, not Lawrence Erlbaum; Wiley, not John Wiley). The names of universities, associations, and so forth are given in full.

The “well-known city rule” is no longer in effect, so the state (or country, for non-U.S. publishers) is included for all publishers. However, there is one exception to this rule: If the publisher is a university whose name includes the name of the state, don’t repeat the state in the publisher location.

Clark, D. T., & Schoomaker, P. J. How not to be seen. Tampa: University of Florida.

Electronic Sources

The digital object identifier (DOI) is the new gold standard for locating electronic publications. Through the magic of international concordats and computer programming, it will get you to the online version of the article every time, even if the publisher has changed Web addresses. Over the past few months we have devoted considerable space on the blog to the use (and the pros and cons) of DOIs, so I’ll simply point you to Chelsea's DOI primer and handy flowchart for guidance on when to use DOI versus URL. You may also want to check out Tim's video on how to find those pesky DOIs, and Paige's discussion of document URL versus homepage URL.

Odd Cases

Do you have a locator problem that stumps you? Post it here and we’ll try to figure it out!

How to Find a DOI

by Timothy McAdoo

Ever had trouble finding a DOI? In the video below, we demonstrate how to find a DOI in a variety of ways: from an article’s record in APA PsycINFO (on a number of vendor platforms), from an article itself (hard copy version or electronic), or from CrossRef’s Simple Text Query form.

We hope this visual demonstration is helpful. Are there other tutorials about APA Style that you’d like to see? Let us know!

P.S. For more detailed background information on DOIs, see Chelsea’s recent DOI primer. And for information about using DOIs and URLs in your references, don’t miss the DOI and URL flowchart!

A larger version of this tutorial, with a navigation menu option, is available here.

What to Use—The Full Document URL or Home Page URL?

by Paige Jackson

Following on from Annie’s post yesterday on URLs, today I wanted to share some tips that might help in deciding what to use when. With the increasing predominance of electronic publishing, it’s a challenge to know how best to cite documents you find online. The DOI is the gold standard, and eventually all documents will have their own DOIs. In the meantime, it’s not always easy to know what to do. If you find a document on the Internet (but not from a database) that you want to cite for which there is no DOI, is it better to cite the full document URL or the publisher home page URL?

The question to ask before deciding which to include is, Which will be most helpful to the reader in locating the document? The following are some instances when the homepage URL would be most helpful (all examples refer to Chapter 7 in the Publication Manual):

• Subscription wall—If the document is available online only by subscription, the document URL would not be accessible by nonsubscribers. The homepage URL, however, lets the reader know who the publisher is and therefore what databases the reader might look to to access the document.
• Unstable document URL—If the publisher is one for which document URLs are subject to change, the home page URL is more likely to be helpful (see Examples 11 and 19a).

In the following cases, the full document URL is likely to take the reader to the source more reliably:

• Publisher website that’s difficult to search—Some publisher homepages—such as those of government agencies or nongovernmental organizations—can be difficult to search, so citing the full URL for a document that takes the reader directly to the document may save time (see Examples 9, 31, and 33).
• Message posted to a blog or other online forum—Similarly, it can be difficult to locate a particular message on a blog website, so providing the URL that will lead the reader to the message would be the best choice (see Examples 74–77).

This list is not exhaustive—we hope it will give a sense of factors that should guide your decision. A URL is imperfect in pointing the reader to an electronic source, but for many sources, it’s the best we can do. So don’t belabor the issue—make an informed guess as to whether the publisher home page URL or the full document URL is more likely to lead the reader to the document in question, and move on!

A DOI and URL Flowchart

by Chelsea Lee

Yesterday I talked about the basics of DOIs. Today I'll be unveiling a flowchart about using DOIs and URLs in your references.

The most common questions we have gotten at APA since the introduction of the 6th edition of the Publication Manual have to do with using DOIs, URLs, and database information in reference citations. We on the blog team have done our best to analyze what the manual has to say about this matter, and the flowchart below illustrates the principles at work.

Click on the image below to see a larger version of the flowchart, or you can download a PDF of the flowchart (with hyperlinks to CrossRef) here: Download DOI and URL Flowchart

We hope that the flowchart will be helpful to you. Stay tuned for tomorrow, when Annie will be sharing a blog on the nebulous nature of URLs.

A DOI Primer

by Chelsea Lee

As Anne noted last Thursday, this week we'll be featuring a series of posts on DOIs and URLs. Today's post is an introduction to DOIs.

What is a DOI?

A DOI, or digital object identifier, is like a social security number for a document online. It’s a unique and permanent identifier that will take you straight to a document no matter where it’s located on the Internet. You can read more about DOIs on pp. 188–192 of the 6th edition of the Publication Manual as well as in our FAQ on DOIs. They figure prominently in the 6th edition reference citation style.

How do I get from a DOI to an article?

You can Google a DOI to find an article, although you may still have to sift through search results. To go straight to the source, you can also consult a DOI resolver, such as the one supplied by CrossRef.org. Copy and paste the alphanumeric DOI string (e.g., 10.1037/a0015859) into the DOI resolver and click submit. Or, you can append the DOI string to http://dx.doi.org/ (as in http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0015859) and copy that straight into your browser’s address bar.

When do I include DOIs in my references?

If your reference has a DOI, include that DOI.

How do I find DOIs?

In best publishing practices, the DOI should be listed prominently on the first page of an article, whether in print or online. If you’re working online, copy and paste it into your reference list, to avoid transcription errors. Do not alter the alphanumeric DOI string in any way.

To search for DOIs, use CrossRef. The free DOI lookup searches for DOIs using information such as article title, authors, and publisher information. Or cut and paste your entire reference list into the Simple Text Query form and CrossRef will return all available DOIs at once.

What do I do about DOIs if I read something in print?

If you do not find DOIs for the printed materials that you read, then you do not have to include anything further. You’re done! (Note that many books that exist only in print form are not likely to have DOIs at this time.) When you’ve read something in print form and no DOI exists, simply follow the reference format for print materials.

What's next?

Check back to the blog tomorrow, when I will be sharing a flowchart I have created that explains when to include DOIs or URLs in references, including references retrieved from a subscription database.

DOIs and URLs: Special Focus Next Week

The sixth edition of the Publication Manual and its ancillary books have now been off press for several months. One of our goals in the revision of the manual was to simplify reference style; for example, retrieval dates are no longer required for most sources, and digital object identifiers (DOIs), when available, replace uniform resource locators (URLs) as persistent and reliable links to locate sources. However, the latter recommendation has led readers to pose several complex and challenging questions about the use of DOIs and URLs in electronic references that warrant further discussion and clarification.

We are at a crossroads in the publishing industry. Evolving web-based technological innovations have led to varying recommendations from publishers on which elements to include in an online reference citation. For example, according to the 15th edition of the  Chicago Manual of Style, an online reference with a DOI includes both DOI and URL:

James W. Friedman and Claudio Mezzetti, “Learning in Games by Random Sampling," Journal of Economic Theory 98, no. 1 (May 2001), doi:10.1006/jeth.2000.2694, http://www.idealibrary.com/links/doi /10.1006/jeth.2000.2694.

The citation to a web document according to the seventh edition of the  MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers should include a URL only “when the reader probably cannot locate the source without it or when your instructor requires it.” The reference with a URL looks like this:

Eaves, Morris, Robert Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, eds. The William Blake Archive. Lib. of Cong., 28 Sept. 2007. Web. 20 Nov. 2007. <http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/>.

Another variation can be found in the second edition of the Columbia Guide to Online Publishing, which requires information on CrossRef as the source for the DOI, another format for the DOI, and an exact retrieval date:

International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium. “Initial Sequencing and Analysis of the Human Genome.” Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science 409 (2001): 860–921. Crossref.org. http://crossref.org (Links: For Researchers /DOI Resolver/). DOI:10.1038/35057062 (25 Aug 2006).

With retrievability the shared goal, these three manuals demonstrate three different methods for citing online resources. So, when and how do we include DOIs and URLs in APA Style references? Next week, we will have several blog posts that focus on these important and evolving topics in an effort to clarify the rules. Please join us!

How Do I Cite a Kindle?

by Chelsea Lee

E-book readers, like the popular Kindle from Amazon.com, are revolutionizing the way we interact with the printed page. Although most e-book content has leaned toward the nonscholarly, major textbook manufacturers are now partnering with Amazon to produce e-textbooks, with a pilot program to be run at six universities in Fall 2009. They have recently debuted the Kindle DX ($489 retail), which in comparison to the original Kindle boasts a bigger screen (9.7” vs. 6” diagonally) and native support for PDFs, both key to good textbook reproduction.

For the students and scholars who use Kindles (or other e-book readers) when writing papers, the next question becomes, how do I cite material I read on a Kindle?

For the reference list entry, you’ll need to include the type of e-book version you read (two examples are the Kindle DX version and the Adobe Digital Editions version). In lieu of publisher information, include the book’s DOI or where you downloaded the e-book from (if there is no DOI). For example:

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success [Kindle DX version].  Retrieved from Amazon.com

Brill, P. (2004). The winner’s way [Adobe Digital Editions version]. doi:10.1036/007142363X

Consult Chapter 7 of the 6th ed. of the Publication Manual (examples 19, 20, and 21) for some more help. If the full URL is very long (the one for Gladwell's book was), you may give instead the homepage URL with a description of where to go from there, or the store name—your preference (e.g., Amazon Kindle store or http://www.amazon.com).

In the text, however, citation can get confusing because e-books often lack page numbers (though PDF versions may have them). Kindle books have “location numbers,” which are static, but those are useless to anyone who doesn’t have a Kindle too. To cite in text, either (a) paraphrase, thus avoiding the problem (e.g., "Gladwell, 2008"), or (b) utilize APA’s guidelines for direct quotations of online material without pagination (see Section 6.05 of the manual). Name the major sections (chapter, section, and paragraph number; abbreviate if titles are long), like you would do if you were citing the Bible or Shakespeare.

Gladwell’s book has numbered chapters, and he’s numbered the sections in the chapters. An example direct quotation might be this: 

One of the author’s main points is that “people don’t rise from nothing” (Gladwell, 2008, Chapter 1, Section 2, para. 5).

And that’s how you cite material from a Kindle or e-book reader. Have you tried this out yet?