How to Cite Course Packs, Custom Textbooks, and Other Classroom Compendiums

by Jeff Hume-Pratuch

If you’ve taken a college course in the last 20 years, you’ve probably used a course pack—a collection of information put together specifically for your class. Course packs can be as simple as a stapled packet or as fancy as a hardbound book with a four-color cover. They’re usually compiled by the instructor from relevant articles, chapters, and original material; they may be printed by the college print shop, outsourced to a local copy shop, or ordered through a custom textbook manufacturer. It’s increasingly common to provide all or part of the book in electronic form as well.

Course packs are seldom cited in journal articles, but students are often given the assignment of writing on a specific extract from the textbook. The plethora of sources in a course pack often creates a conundrum for students: Who’s the author? Who’s the publisher? Below I suggest a technique for handling the types of sources most commonly encountered in course packs.

Previously Published Articles or Chapters

Let’s say you’re working from a course pack for a neuropsychology class, and you need to cite a journal article included in it. The source should be clearly identified as part of the copyright/permissions statement, which is required by law.¹  In this case, you can eliminate the middleman—just cite it as if you found it in the original source:

Wenner, A. M. (1962). Sound production during the waggle dance of the honey bee. Animal Behaviour, 10, 79–95. doi:10.1016/ 0003-3472(62)90135-5.

 

Original or Unattributed Material

Instructors frequently include unpublished material in their course packs, particularly in rapidly developing areas of research. Since the only source for this material is the course pack itself, treat it as part of an anthology compiled by the instructor and published by the university. If authorship is not stated, treat it as an unauthored work. The title of the compilation is whatever is on the cover or title page—often (but not always) this consists of the course name and number, as in the first example below:

Diagram of the tibia–basitarsis joint in Apis melifera. (2011). In B. Haave (Comp.), NEU 451: Movement and perception (pp. 44–45). Davenport, IA: St. Ambrose University. MacGyver, A. (1990). Five steps to repelling an attack by killer bees. In R. D. Anderson (Comp.), Selected readings in survival, escape, and evasion (pp. 31-34). Davenport, IA: St. Ambrose University.

Supplemental Material

Many custom textbook publishers offer supplemental materials such as CDs, DVDs, or online materials that are accessible only with the purchase of the text. Since these are essentially extensions of the course pack or text itself, it makes sense to cite them as supplemental materials:

“Varroa mite blues” and other songs of the honey bee [Supplemental material]. (2012). In B. Haave (Comp.), NEU 451: Movement and perception (pp. 44–45). Davenport, IA: St. Ambrose University.

If you find other challenges in citing materials from course packs, please let us know in the comments below.

¹ Prior to 1991, course packs were often reproduced without acknowledging or obtaining permission from copyright owner(s), under the assumption that all copying for educational purposes qualified as “fair use.” Two federal cases (Basic Books Inc. v. Kinko’s Graphics Corp, 1991, and Princeton Univ. v. Michigan Document Servs., 1996) established that there is no educational exception for course packs under U.S. copyright law. See http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter7/7-a.html for a good overview of this issue.

Almost Published

by Stefanie

Imagine you are writing a paper on a cutting-edge topic. A friend in the field passes along a manuscript on which she is working that is relevant to your work. Your advisor, on reading your draft, hands you his own manuscript, which takes a different approach to the material. He informs you that yesterday he submitted this very manuscript to a journal for publication. Then, on your favorite journal’s website, you stumble across a bunch of articles that will be published in a future issue but have yet to appear in print, all of which you would like to cite in your article. None of these sources have been published in physical books or journals, complete with page numbers, at least not yet; how do you create references for them?

Manuscript in Preparation
A manuscript for an article that is not yet finished, or that is in preparation, can be cited and referenced using the year the draft of the manuscript you read was written.

Kirk, J. T. (2011). Reprogramming the Kobayashi Maru test: A tale of an inside job and the genius behind it. Manuscript in preparation.

Manuscript Submitted for Publication
If the manuscript has been submitted for publication, again use the year the manuscript was written (not the year it was submitted) as your date. Also, do not provide the name of the journal or publisher to which the manuscript was submitted. If the manuscript is rejected on first submission, the author is free to submit the article elsewhere, where it could be accepted. If this happens while your own article is in preparation and if your reference names the first journal or publisher to which the material was submitted, your reference is not only out of date but misleading.

Castle, R. (2012). Shadowing a police officer: How to be unobtrusive while solving cases in spectacular fashion. Manuscript submitted for publication.

As soon as that article is accepted for publication, the status changes to in press and you can include the name of the journal in the reference.

Castle, R. (in press). Shadowing a police officer: How to be unobtrusive while solving cases in spectacular fashion. Professional Writers’ Journal.

Advance Online Publication
Now, onward into the brave new world of articles being available before they are available—in specific issues of print or online-only journals, that is. Definitions of advance online publication vary among journal publishers. Sometimes articles appearing in advance online publication databases have been edited, sometimes they have not. They may or may not have a DOI assigned. For many publishers, these articles are the version of record and thus are, technically, published, belying the title of this post.

Yet the question remains: How does one create references for advance online publication articles? Provide the author(s), year of posting, title of the article, name of the journal, the notation Advance online publication, and the DOI or the URL of the journal’s home page.

Muldoon, K., Towse, J., Simms, V., Perra, O., & Menzies, V. (2012). A longitudinal analysis of estimation, counting skills, and mathematical ability across the first school year. Developmental Psychology. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/a0028240

As your article is heading toward submission and publication, keep following up on your references that are moving through their own publication processes, and update them as you are able. If possible, refer to the final versions of your sources.

Have other questions about preprint publication sources? Comment here or e-mail [email protected]!

 

Citing a Special Issue or Special Section in APA Style

by Timothy McAdoo

Typically you cite one thing at a time: anything from a journal article, a book or book chapter, a CD or mp3, a painting, a legal document, or classroom notes to a webpage, a YouTube video, a computer app, an e-book, or even a Twitter or Facebook post.

However, if you’ve ever read a special section or special issue of a journal, you know that the interrelated nature of these articles makes them a special case. In this post, I’ll detail how to reference and cite them.

What Are Special Sections and Special Issues?

Articles in a special issue focus on the same topic, albeit from different vantage points. An editor often requests that authors submit the articles in order to highlight an important topic.

These issues will often, but not always, include an introduction from the editor. In this, he or she may expound on the importance of the topic, explain how the topic and the individual articles were chosen, detail how the included articles agree or disagree on major points, and/or provide a summary or analysis of the findings. Special issues also generally have a title, which sets them apart from regular issues that have just a volume and issue number.

Special sections are much like special issues, only smaller. They appear within a regular issue and may or may not have a title.

 

References

Of course, you may want to reference just one article within a special issue or special section. That’s okay! To do so, just use the journal article reference format, as usual. (You can find examples in this sample reference list.)

But, if you want to reference the entire special issue or special section, here’s what you need to know (as per Example 12 on page 201 of the Publication Manual).

The reference to a special issue should include the editor(s), the year, the title, [Special issue], the journal name, volume, and issue. The reference to a special section should include the editor(s), the year, the title, [Special section], the journal name, volume, page range of the section, and the DOI (if applicable).

Rotf, L. (Ed.). (2012). Beyond the LOLcats: Maru, Nyan Cat, and more     [Special issue]. The Journal of Internet Memes, 115(3). Jenkins, L., & Astley, R. (Eds.). (2012). What’s up with Nyan Cat? [Special     section]. International Journal of Memes, 32, 415–565.     doi:27.0018/99-36me0w

If the issue has no editors, move the issue title to the author position.

Ennui or not ennui? Henri versus Keyboard Cat. (2012). Meme World, 19, 1–23.     doi:27.0018/45-09h1ss

 

Citations

For the citation, use the editor name(s) and the year, as usual.

...when soaring across the sky (Jenkins & Astley, 2012).

When there are no editors, the in-text citation should include a shortened title in quotation marks and the year.

...present with a wide spectrum of emotional states (“Ennui or Not Ennui,” 2012).