ADDENDUM ON APA CITATION: ONLINE
SOURCES
Jamie Anderson, SFU Surrey Library
August 1, 2006
The APA Manual should be your main source of information for citing sources,
but this addendum was put together to cover several types of electronic sources
which are not covered by the APA. Here’s what the guide covers:
1.
2.
3.
4.
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6.
7.
Webpages
Blogs
Online Journal Articles
Online Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
Email
Online Images
The TECH 100 text Teamwork and Communication
1. Webpages
There are several challenges in citing webpages, but the basic structure is the
same: author, date (use the year, month and day if available), title in italics, the
date you retrieved it, and the URL.
Author Known
Gick, N. (2002, September 24). What is a scholarly journal? Retrieved July 21,
2006, from
http://www.lib.sfu.ca/researchhelp/publicationtypes/periodicaltypes.htm
Author Unknown, use Owner of Website
If you are unable to determine the author of the page use the company or
organization name instead. If the above webpage did not have an author, it
would be cited this way:
Simon Fraser University Library (2002, September 24). What is a scholarly
journal? Retrieved July 21, 2006, from
http://www.lib.sfu.ca/researchhelp/publicationtypes/periodicaltypes.htm
Author and Owner Unknown, use Title of Webpage
Use the webpage title as the first element of the citation if the author or owner
is unavailable.
What is a scholarly journal? (2002, September 24). Retrieved July 21, 2006,
from
http://www.lib.sfu.ca/researchhelp/publicationtypes/periodicaltypes.htm
Author, Owner and Title Unknown
If a webpage has no identifying (no author, no date, no title) you will need to
make a title (put it in square brackets to show that you’ve added it). Use the
URL and the date you accessed it. If there’s no date use (n.d.).
[Anonymous personal photography site] (n.d.). Retrieved July 21, 2006, from
http://zebra27.tripod.com
(Ask yourself, if you are using a site that has no author, owner or title
information, is it reliable?)
2. Blogs
Blogs can be treated like webpages when citing. Make sure to use the
‘permanent link’ to the article, not the blog’s front page as this may change
regularly.
Author Known
Wardrip-Fruen, N. (2006, July 17). Expressive processing. Grand Text Auto.
Retrieved July 21, 2006, from
http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2006/07/15/expressive-processing/
Author Unknown, use Blog Name
Buec Buzz (2006, July 20). ASIL guide to electronic resources in international
law. Retrieved July 21, 2006, from
http://blogs.lib.sfu.ca/index.php/buecbuzz/2006/07/20/asil
3. Online Journal Articles
Articles in journals, magazines or newspapers that are found in online
databases should NOT be cited as webpages.
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Full-text Article from Database
Meyers, D. (2005). Video games: Issues in research and learning. Simulation &
Gaming, 36, 442-446. Retrieved July 21, 2006, from Academic Search
Fulltext Elite database.
(In #44 Troyka gives an example of this method, but there's a mistake -- she
needs , from between "1999" and "http...".)
Avoid using the URL in an article citation. They tend to be long and can be
session specific as the example below shows.
http://web24.epnet.com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/resultlist.asp?tb=1&_ug=sid+&session
id=34534545&2D9F51%2DE9BC37DA1DAE%40sessionmgr5+dbs+afh+574
6&dynamicid=23446873453&_us=hd+False+hs+False+or+...
Don’t cite it as an online source if you haven’t viewed the text of the
article/book online!
Before you cite something as an online source, make sure you view the full text
of the item online. Some databases show you the full text of the article, but
others only provide the title, author and a brief summary.
This applies to books as well. Unless you read the book on the computer, you
cite the print source and not the URL for the library catalogue record.
Online Dictionary with Edition Information
In a dictionary, authors are never identified and the articles don’t have titles. So
the title of the dictionary should be the first element.
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) (2000).
Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Retrieved October 28, 2004 from
http://www.bartleby.com/61/
Online Dictionary without Edition Information
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (n.d.). Retrieved October 28, 2004, from
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary.htm
5. Email
You should not include citations to email in your reference list at the end of
your assignment. Include the citation only in the text of your essay. You need
the author and the date the email was sent, as follows:
I revised my thesis based on the suggestions of a fellow student (J.M.
Smith, personal communication, October 2, 2004). First, I added a
section discussing …
If an email was sent to a listserv which is archived and viewable by others, it
must be included in your reference list. See Troyka’s example #49 on how to
do this.
6. Online Images
4. Online Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
The APA style manual does not cover citing encyclopedias or dictionaries, so
the closest print example is given in Troyka #12-13.
Online Encyclopedia
Hammill, G. (1997). Saturday night live. In Encyclopedia of television.
Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. Retrieved July 21, 2006, from
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/index.html
You must cite images like any other source. There is no APA rule on citing
images, but we can create a model based on APA rules for other types of online
sources. Identify:
!
!
!
!
!
person who created the work, and their role (Artist, Photographer, etc.)
date of creation
title of the work
date you retrieved it
URL
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If no title is given, include a descriptive title and place it in square brackets. If
you have other information about the image, such as the image database or
collection it is available from, you could include that too.
Online Image
Sullivan, J. (Photographer) (2005, September). [Water gushes over New
Orleans dike.] Retrieved September 23, 2005 from
http://www.cbc.ca/news/ Available from Getty Images.
How to cite this document in APA style:
Anderson, J. (2006,August 1). Addendum on APA citation: Online sources.
Retrieved [month day, year] from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/researchhelp/
subjectguides/tech/apa_citing_addendum.pdf
8. The TECH 100 text Teamwork and Communication
This is not an electronic source, but it’s something which a number of students
have difficulty citing. The textbook is a compilation of chapters from other
books, so it should be treated as an “anthology or edited book” (see Troyka’s
example #10). Here’s how to cite the first chapter of your text:
MacLennan, J. (2005). Understanding the nature of communication. In
Teamwork and communication: Simon Fraser University, Surrey TECH 100/TECH 101 (2nd ed.) (pp. 1-16). Boston: Pearson Custom
Publishing.
Use the date your text was published (2005), not the date the chapter was
originally written.
Final remarks
It’s very easy to get lost in all the picky details of citing, but you shouldn’t let
that happen to you. Keep the big picture in mind. The goal of citing is to
reflect the careful work you have put into your research. It draws a line
between the work you have done and that of other scholars. It also allows
for others to locate the sources you have used in conducting your research.
Gather whatever information you can find about the source –author, title, URL,
etc. If you’re missing some elements, don’t worry. Follow the basic APA rules
and combine the bits you’ve got into a citation.
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