Education Research

APA (American Psychological Association) format, commonly known as APA style, is used to cite sources within the social and behavioral sciences. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th Edition is the most current edition, which is available at the Reference Desk and in the Reference Stacks (both located on the Main level of the Library). The Manual is the definitive source for APA formatting, in-text citations, and the Reference List that appears at the end of a research paper.

The following links draw information from the Manual and provide explanations and templates for formatting and citation:

• Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) APA Style Guide

This guide provides numerous examples and templates for formatting APA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Reference List.

• APA Style

This APA official website has functions similar to those in the Purdue OWL APA guide.

• Style and Grammar Guidelines 
• Sample Papers
• Tutorials and Webinars
• APA Style Blog

Here a few general notes about the APA's rules for citing electronic resources, as well as our advice for following them.  

Online articles/reports from a library database or from the "free web" that have a DOI assigned:

• APA calls for the use of DOI (Digital Object Identifier) when it is available. DOIs are used by some publishers to provide stable, long-lasting links for online articles. They are unique to their documents and consist of a alphanumeric code.  If a publisher of electronic information is using DOIs, you will likely find it printed on the first page of a journal article. When a DOI is used the URL is not required.

Online articles/reports from a library database that don't have a DOI assigned:

• The APA states that it is not necessary to include database information in a citation because journal coverage in a database may change over time.  Instead, the APA calls for using the home page URL of the article/report publisher.  However, we advise that you cite an article retrieved from a library database the same way you would cite the print version of that article.  If the article is easily located, you do not need to include database information or a URL.

• Database information may be included if the information is difficult to find. As you'll see in the examples we provide, we do recommend including database names for many business resources.  Furthermore, we recommend retrieval date information in those cases where the source material may change over time (e.g. ReferenceUSA company profiles, Morningstar stock quotes).

Online articles/reports from the "free web" that do not have DOI assigned:

• Free online magazines, newspapers, newsletters and reports are not likely to have a DOI. In this case, include the publisher's home page URL in the citation.