APA Requirements for Citing E-Journals

In June 2007, APA issued: APA Style Guide to Electronic References, which is an update to the 5th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The new guidelines call for changes in how people cite electronic media.

The most significant change is that APA wants people to cite the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) instead of a URL. Since DOI’s have been published as part of many scholarly articles for some years now, this should not present a great problem — but it does, because most people have never noticed them, don’t know what they are, and don’t know how to use them.

See this page on the APA site: Electronic References: Electronic Media and URLs

It gives this explanation:

A DOI is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency to identify content and provide a persistent link to its location on the Internet. When a DOI is available, include the DOI instead of the URL in the reference. Publishers who follow best practices will publish the DOI prominently on the first page of an article. Because the DOI string can be long, it is safest to copy and paste whenever possible. Provide the alphanumeric string for the DOI exactly as published in the article. When your article is published and made available electronically, the DOI will be activated as a link to the content you are referencing.

Here is an example of a journal article: (remember to use the Proxy sign-in if you are reading this off-campus)

Explaining sibling differences in achievement and behavioral outcomes: The importance of within- and between-family factors Social Science Research
Volume 36, Issue 3, September 2007, Pages 1087-1104

This journal is available through the vendor ScienceDirect. I use this as an example becaue the DOI is easy to spot and the vendor includes an explanation of what DOIs are. The DOI for this article is doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2006.09.002

The new APA citation style is:

Conley, D., Pfeiffera, K. M., & Velez, M. (2007). Explaining sibling differences in achievement and behavioral outcomes: The importance of within- and between-family factors. Social Science Research, 36(3), 1087-1104. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2006.09.002

Other changes include:

• With the exception of hard-to-find books and other documents of limited circulation delivered by electronic databases, the database name is no longer a necessary element of the reference. This change is made in the interest of simplifying reference format. If you do include the database name in a reference, do not include the database URL.
• For journal articles, always include the journal issue number (if available) along with the volume number, regardless of whether the journal is paginated separately by issue or continuously by volume. This change in reference style from the fifth edition of the Publication Manual is intended to make the format for journal article references more consistent.
• Only use a retrieved date when there is no fixed publication date, edition, or version number.
• If there is no DOI assigned, give the exact URL (if the content is open-access) or the URL of the journal home page (if the content is accessible by subscription).
• Give the home or menu page URL for works whose full text is accessible by subscription only.
• Give the home or menu page URL for reference works, such as online dictionaries or encyclopedias.

The update APA Style Guide to Electronic References is only available for purchase as an online file (by download) . They are not planning on issuing a print edition.

Here links to DOI resolvers:

• Resolve A DOI
• Free DOI look-up (CrossRef)

To access the article listed above, paste 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2006.09.002 (or doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2006.09.002) into the search box.