Citing your information sources:
All types of information sources that you may use must be cited, including books, articles, web pages, images, interviews, and government documents.
Papers written for psychology classes at Brescia are required to be formatted in APA style. The information on this page will help you to understand APA style and find examples of it. The American Psychological Association (APA) has published the sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2010), which contains guidelines for documenting sources and formatting papers in the social sciences.
In the new edition, changes were made in how multiple authors are handled, issue numbers of journals, state abbreviations, APA paper format and in-text citations. Click on this link to see What’s new in APA 2010 style, © Bedford/St. Martin’s. The links below provide excellent up-to-date resource guides to using the new APA style manual.
You'll notice the term "DOI" in the APA style guide when citing a journal article found online. What is that, anyway?
DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier. It is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by the International DOI Foundation when an article is published electronically. It provides a persistent link to the article.
Since July 2007, APA has emphasized using the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) when referencing articles. Unlike URLs which may change over time, the DOI is unique to an individual work. Not all publishers participate in the DOI initiative; as a result, an article may or may not have a DOI assigned.
In the 6th edition of the Manual, APA presents a simple approach for referencing online articles: either an article is assigned a DOI OR an article is not assigned a DOI. Usually only journals (primarily scholarly/research), and some online books—are assigned a DOI. Magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and most online documents/reports do not have a DOI.
When an article is assigned a DOI, the APA standard is that researchers (including students) will always locate the DOI, and use the reference format which includes the DOI. This is not an “either-or” situation where the researcher may choose to ignore a DOI.
When there is no DOI assigned, provide the periodical home page web address (URL).
Can't locate the DOI? Try using CrossRef's free DOI lookup. For best results,use "Search an article title" rather than the bibliographical metadata search.
Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. 6th editionWhile most of our online databases, Word 2007 and on-line resources such as EasyBib offer automatic MLA formatting tools for citations, these are NOT ALWAYS ACCURATE and do not allow for formatting of all pertinent information.
If you use these online tools it is important to double check the accuracy of your results against a style sheet such as the ones in the MLA Handbook or those linked to from this page.
