Wednesday, September 09, 2009

APA 6th Edition is Up and Running

I have almost three weeks off from traveling, and I have spent the first part of that, the afternoons, updating APA to the Sixth Edition Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA). I also took the opportunity to rewrite a lot of the code that generates the APA citations so that the tool will run much faster (theoretically).

I know that there will be questions. There have already been questions:
..for example why was the Web Pages heading dropped from the APA format???

I had to make a number of calls and dropped a couple of sources because I simply wasn't comfortable adapting citations the way that I have in the past. Dropping Web Pages was a tough call. But there simply was not a citation format described in the manual for "web pages."

Most of the non-print sources, however, do include textboxes for web URLs as well as Digital Object IDs (DOIs). So you can cite books, journal and magazine articles, online encyclopedia articles, weblogs, podcasts, online forums, and online conference proceedings as web pages. The impression that I got from the manual was that APA wants references to be established and easily verifiable resources.

If there are other sources that are missing here, please just comment on this blog entry. I will receive an e-mail notification and get to it as soon as possible.

Next step -- go through and double check (and recode) MLA to 7th edition.

29 comments:

Unknown said...

I noticed that there is not a section for just a regular web-site anymore under APA. Could you please put that back in? It was very helpful.

Thank you

Deidre said...

I use your website for help with nearly all my papers. I am dismayed to not see a web page under APA anymore. That being said, I'll try to use another option.
Thanks for all your efforts. You've saved me more than once!

Unknown said...

I am also an educator, and I have been sending hundreds of students to this web site so they could correctly cite web pages. I, like many others, would greatly appreciate if you would put the web-site citation along with the date retrieved back in the menu as an option. Leaving it out was not a good decision, but changing your mind and included it as a choice would be. Like many have also said, if its not broke - don't fix it...

Ron

Unknown said...

I too was surprised that the Web pages citation was removed, but I understandd your concern. I notice the MLA section has the option for Web documents so I hope the APA "powers" can come to a resolution soon.

Thanks for your efforts. Greatly appreciated.

Unknown said...

Great site! I am a Librarian at a Technical College and I suggest your site to students all the time. With the new revision, we miss the "work from a subscription service accessed through a library" format. You have it for MLA, any chance you can add one for APA?

Thanks!

Mary-Ann Updike said...
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Mary-Ann Updike said...

Love your site and I refer students to it all the time. It's also the only one that I have found that has updated to the 6th edition and I'm glad you've added a web page option. However, I have the manual and I noticed that APA recommends that when DOIs are available, they be included for both print and electronic sources but there isn't a DOI field for printed journals. In addition, page numbers are to be included when an electronic version of a journal article is based on a print source but there is no field for them in the online journal article option. Thanks for your efforts. It's greatly appreciated.

Unknown said...

Just a thought, but since many schools still use the last APA edition for "web page" citation, maybe you could use it also, instead of the OWL. Those who are strict on APA will stick with the older version rather then use a completely different approach for one kind of citation-reference.
Thanks, and love love love this little "machine".
All the best

Anonymous said...

Is there a site like Citation Machine that offers ASA style?

3fan4ever said...

Just thought you would like to know that on the pages that have the Marriott ads, they will not load up at all for me past the ad on the page. Not sure what the issue is, but something isn't right. As long as it's a different ad, the page loads just fine, otherwise all I get is a white screen that says "Done" in the bottom left hand corner of the screen.

Elusis said...

I think APA seems to want web pages that are not discussion fora, online brochures, etc. treated like self-published materials.

The major omission from this version of CM for me is the same one that I commented on previously, namely chapters from edited books. The "edited books" tool as provided only works for citing the entire book. Citing individual chapters by author is extremely tricky, as there are many elements in such a citation. Could you please provide an option for citing individual chapters? I can look up specific pages/references in APA 6 if you need them but I am hoping not, as this is such a common form of citation.

http://ashwaretail.blogspot.com said...
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Dr. Watson said...

Thanks for this site. All of my students (graduate and undergraduate) appreciate it as a resource. For journal articles, I think the volume number is supposed to be italicized (although the issue number, if included, is not). It's not appearing that way on the citations I generated to demonstrate the website for my students though. Not sure if it's my computer or the website...

Big Fat Mike said...

I don't have a problem with the recoding that you have done and feel safe in using Son of Citation as my guru to citation conundrums. However, could you change the colors? The red in the cyan text box is hard to see. BTW: really love the ISBN look-up ... very cool!

BCL said...

The equivalent of MLA's "Work from a subscription service accessed through a library" is the HUGE, gaping hole in your APA non-print options. This is where my students reference their academic journal articles--BY FAR the most common entry type on their References pages. What happened to it?

eda said...
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Greg said...

Absolutely the best online citation tool I have found. Thank you for all of the hours of work you have done. I can not believe you provide this free of charge.

Big Fat Mike said...

This is a fantastic tool, and I used it all the time for my college assignments. Although I really miss the web page reference, I guess I can adapt on my own, and respect that this is a tool based on authenticity versus synthesized syntax. I would ask that you add a field so if a printed work has been retrieved from a web page that the URL can be added using the appropriate syntax.

Unknown said...

Can you suggest a citation for court documents? I am reading case law for an class in education and am at a loss to cite because the document was provided by the professor...
This is such a fantastic resource and I appreciate all the time and effort you put in! Thank you!

Justin said...

I am working on an apa style research paper and we are required to do an interview and site it correctly. I don't know how to cite an interview and was wondering if apa even covers that?

Big Fat Mike said...

Justin, Sorry - thought ref would be included: Purdue Online Writing Lab (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/11/)

Big Fat Mike said...

I would like to see an addition to Citation Machine. I have found articles that were originally printed, that are being republished online. It would be cool to be able to list the hard copy publishing info, plus where it was retrieved. Additionally, when specifying retrieve date, citation machine should assume current date in input boxes, but allow for editing.

Unknown said...

Thank you so much for your helpful site! It sure does make writing this dissertation much easier! Thanks again! :)

Meow said...
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Elusis said...

David, is there any chance of getting edited books added to the APA tool?

Also, it looks as if you may want to add a captcha or spam filter for URLs as you are getting a lot of comment spam intended to drive traffic to web pages all of a sudden.

The A-team said...

My wonderful research librarian sent me here, however, I'm up against a problem: I don't HAVE the ISBN for some of the technical journals that I want to cite. What to do? I truly wish I'd found this site a year ago, during the first onslaught of required papers.
Being a "non-traditional" returning student, I half-jokingly asked one prof what was wrong with ye olde footnotes. She just looked at me, sadly.

Big Fat Mike said...

I think that everyone who is complaining about the removal of the web page citation is complaining to the wrong entity. They should be protesting to APA, who witlessly removed web page citation from the standard. That said, the web page citation was part of version 5, and perhaps returning that form's citation would be a good idea.

Meow said...
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Big Fat Mike said...

I would search for the ISBN using the online catalog in the library of congress (www.loc.gov), or just fill in the fields as folks used to have to do before the ISBN lookup.