APA Electronic References

My dissertation proprosal is coming along nicely, so while I’m waiting for feedback from my committee I’m working carefully through my APA references.

APA Supplement
In the LEAD 880 Proposal Development class, the instructors linked to a new Andrews document about the new APA rules for citing from the Internet. I can’t find it online to link it here. The document recommends the full APA Supplement – 11.95 – that Bonnie Proctor’s document recommends. I knew I needed it because I’m quoting two blog entries. So I bought and downloaded that.

At first I wondered if I needed to do the doi stuff for all my journal articles – but then I realized I collected almost all of them online – so I guess I had better do so!

Endnote Upgrade
Then I upgraded my Endnote program – (Help, Endnote Program Updates) figuring that might help me.

Updated APA Style for Endnote
Then I googled “Endnote APA electronic” to see if there were any updated APA styles out there. I found this page in Australia – where the librarians fixed the Endnote style for APA so it does it better. I downloaded that to the styles folder (c:/program files/endnote/styles).

DOIs
To test it I entered a DOI for one of my journal articles. I chose the uq_apa5th style for an electronic journal article and then switched back to Endnote’s APA and I could see that the uq one does it right.

Next I’m heading over to http://www.crossref.org/ to collect DOI’s for as many references as I can. You can use the Guest Query for just one reference, or copy and paste a set of references from Endnote (Ctrl+K), add a line between each one, and search with the Simple Text Query.

I’m also fixing my references by sorting the list by RefType. Then I can carefully check all the books, all the conference papers, all the journals etc.

As I’ve been searching and finding the DOI numbers, I’ve discovered that CrossRef.org doesn’t seem to know the DOI’s for international papers. Journals from InformaWorld, for example, have DOIs, but the CrossRef.org doesn’t find them. So I’m double searching for all DOIs, first on CrossRef.org, then on Google. If I know the article came from InformaWorld, usually the DOI is already in the URL field from downloading the reference. So I can just copy and paste it from there into the DOI field.

Editing Reference Styles
As I’m doing this, I’m finding some “odd” ones that I have to figure out from the new APA reference. A powerpoint presentation, a chapter in an electronic book, etc. I figured out that if you go to Edit, Output Styles, Edit up_apa5th [or insert your filename here], then Bibliography, templates, you can see exactly how the reference is built.

I stumbled across this when I was trying to do the chapter in an electronic book. I thought I needed to create a new reference type, but really the electronic book reference has the setup for the chapter as well. If you put the chapter info it, it lists it as a chapter in a book. Otherwise it just lists as an electronic book. So figuring out how the references are put together can help you figure out what data to enter where.

These are the reference styles I edited:

  • Thesis: Author (Year). Title. Retrieved from Name of Database. Retrieved from URL (AAT Accession Number)
    Note: only do this if you got all your dissertations from ProQuest. Otherwise you’ll need the city and university info etc.
  • Online Multimedia: Created By (Year). Title [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from URL

I also created two new ones for the ERIC documents. I’m not positive these formats will be accepted, but if they aren’t, I’ll edit them again here.

First, you go to Edit, Preferences, Reference Types, and choose one of the Unused reference types. Click Modify Reference Type. Then you can turn on the fields by typing in the same name or a different name. I used a similar reference – like conference paper – to figure out what I should do. After turning on the fields you want, then go to Edit, Output Styles, Edit [your style name here], Bibliography, Templates.  I’ve been just adding to the uq_apa5th that I downloaded earlier. Here are the two I did – one for a paper and one for reports.

  •  Author (|Year of Conference|, Date|). Title|. Paper presented at the Conference Name, Conference Location. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ERIC Number)
  • Author (Year). Title. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ERIC Number)

Some of the dots & lines, italics etc. don’t come through here, so you’ll want to make your own by typing it in. But this gives you an idea of what I did.

Hope these steps and tips are helpful for you too! Please comment if you have corrections, updates, or further suggestions.

2 replies on “APA Electronic References”

  1. Hi Janine,

    I was just updating some of my EndNote stuff and found that the EndNote website has a new APA style file posted for downloading. It was posted 2/2/09. Have you looked at that yet? I’m wondering how it compares to the uq_APA5th that you have recommended. I have both and in just a few minutes I haven’t been able to see if there is any difference. Just wondered if you had looked at it.

    Thanks, Mike.

    • Mike – I haven’t looked at it yet. I probably won’t use it because I tweaked the “unused ones” for some of the electronic reference formats I use. I’m right in the middle of the dissertation process now so I don’t want to change anything.

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