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APA Citation Style: Internet resources

APA Citation Format (Commonly used for psychology and other social science papers)

Citation format for World Wide Web pages

According to apastyle.apa.org:

  • Provide as specific a date as is available on the webpage. This might be a year only; a year and month; or a year, month, and day.
  • Italicize the title of a webpage.When the author of the webpage and the publisher of the website are the same, omit the publisher name to avoid repetition (as in the World Health Organization example).
  • When contents of a page are meant to be updated over time but are not archived, include a retrieval date in the reference.
  • Use the webpage on a website format for articles from news websites such as CNN and HuffPost (these sites do not have associated daily or weekly newspapers). Use the newspaper article category for articles from newspaper websites such as The New York Times or The Washington Post.
  • Create a reference to an open educational resources (OER) page only when the materials are available for download directly (i.e., the materials are on the page and/or can be downloaded as PDFs or other files). If you are directed to another website, create a reference to the specific webpage on that website where the materials can be retrieved. Use this format for material in any OER repository, such as OER Commons, OASIS, or MERLOT.
  • Do not create a reference or in-text citation for a whole website. To mention a website in general, and not any particular information on that site, provide the name of the website in the text and include the URL in parentheses. For example, you might mention that you used a website to create a survey.

Basic format:

:Author, A. (date). Title of Webpage or document [format description]. Retrieved from http://URL
That format description in brackets is used only when the format is something out of the ordinary, such as a blog post, twitt, or lecture notes; otherwise, it's not necessary.

 

Press Release: examples from apastyle.org

American Psychological Association. (2010). Today’s superheroes send wrong image to boys, say researchers [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2010/08/macho-stereotype-unhealthy.aspx

 

The White House, Office of the Press Secretary. (2010). Administration officials continue travel across the country holding “Recovery Summer” events, project site visits [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/administration-officials-continue-travel-across-country-holding-recovery-summer-eve

 

King Fish Media. (2010). The perfect marriage of content and technology: Is social media the new CRM? [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-perfect-marriage-of-content-and-technology--is-social-media-the-new-crm-100760344.html

Blog, Facebook, and Twitter: examples from apastyle.org

Blog

Freakonomics. (2010, October 29). E-ZPass is a life-saver (literally) [Blog]. Retrieved from http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/e-zpass-is-a-life-saver-literally/

Facebook

Barack Obama. (2009a, October 9)Humbled. http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/obamaforamerica/gGM45m [Facebook]. Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com/posted.php? id=6815841748&share_id=154954250775&comments=1#s154954250775

Twitter

Barack Obama. (2009b, July 15). Launched American Graduation Initiative to help additional 5 mill. Americans graduate college by 2020: http://bit.ly/gcTX7 [Twitt]Twitter. Retrieved from http://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/2651151366

Personal Communications

According to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association -- 6.20, personal communications such as:

  • private letters
  • memos
  • nonrecoverable electronic communications (email or messages from nonarchived discussion groups or electronic bulletin boards)
  • personal interviews
  • telephone conversations, etc.

are not included in the reference list. Cite them in text only (see examples in in-text citation)

Example of citing an email in the main text:
(G. Brown, personal communication, January 4, 2016).

For archival or recoverable documents, use the following format (from Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association --7.10) :

Author, A.A. (Year, Month Day). Title of material. [Description of material]. Name of Collection (Call number, Box number, File name or number, etc.). Name of Repository, Location.

Video from Youtube or other video posting websites

According to the American Psychology Association website https://www.apastyle.org

  • Use the name of the account that uploaded the video as the author.

Author, A. A. (year, month day). Title of video  [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from http://xxxxxxxxx

  • If the account did not actually create the work, explain this in the text if it is important for readers to know. However, if that would mean citing a source that appears unauthoritative, you might also look for the author’s YouTube channel, official website, or other social media to see whether the same video is available elsewhere. -- apastyle.apa.org

Conference Presentation References