Citation Resources: APA Examples - Online and Electronic

*If the book does not have a DOI and comes from an academic research database, end the book reference after the publisher name. 

Examples:

Cain, S. (2012). Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking (K. Mazur, Narr.). [Audiobook]. Random House Audio. http://bit.ly2G0Bpbl/

Rabinowitz, F. E. (2019). Deepening group psychotherapy with men: Stories and insights for the journey. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000132-000

APA Manual p. 321, Section 10.2

*If the book does not have a DOI and comes from an academic research database, end the book reference after the publisher name. 

Examples:

Aron, L., Botella, M., & Lubart, T. (2019). Culinary arts: Talent and their development. In R. F. Subotnik, P. Olszewski-Kubilius, & F. C. Worrell (Eds.), The psychology of high performance: Developing human potential into domain-specific talent (pp. 345–359). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000120-016

APA Manual p. 326, Section 10.3

*If the journal article does not have a DOI and is from an academic research database, end the reference after the page range. If the journal article does not have a DOI but does have a URL that will resolve for readers (e.g., it is from an online journal that is not part of a database), include the URL of the article at the end of the reference.

Examples:

Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185

Guéguen, N., Jacob, C., & Morineau, T. (2010). What is in a name? An effect of similarity in computer-mediated communication. Electronic Journal of Applied Psychology, 6(2), 1-4. http://ojs.lib.swin.edu.au/index.php/ejap​

APA Manual pp. 316-317, Section 10.1 

*As with scholarly journals, include the DOI or URL when available. If the magazine article does not have volume, issue, and/or page numbers (e.g., because it is from an online magazine), omit the missing elements from the reference (as in the Schulman example).

Examples:

Bergeson, S. (2019, January 4) Really cool neutral plasmas. Science, 363(6422), 33-34. https://doi.org/10.1126/scienceaau7988

Schulman, M. (2019, September 9). Superfans: A love story. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/16/superfans-a-love-story

APA Manual p. 320, Section 10.1

If the newspaper article is from an academic research database, end the reference after the page range. For online newspapers without volume, issue, and/or page numbers, omit the missing elements from the reference.

For articles from a news website (e.g., CNN, HuffPost)—one that does not have an associated daily or weekly newspaper—use the format for a webpage on a website instead.

Examples:

Carey, B. (2019, March 22). Can we get better at forgetting? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/health/memory-forgetting-psychology.html

Hess, A. (2019, January 3). Cats who take direction. The New York Times, C1. 

APA Manual p. 320, Section 10.1

Example:

National Aeronautics and Space Administration [nasa]. (2018, September 12). I'm NASA astronaut Scott Tingle. Ask me anything about adjusting to being back on Earth after my first spaceflight! [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9fagqy/im_nasa_ astronaut_ scott_tingle_ask_me_anything/

APA Manual p. 350, Section 10.15

Type of contribution is flexible (e.g., “[Conference session],” “[Paper presentation],” “[Poster session],” “[Keynote address]”).

Example:

Fisteck, A., Jester, E. & Sonnenberg, K. (2017, July 12-15). Everybody's got a little music in them: Using music therapy to connect, engage, and motivate [Conference session]. Autism Society National Conference, Milwaukee, WI, United States. https://asa.confex.com/asa/2017/webprogramarchives/ Session9517.html

APA Manual p. 332, Section 10.5

Example:

National Cancer Institute. (2019). Taking time: Support for people with cancer (NIH Publication No. 18-2059). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.cancer.gov/publications/patient-education/takingtime.pd

APA Manual pp. 329-332, Section 10.4 covers additional types of reports and gray literature

In APA style, online and print references are formatted largely the same. All references generally include the author, date, title, and source, with the source element showing the difference between online and print. Online source elements will include their corresponding DOI and URL when available. 

• 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 (as in the Fagan example).
• 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.

Webpage Examples:

Fagan, J. (2019, March 25). Nursing clinical brain. OER Commons. Retrieved September 17, 2019, from https://www.oercommons.org/authoring/53029-nursing-clinical-brain/view

National Institute of Mental Health. (2018, July). Anxiety disorders. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders/index.shtml

Woodyatt, A. (2019, September 10). Daytime naps once or twice a week may be linked to a healthy heart, researchers say. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/10/health/nap-heart-health-wellness-intl-scli/index.html

World Health Organization. (2018, May 24). The top 10 causes of death. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death

Entire Web site:

• 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.

If the tweet or status update includes an image, a video, a poll, or a thumbnail image with a link, indicate that in brackets after the title: [Image attached], [Video attached], [Thumbnail with link attached].

Tweet Example:

Obama, B. [@BarackObama]. (2012, February 9). Today President Obama announced a landmark foreclosure settlement with major banks to help struggling homeowners [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/167690595870052352

White, B. [@BettyMWhite]. (2018, June 21). I treasure every minute we spent together #koko [Image attached] [Tweet]. Twitter.  https://twitter.com/BettyMWhite/status/1009951892846227456

Twitter Profile Example:

APA Style [@APA_Style]. (n.d.). Tweets [Twitter profile]. Twitter. Retrieved January 22, 2020, from https://twitter.com/APA_Style

Facebook Post Example:

Gaiman, N. (2018, March 22). 100,000+ Rohingya refugees could be at serious risk during Bangladesh's monsoon season. My fellow UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Cate Blanchett is [Image attached] [Status update]. Facebook. http://bit.ly/2JQxPAD

Facebook Page Example:

Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden (n.d.). Home [Facebook page]. Facebook. Retrieved January 19, 2020, from https://www.facebook.com/cincinnatizoo/

APA Manual pp.348-350, Section 10.15

*When an online work is updated continuously, use n.d. for the year and include a retrieval date before the URL. Also, you do not need to include a publisher name if it is the same as the author.

Examples:

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Culture. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved January 5, 2020, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture

Poverty and Environmental Hazards. (2011). In S. M. Alters (Ed.), World Poverty, (2010 ed., pp. 123-136). http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=GVRL&u=muohio_gvrl

Wikipedia:

National Park. (2020, January 7). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_park

*Use the View History option to verify the date to for the version of the page you used. 

APA Manual pp. 328-329, Section 10.3

Format for the reference list

Inventor, A. A. (Year Patent Issued). Title of patent (U.S. Patent No. x,xxx,xxx). U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. URL

Format for parenthetical citation

(Inventor, Year)

Please see the Publication Manual for more details.

From the APA Style blog:

The results of a ChatGPT “chat” are not retrievable by other readers so credit should be given to the author of the algorithm within a reference list entry and the corresponding in-text citation. "You may also put the full text of long responses from ChatGPT in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated. It is particularly important to document the exact text created because ChatGPT will generate a unique response in each chat session, even if given the same prompt. If you create appendices or supplemental materials, remember that each should be called out at least once in the body of your APA Style paper."

Example:

In Text:

When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).

Reference:

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat