Citation Generators - A Warning!
There are several free online citation generators that will make your Works Cited or Reference pages for you. Beware that these do not always format your sources correctly (there is a reason they are free). If you choose to use one of these tools, use the tabs at the top of the screen to check that they are correct before submitting your assignment. You don't want to lose points on your assignment because the AI generators were wrong!
APA Online Academic Journal Article
The Reference entry for an online journal article is different than the entry for other web pages.
How do I know it's a journal article? There are a few key things you can look for:
- Volume and issue numbers
- DOI
- Phrases such as Open Access
- Author names are always formatted as Lastname, comma, then their initials.
- Do not use full first names.
- Periods and spaces separate first and middle initials.
- Commas are used the separate different authors.
- Article titles are written sentence style, which means you capitalize like you are writing a sentence. Capitalize the first word and any proper nouns in the title.
- Journal Titles use the formal capitalization (like the name of a book or movie) and they are italicized.
- Note where periods and commas separate pieces of information. If your article has a DOI, do not put a period after the DOI number.
- To find the volume, issue, page numbers, and DOI look on the first page of the article or in the header or footer of the article pages. In the example above, the volume and issue number are listed after the year in the upper left corner. They are 14:99. The DOI is listed below that.
- If there is no DOI, use the link to the web page where you found your article.
References:
Authors. (year of publication). Article title (capitalized sentence style). Journal Title (italicized), volume (and issue number, if available), page numbers. DOI link
Giri, R. K., Khatri, R. B., Mishra, S. R., Khanal, V., Sharma, V. D., & Gartoula, R. P. (2015). Prevalence and factors associated with depressive symptoms among post-partum mothers in Nepal. BMC Research Notes, 8(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-015-1074-3
In-Text Citation:
(Giri et al., 2015)
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