Reference: Electronic and Online Resources

A. General Information

Electronic correspondences, such as e-mail or discussions on bulletin boards or discussion groups, is regarded by the APA as personal communication (like phone conversations or memos), because it is not recoverable by others. Personal communications are cited only within the text and not on the reference page.

However, if the information is, in fact, retrievable, the following elements are necessary for the reference page:

Author(s), I. (date —or "n.d." if not date is posted). Title of work. (Online), date retrieved. Name of Database or Internet address of the specific document. Specify URLexactly. [Do not end your entry with a period when ending with an URL.]

The date should be the year of publication or the most recent update. If the date of the source cannot be determined, provide the exact date you retrieved the information on the Internet.

The path information should be sufficient for someone else to retrieve the material. For example, specify the method used to find the material: the protocol (HTTP, Telnet, FTP, etc.), the directory, and the file name. Do not end the path statement with a period after a file name or Web address.

Just about everything of serious interest on the Internet is now available through the hypertext transfer protocol (the familiar HTTP). Some items, however, may still be discovered through FTP, GOPHER, TELNET, etc. (For instance, some universities might enable a professor to archive articles, etc. on a server accessible only through File Transfer Protocol (FTP). If you need to cite such sources, ask your instructor or consult the AP Publication Manual. It is not a good idea to cite resources that are available only with a password, unless that password can be established freely and easily (some online newspapers have password-protected archives like that). Also, do not refer your reader to a course Website that is password protected unless you know that all your potential readers have access to that material.

B. Sample References

Online article

Central Vein Occlusion Study Group. (1993. October 2). Central vein occlusion study of photocoagulation: Manual of operations [675 paragraphs]. Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials [On-line serial]. Available: Doc No. 92

On-line abstract

You can cite an entire Web site within your text, but do not include it in your list of References. For instance, you could say something incredibly profound you learned from this Web page, and cite the URL at the end of the paragraph (http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/apa/). If a line-break is necessary when you cite an URL, make the break immeidately after a slash mark and carefully avoid the insertion of a hyphen where none is appropriate.

Electronic Database
College and public libraries subscribe to electronic databases such a sEBSCO, LexisNexis, OCLC, WilsonWeb, SIRS, etc. There are also online databases such as ERIC, PsychINFO, and Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS). These databases contain full-text articles and article abstracts.

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