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CHEM 151 (Roberts): APA style 7th ed.

Creating references

MCC Library guides to APA, MLA & ACS citation styles

To edit or create citations, you need to:

1.) understand what kind of publication you are citing (is it book with 1 author? journal article from database? an essay in an anthology? etc.)

2.) find the matching publication type in a perfectly-formatted list of citation samples (eg. MCC Library's APA citation help page, Purdue OWL website)

3.) match the formatting of your source's citation elements (or parts) to that of the citation sample

Why cite?

  • To show your reader you've done proper research by listing sources you used to get your information
  • To be a responsible scholar by giving credit to other researchers and acknowledging their ideas
  • To allow your reader to track down the sources you used by citing them accurately in your paper by way of footnotes, a bibliography or reference list
  • To avoid plagiarism by quoting words and ideas used by other authors (here's a Miracosta Library video about how to avoid plagiarism)

Video: APA In-Text citations

Using databases to create APA references

Most online / subscription-based resources will format your reference in the style of your choice. In databases produced by EBSCO, look for the icon on the right side of the record description page; it looks like this:

Other databases use different icons or words, but if you look carefully you will usually find the auto-cite button.

CAUTION! Most of the time automatically-generated citations are not perfect. It is your responsibility to search for these errors and correct them before using them in your final References list.

APA in-text citations

DOI's : Ensure you have one!

What is a DOI?

A digital object identifier (DOI) is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency (the International DOI Foundation) to identify content and provide a permanent link to its location on the Internet. The DOI is like a digital fingerprint: Each article receives a unique one at birth, and it can be used to identify the article throughout its lifespan, no matter where it goes.
Fingerprint_WhorlDeveloped by a group of international publishers, the DOI System  provides a way to guarantee that digital copies of articles can remain accessible even if a journal changes its domain name or ceases publishing, or is dropped from an online database.

Source: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/dois-urls

 

Note: DOI's are usually found on the first page of the article itself *or* on the database's article information page; in an EBSCO database this page is called the Detailed Record.

APA elements exercise: Scholarly article from a database