NEIT Library: Research Paper Format, APA Style

This booklet was prepared as a quick reference to the American Psychological Association (APA) style of documentation adopted by the New England Institute of Technology as a standard for documentation. Examples are formatted according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition, 2001. Please consult the complete manual located in the Reference Room in the Library (under the call number Ref. BF76.7 .P82 2001) or at the APA’s website (http://www.apastyle.org/) for additional details and examples.

Pages are usually numbered on the upper right-hand corner of the page, after the running head (short title).

While writing a paper, you should be sure that what you are writing is clear and easily understood. It is a good idea to write out a draft of your paper and review it (or have someone else review it) to see if it makes sense.

If you have some difficulty organizing your ideas or with writing in general, there are a number of books in the Library that offer tips on how to improve your writing. In addition, New England Tech has an Academic Skills Center that offers help with reading, writing, and study skills. No appointment is necessary and there are always people there who can help you with writing a paper.

When you are doing your research, and even more importantly, when you write your paper, you must credit the sources of the information that you have used.

Documentation of sources is giving credit to the sources of the information that you have used to form the opinions that you express in your final paper. You must clearly indicate where you obtained your information, quotes, or statistics. There are a variety of standard ways to do this.

Courses taught at New England Tech use the in-text documentation style developed by the American Psychological Association (APA). In the text of your paper, if you quote or paraphrase an idea or list statistics found through your research, you have to give credit to the source of that information. Information on this form of documentation can be found on pages 207-214 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition, 2001.

The in-text style of documentation is used to avoid a number of lengthy footnotes at the bottom of the page. Instead sources should be documented on a "References" page at the end of your paper. In order to have all of the information that you need for your reference list, it is important to copy the complete information for each source that you have consulted. This style of documentation makes it easier to read a research paper by incorporating the sources of your research within the text.

The following examples (in the boxes below) illustrate the APA style of in-text documentation. For more citation examples, consult the fifth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (pp. 215-281). You may also wish to consult the ninth edition of Writing Research Papers: A Complete Guide, by James D. Lester. Lester's book shows you how to write and organize a paper, as well as how to document your sources according to the APA format (and several other styles). The boldface type indicates the information that identifies the sources of the quotes in each example. Please note that the latest edition of Lester's book does not include changes from the fifth edition of the APA Manual.

The APA style uses either an author-date system or an author-number system. This guide includes the author-date system because it is the most common. If you paraphrase or reword the basic ideas of an author, you can give the author credit by naming him/her in the text, and then indicating the date of the publication where the information was found. Use the past tense when referring to a source. For example:

The way this particular example is worded indicates that Smith is the author and that the book or article from which the information was taken was published in 1983.

If the author were not mentioned in the text of the paper (as in the next quote) and a specific portion of the source was used, the documentation would be a bit different.

Multiple Authors, Citing a Specific Part of a Source

There was some supporting evidence for a portion of the questionable data (Marr & Brown, 1979, pp. 23-32) through point bi-serial correlation techniques.

This example does not mention the author's name within the text, so it is included within the parentheses along with the date and page number. This example also shows how to cite a book with two authors, listing both names and using an ampersand (&) to connect the names. Since the information was taken from a specific part of the text, the pages are also supplied.

In both examples, credit is given to the source of the information (Smith, Marr & Brown) and the publication date of the source.

If you should use information found in a source that has no listed author, you should use the first few words of the title and the year. Double quotes should be placed around the title of an article or chapter and a book or periodical title should be italicized (or underlined if you are unable to use italics). For example:

No Listed Author

on free care ("Study Finds," 1982)

the book College Bound Seniors (1979)

If you are quoting directly from one of your sources, you must use quotation marks. Quotation marks indicate the start and the end of material that you have borrowed directly from a source. Punctuation of quotes, such as commas and periods, should be placed inside the quotation marks and in-text documentation should be placed in parentheses outside the quotation marks. For example:

In the previous example, since the page number identifying the quote comes at the end of the sentence, the period is placed after the documentation and not inside the quotation marks.

If an author has two or more works listed in the reference list, the dates will allow you to distinguish between the two publications.

In this passage, two works by Joseph Campbell are quoted – The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) and The Masks of God (1959). To distinguish the two of them, the dates of publication are used. This makes it easy to tell which of his two books was referenced in each sentence.

The types of in-text documentation listed above are the most basic types. If you have other questions about different types of materials quoted in your text, consult the latest edition of: American Psychological Association (2001, 5th edition). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Copies of this book are located in the Reference Room (call number: Ref. BF76.7 .P82 2001) and with other ready reference materials in the Library. Copies can also be purchased at many bookstores.

Please remember that in-text documentation should be as brief as possible, but complete enough to indicate the exact work from which the information was taken. It is acceptable to abbreviate an author's name or the title of book or article as long as it can be distinguished from all other entries in your reference list.

The verb plagiarize is defined by Webster's Dictionary as "to steal the words, ideas, etc. of another and use them as one's own" and plagiarism is defined as "literary theft." It is the use of the words or ideas of another without proper credit. Passing off someone else's work as your own is academically dishonest – like cheating. For information on the consequences of plagiarism, see the College's Academic Honesty Policy.

When doing research for a paper, you are selecting books and articles written by other people to form opinions of your own. You are able to work with tables, statistics, and ideas that other people have published. When you prepare your paper, it is important to list all sources from which you have obtained information. Ideas that are not your own that you have quoted directly or paraphrased should be documented in the ways listed above.

If the exact wording of a research source is copied directly and is not documented, it is usually quite obvious to an instructor. Your own writing style will deviate noticeably from the style of the writer whose words you have copied. Plagiarism is dishonest and should be avoided at all costs.

When you type a paper, it is important to place numbers on each page. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association states that page numbers should appear in the upper right-hand corner of each page starting with the title page.

The APA style of manuscript preparation also requires that a "running head" or short title appear with the page number. For example, if the title of your paper is "The Development of the Pentium II Processor," your running head might be "Pentium II."

As mentioned above, it is important to give credit to all sources that you have consulted in your research. In your reference list, which should be titled "References" in APA style, you should include not only the sources that you have quoted in your in-text documentation, but also all of the other sources that you have used to put your paper together.

There is a specific format for the way that books, articles, and other sources should be listed in your reference list. The style that the College uses is the the APA (American Psychological Association) style.

These examples give you an idea of how to set up many common types of entries for a reference list. One of the best things that you can do when you begin doing research is to copy down all of the information that you will need for your final reference list. Trying to find the information later always takes much longer. Using the "Labeled Display" screen of the online catalog (http://library.neit.edu) can help you retrieve missing elements of information for your references if you have already returned the book to the Library.

Please note: formatting for citations listed below may not print correctly in this format. If you want a printed copy, use this .pdf format.)

First, all items listed in the reference list should be arranged in alphabetical order by the last name of the author. If there is no named author, list the item alphabetically by the first significant word in the title (skip words like a, an, and the). The first line of each entry should be placed against the left-hand margin and all other lines of the entry should be indented by five spaces. For term papers, all entries in the reference list should be single-spaced. The word "References" should be centered one inch from the top of the page in upper and lower case letters. Double-space between entries.

Very specific forms of punctuation and underlining should be observed in the reference list. The following examples of different types of bibliographic entries are in APA format. Some of the most commonly used examples are included below. If a citation of yours does not fit any of the categories below, consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (pp. 215-281) for a more complete list. The book is available in the Library.

Please note that the titles of the books are italicized. If you are unable to italicize (if you are using a typewriter, for example), the title should be underlined instead. There should be one space after all forms of punctuation. Use an author's last name and first and middle initials. Only the first word in the book title is capitalized.

Two Works by the Same Author:

Hansberry, L. (1959). A raisin in the sun. New York: Random.

Hansberry, L. (1969). To be young, gifted and black. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice.

If there are multiple books by the same author, place the book titles in order by year of publication within the listings for that author with the earliest first.

A Specific Edition of a Book/A Book With Two Authors:

Beyer, R., & Trawicki, D. J. (1972). Profitability accounting: For planning and
control (2nd ed.). New York: Ronald.

Please note that in the example above both authors' names are in inverted order (last name followed by first initial). A comma must follow the first author's name and an ampersand (&) must be used between the two names. The edition is listed in parentheses directly after the title, but not italicized.

Corporate Author:

Committee on Telecommunications. (1970). Reports on selected topics in
telecommunications. New York: National Academy of Sciences.

Book With an Editor:

Bevington, D. (Ed.). (1980). The complete works of Shakespeare (3rd ed.).
Glenview, IL: Scott.

Article from an Encyclopedia or Dictionary — Named Author:

Uleman, J. S. (1996). Motivation. In Encyclopedia Americana (Vol. 19, p. 545).
Danbury, CT: Grolier.

In the example above, the title of the article is capitalized and is followed by a period, followed by the word "In" and the italicized title of the book in which this particular article is found. The volume and page of the article are also included.

Encyclopedia Article — No Named Author:

Thomas Jefferson. (1993). In Encyclopedia Americana (Vol. 16, pp. 1-9). Danbury,
CT: Grolier.

Similar to the entry above, the title of the encyclopedia article is followed by the date and the rest of the citation as listed above.

Article from Monthly Periodical:

Schure, A. (1994, March). Towards a new 'distance learning' university. T.H.E.
Journal, 32-34.

This example shows that the year and month of the periodical are placed after the name of the author followed by the title of the article. The title of the periodical appears italicized after the article title, followed by the pages upon which the article was found.

Article in a Weekly Periodical:

Sparks, J. (2006, March 6). Why India's hot......how it's hanging. Newsweek, 147(10)
36-37.

In this example, you would use the date of the periodical. In parentheses, put the year first, then the month, followed by the date. Then list the title of the article, the title of the periodical and the page numbers.

U.S. Government Report, available on government website, no date listed:

As a rule, you should maintain all standard elements of the citation that are included for print materials, such as: author, date, title, location and publisher. Though non-print and electronic formats are different, there are many elements to include in the references that are the equivalents of those in print format.

Video Recording:

Welles, O. (Director). (1982). Citizen Kane [Motion picture]. New York:
VidAmerica.

Citations for videos, films, sound recordings and other types of media should include the name and the function (director, producer, etc.) of the person responsible for the work, the date, title, medium (film, videocassette, filmstrip, etc. in brackets), location, and name of publisher/distributor.

Common terms used for medium (to be placed in brackets after the title of the work) are: television broadcast, motion picture, videocassette, television series, television series episode, CD, record, and cassette.

Television Broadcast:

Crystal, L. (Executive Producer). (1993, October 11). The MacNeil/Lehrer news
hour [Television broadcast]. New York and Washington, DC: Public Broadcasting
Service.

The citation for a television broadcast includes the air date as well as the other elements included for the video recording listed above.

Articles from Electronic Databases:

Franklin, M. B. (2000, September). Running out of HMO coverage. Kiplinger's
Personal Finance Magazine, 54(9), 102. Retrieved August 28, 2000, from
EBSCOhost database (Academic Search Premier).

Hatch, D. (2003, June 6). Drug Company Ethics. CQ Researcher, 521-544.
Retrieved July 4, 2003, from http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher.

Citations for articles taken from electronic databases such as EBSCOhost should include the same type of information used for the print version of the periodical article. In addition, include a statement that indicates the date the article was retrieved, the source (such as EBSCOhost), the specific database used (such as Academic Search Premier or Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition).

Electronic Copy of an Abstract from an Electronic Database:

Schroeder, K. (1994, September). Curbing youth violence. Education Digest, 60, 73.
Abstract retrieved January 4, 2001, from EBSCOhost database (Academic Search
Premier). (Item number: 9409223318).

Citations for full-text periodical articles and abstracts available on electronic databases should include all of the information that would be included for the periodical article itself. For example, this citation includes the author's name, date, article title, periodical title, volume and page. In addition, it should include the title of the database and, if available, the item number of the article/abstract (the number is often identified at the beginning or end of the entry).

Online Journal Article Based on a Print Source
(if online and print versions are likely to be the same):

Jacobson, J. W., Mulick, J. A., & Schwartz, A. A. (1995). A history of facilitated
      communication: Science, pseudoscience, and antiscience: Science working group
      on facilitated communication [Electronic version]. American Psychologist, 50,
     750-765.

Citations for online journals should include the same type of information that you would include for a print source. Include the author(s), title of the article, "electronic version" in brackets after the title, journal title and pages (if listed).

Online Journal Article That Differs From the Print Version:

Prepare the citation the same way as the previous one, but include the date that you retrieved the article since the document could be moved, changed, or removed entirely from the Internet. The final element of the citation should be the web address of the article.

World Wide Web – Articles:

Wall Street Journal (Ed.) (1995, August 14). Money and investing update. Retrieved
from http://update.wsj.com/

World Wide Web – Articles, No Author:

Working out in a new year. (2001). Retrieved January 12, 2002,
from http://www.gymdays/jkr/html

Citations for online journals should include the author or editor (with the designation "Ed." in parentheses after it), the last update or copyright date (in parentheses), the document title, the publication information indicated as "Retrieved from" with a space and the address (underlined). If there is no author/editor available, begin the citation with the document title.

World Wide Web Documents:

Weisman, R. (2001, October 5). Anti-terrorism bills raise online privacy issues. Retrieved January 4,
2002, from http://www.globalexchange.org/september11/newsfactor100501.html

Personal Communications

Personal communications such as interviews, memos, letters, and telephone conversations should not be included in a reference list since they cannot be recovered or retrieved by the reader of a research paper. Instead, these communications should be cited within the text only.

A title page is the cover page for your paper. On it you should have the following information:

The upper right-hand corner of the title page should include the running head and the page number (1). All other elements of information on the title page should be centered on each line and placed just above the center of the page. The example below is an APA style title page.

Sample Title Page:

An annotated reference list is a special type of reference list that describes and often evaluates the work cited in addition to listing publication information.

Each entry of an annotated reference list includes all of the information mentioned in this handout as well as a short description of the contents of the work cited, information about the scope and focus of the work, and a description of the type and quality of illustrations. Annotated reference lists often note other useful features such as the absence or presence of a table of contents, index, glossary, reference list, or directory. General impressions or a concise evaluation of the work may also be included.

Example of an annotation:

Harer, J. B. (1992). Intellectual Freedom: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

This book explores many aspects of the topic of intellectual freedom by beginning with a discussion of the meaning of intellectual freedom, its history and importance as part of the First Amendment, censorship, and current issues. The volume is divided into 7 useful sections including: 1) an introduction, 2) a chronology of important dates, 3) biographical sketches of people important to the topic of intellectual freedom, 4) laws, legislation, and court cases, 5) a directory of organizations involved with censorship and intellectual freedom, 6) & 7) annotated reference lists of print and non-print resources. At the end of the volume, a helpful glossary of terms and a detailed index is also included.

Sources Used to Prepare this Guide

American Psychological Association (2001). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.