Zotero: The Magic Citing Machine

From the American Psychological Association

From the Purdue Owl

From FLITE

These databases aren't being graded by your professors or the American Psychological Association! The citations will need corrections, but will likely give you a decent start!

Why bother with a citation management system? See Cite Faster: Use Zotero (2-minute video). This video will give you a great idea of how useful Zotero is!

Check out this full library guide to using Zotero to learn more:

There are 2 options to purchase the APA Publication Manuals (7th edition) as an ebook.  You can purchase 1-year access, or for just a little bit more money, purchase an ebook edition that you can download and that doesn't expire! There are also various print options.

Citations provide basic information about an information source that allows you or others to locate the same source again. The information source may be a book, journal article, webpage, radio broadcast, etc. Although the information needed to locate a journal article vs. a webpage (or a book vs. a radio broadcast) may vary, some basic information such as who, what, when, and where should be made available in the citation (see bulleted list of Basic Components of an Article Citation below).

When writing papers, it is essential to cite your sources, meaning that you must say where the information came from . If you do not cite your sources, you may be guilty of plagiarism. When in doubt if you should cite a source, err on the side of precaution and note where the information came from.

Basic Components of an Article Citation

• Author (Who)
• Title (What)
• Publication date (When)
• Journal Volume (Where)
• Journal Issue (Where)
• Page number(s) (Where)
• doi (preferred) or URL (Where for online article)

Many, but not all, online resources have a DOI (digital object identifier). These numbers are specific to an online resource, so your professor (or anybody) can use the DOI to find the online source's citation, or possibly the full text. Learn more about DOIs in the:  

How do you locate a DOI?

• For journal articles, you will most often find the DOI listed on the 1st page of the article or the last page, or if you located the article through a database, hopefully you'll find the doi listed in the database

Help, I Can't Find a DOI:

• Not every online article, document, report, book, etc. has a DOI. If you've tried the above steps, and haven't found a DOI, you've done your due diligence. You can then refer to your APA Style Guide to find out how to properly cite the source when there is no DOI.