Reference Desk 610.902.8537
APA Style from the American Psychological Association is the acceptable citation format for the social sciences. The Sixth Edition was released in 2009. For writing and formatting guidelines, consult the Publication Manual, on reserve at the circulation desk in the library.
“DOI” is an acronym that stands for “Digital Object Identifier”. It has become in the last twenty years one of the most durable standards for locating journal articles, reports, and other scholarly work in the Internet.
According to the International DOI Foundation, “A DOI name is permanently assigned to an object to provide a resolvable persistent network link to current information about that object, including where the object, or information about it, can be found on the Internet. While information about an object can change over time, its DOI name will not change.”
Education-related articles may have an ED or EJ number, also a unique number, in this case assigned by the US Department of Education when the item is listed in its ERIC database. Numbers beginning with EJ indicate journal articles; ED numbers indicate standalone documents. EBSCOhost also packages the ERIC database, with more full-text access than the government’s version.
A webpage or article can also be identified by its web address or URL (uniform resource locator). However, this is subject to change. A permalink (a.k.a. persistent link, stable link, or durable link) is a more stable URL. If the article or webpage you want to cite has a tool that will give you a permalink, use that URL in your citation. Otherwise, use the URL you have where it is called for.
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