Diane Zabel, Editor
Leslie A. Lewis, Guest Columnist
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This column addresses the impact of recent changes to APA style citation on the academic community, which widely uses this style to document its research. The author notes that these changes, especially the wholesale adoption of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for citing electronic journal articles, have caused frustration and confusion for users of APA style, and the problem is likely to worsen as more students and faculty realize what the new changes entail. The column also touches on the problems these changes will create for citation software and online bibliographic management tools like RefWorks, EndNote, and Zotero. Lewis concludes that the American Psychological Association needs to recognize the problems its new changes are causing and institute an interim measure for the millions who use APA style on a daily basis to document their research.—Editor
A common question at academic library reference desks is how to properly cite a source in a specific citation style. Because students and faculty may use a variety of citation styles, libraries often keep copies of the most current versions of major citation styles at the reference desk. While librarians are not necessarily experts on all styles, they will usually be familiar with the styles most used at their institutions. If institutions offer subscription citation tools like RefWorks or EndNote, reference desk librarians will also receive numerous questions pertaining to the use of these tools and their rendering of particular citation styles. Not surprisingly, it is often reference librarians who teach classes or workshops on citation styles and citation tools at institutions of higher learning. Thus academic reference librarians are among the first to deal with the impact of citation style updates. A perfect example involves recent changes to APA style, which is widely used today by many disciplines in the academic community.
In June 2007, the American Psychological Association (APA) released an update to its citation style titled APA Style Guide to Electronic References. This twenty-four page pamphlet, available for purchase as a PDF from the APA website, does not replace the fifth-edition (2001) manual, but rather revises and updates that section of the manual dealing with electronic resources. Because APA has not released a new edition of its manual and because this electronic addendum has restricted access even when purchased (e.g., libraries must purchase site licenses to post the electronic version and limit access to authenticating users), users of APA style have been slow to realize the changes and their ramifications. In addition, although the update addresses many new types of electronic content and technologies, the wording of the publication itself is at times ambiguous, confusing, and difficult for users to interpret.
APA’s most significant change to citing electronic resources is the application of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI). A DOI is a unique alphanumeric code that identifies a specific article or document and provides a persistent link to its location on the Internet. The intent of the DOI is to provide a consistent way for users to find articles and documents on an ever-changing Internet. In a very forward-looking move, APA made the inclusion of DOIs in citations the method of choice when citing scholarly journal articles accessed online. Now, instead of adding a retrieval date and URL or retrieval date and database name when citing journal articles accessed electronically, users are directed to include the DOI assigned to that article by an approved registration agency (see figure 1).
While this change makes sense conceptually, in practice its implementation seems a bit premature. DOIs may well be the wave of the future, but right now not all articles have DOIs. Furthermore, many research databases do not yet include DOIs in their records or articles. At the same time, as many academic librarians will tell you, students at the college and university level currently access the majority of the journal articles used in their research papers from the myriad subscription research databases available through their institutional libraries. Therefore the most common form of journal article citation at the college and university level is that of the journal article retrieved from a research database. The recent changes to APA style, however, now make this a confusing and difficult source to cite.
Subscription research databases enable students to search for information on their topics and find full-text articles electronically from a wide range of publications. They allow faster, more efficient searching and the reassurance that students are searching authoritative sources. When citing these sources, students want a quick, efficient way to glean the information needed for whichever citation style they might be using. They certainly want all of the required information to be readily available in the databases they are using. What if they do not see a DOI for a journal article they want to cite? This is currently a very common dilemma, and herein lies much of the problem with APA’s change in electronic citation style.
Some research databases, like PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES (both sponsored by the American Psychological Association), do a great job of including DOIs, and citing articles from these sources is simple. Many other research databases, however, do not—or at least have not yet—embraced this new technology. APA realizes this and offers the following solution: If one does not find a DOI for a journal article in a research database, one should then search for an article’s DOI by going to the CrossRef.org website and using its “free DOI lookup.”1
If one goes to CrossRef.org and finds that no DOI has been assigned to a particular article (currently a very real and distinct possibility), one should then “give the exact URL (if the content is open-access) or the URL of the journal home page (if the content is accessible by subscription).”2 Needless to say, this explanation has left many a student, faculty member, researcher, and librarian scratching their heads. These additional, external steps are making databases, the primary research tool at the college and university level, harder, not easier, to use, if one wants to cite one’s sources properly in APA style. What happened to simply citing the name of the database itself in one’s retrieval statement, which was what the fifth edition of the APA manual specifically prescribed?3
APA states, however, that one should no longer include the name of a database in a retrieval statement for a journal article. Instead, if unable to locate a DOI for an article (either by finding it in the article itself, in the database record, or via CrossRef.org), one should then go searching further on the Web for an appropriate URL. The APA Style Expert confirmed this cumbersome procedure in response to an e-mail query: “Please note that if the article is open access, the exact URL of the article (not the database home page URL) should be provided. If the content is accessible by subscription, the URL of the journal home page should be provided.”4
The new APA style guide does not address what to do when neither an article URL nor a journal home page is available for an article lacking a DOI. The fact remains that researchers today will find such articles in many research databases. How then should they properly cite these articles in APA style? Would it not make sense to cite the name of the database, at least when no DOI is readily available?
While the APA style was developed specifically for articles published in American Psychological Association journals and publications, APA style is widely used today by students and researchers in many different disciplines. At my university alone, our schools of nursing, business, and education all use APA style, as do many of the departments in the social sciences and health sciences. Many students coming to the university have never heard of APA style before, and if familiar with any citation style, it is usually Modern Language Association (MLA). Now not only will librarians and faculty be teaching their students a new style that is quirky and detail-oriented, they will also be telling them to search for DOIs, article URLs, and journal homepage URLs to cite articles accessed in research databases. This process seems very untenable indeed, especially for undergraduates.
[...] inside Rhodes added an interesting post on From the Front Lines: An Academic Librarian Reports on the Impact of…Here’s a small excerptMany other research databases, however, do not—or at least have not yet—embraced this new technology. [...]