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Education: Additional Resources/Web Pages

Research help in the area of Education

Essential Elements

Include as much of the following information as available when citing Web sites:

  • Name of author(s)
  • Date of publication
  • Name of Web page
  • URL of Web page

Tips

- Italicize the name of the Web page. The name of the overall Web site is not needed.

- Capitalize only the first word of the page's title, subtitle, and proper nouns.

- Do not place a period after the page's URL to end the citation. This will corrupt the URL address.

- Try to keep the URL on one line. If it must continue onto another line, be sure to break the URL before a forward slash (/).

Sample Citations - Web Sites

Web Page

Follow this Format:

Author, A.A., & Author, B.B. OR Name of Group. (Date). Title of Work. Website Name. URL

Example:

Martin Lillie, C.M. (2016, December 29). Be kind to yourself: How self-compassion can improve your resiliency. Mayo Clinic.                         

        https://www.mayoclinic.org/health-lifestyle/adult-health-in-depth/self-compassion-can-improve-your-resiliency/art-20267193

 


Web Page, No Stated Author

An Author may be

  • An individual
  • multiple people
  • A group (institution, government agency, organization, or
  • a combination of people and groups

If an author cannot be easily established on a website you should try to determine the author from context. For example, an annual report from an organization generally will not have a listed author but in this context the organization is considered the author. In the same way if a page from an organization's website or government website is lacking a stated author then you can consider that organization or department to be the author.

Example:

British Museum (2009). Africa: arts and cultures. Retrieved from http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/world_cultures/africa

         /africa_arts_and_cultures.aspx

 

Note: If the name of the group or organization is the same as the website name then the website name portion of the citation can be omitted.

 


Web Page, No Date

If the web page has no date of publication or no date updated,  use the notation "n.d."

Example:

Boddy, J., Neumann, T., Jennings,S., Morrow, V., Alderson, P., Rees, R., & Gibson, W. (n.d.). Ethics principles. The Research Ethics Guidebook:

        A Resource for Social Scientists. http://www.ethicsguidebook.ac.uk/EthicsPrinciples

 


Blog

If the author's full name cannot be found, it is acceptable to use the blogger's screen name.

Examples:

​Klymkowsky, M. (2018, September 15). Can we talk scientifically about free will? Sci-Ed. https://blogs.plos.org/scied/

        2018/09/15/can-we-talk-scientifically-about-free-will/

 

Webpage on a website with a retrieval date.

Some websites are designed to be updated over time in these cases you should include a retrieval date to be sure that your reader knows when you accessed the information.

 

U.S. Census Bureau. (n.d.) U.S. and the world population clock. U.S. Department of Commerce. Retrieved July 3, 2019, from                 

        https://www.census.gov/popclock/

 

Personal Communication

No personal communication is included in your reference list; instead, parenthetically cite the communicator's name, the phrase 'personal communication,' and the date of the communication in your main text only. See in-text citation page for examples.