East Carolina University
Department of Psychology


Citing Articles Retrieved From an Electronic Database


    These days one can frequently obtain from an electronic database a copy of a journal article (most often in a pdf file) that is an exact duplicate of the article as it appears in the hardcopy of the journal.  In this case, the APA advises that you should cite the article exactly as you would if you read it in the hardcopy version, except that you should add a bracketed comment indicating that you read only the electronic version.  Here is an example:

Brase, G. L., & Walker, G.  (2003)  Male sexual strategies modify ratings of female models with specific waist-to-hip ratios [Electronic version].  Human Nature, 15, 209-224.

    If, however, you have reason to believe that the online article is not formatted in the same way that the hardcopy article is (the page numbers may differ or commentary may have been added, for example), APA says you must include the date you retrieved it and the URL.  Although not necessary for the article in the example below (which was an exact copy of the hardcopy article), here is how you would do this:

Olson, J. M., Vernon, P. A., Harris, J. A., & Jang, K. L.  (2001).  The heritability of attitudes:  A study of twins.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 845-860.    Retrieved February 10, 2005, from http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp806845.pdf.

    When you have retrieved the article from an online database, like those available through the Joyner Library at East Carolina University, you should definitely not give the URL, which is not of the type that can be used by anybody else to point to the online article.  It is generated by passing through proxy machines, gateways to verify that you belong to an institution that has subscribed to the online service, search engines, and so on.  It is useless to others and too long and ugly as well.   Here is an example of how you should cite an article from such a database:

Brase, G. L., & Walker, G. (2003) Male sexual strategies modify ratings of female models with specific waist-to-hip ratios. Human Nature, 15, 209-224.  Retrieved February 10, 2005, from EBSCO Host Research Database.

    Here, from a student paper, is an example of how you should NOT cite such a paper:

Scheffler, H.W. (2003). Observations on the fall of kinship. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3(4), Retrieved September 3, 2006, from http://jproxy.lib.ecu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=psyh&AN=2004-12540-007&site=ehost-live

    The url in this example would be useless for anybody other than a current member of the East Carolina University community.  Clicking it leads to a page that asks for a valid PirateID and password.  Furthermore, the document is in a pdf file with page numbers identical to those in the printed medium.  Note also that this student did not give page numbers (she should have) and did give an issue number (she should not have, since this journal is paginated by volume).



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This page most recently revised on 7. September 2006.